Conferences - Recording Break Out Rooms

[rachel_groft]

Hi everyone!  I have searched around on Google, on Big Blue Button's platform, and here in the Canvas community, and I cannot find an answer to these questions.  Please forgive me if they have already been asked:

• Can a teacher see multiple breakout rooms at once (ex. grid view) other than having multiple tabs open at once?
• Can conferences be automatically recorded (maybe through some kind of script)?
• Can breakout rooms also be automatically recorded?

Our district is wanting to ensure that breakout rooms are constantly monitored, especially if younger children are in them "alone" working in groups.

Thank you for your help!

[Brown2020]

This is a very important and EXCELLENT feature!!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @rachel_groft ...

I'm not really sure of an answer for you, but I am hopeful that @ffdixon might be able to chime in here to give you some feedback.

Good luck to you!  Thanks, take care, be well, and stay safe!

[ffdixon]

Hi Rachel,

I am the product manager for BigBlueButton.  While I work at Blindside Networks, the company that provides hosting for Canvas Conferences to Instructure, and can't speak on behalf of Instructure, I can respond to your question.

> Can a teacher see multiple breakout rooms at once (ex. grid view) other than having multiple tabs open at once?

We understand the importance of monitoring breakout rooms -- especially with younger children.  

At the moment you would need to have multiple tabs open.  We've have ideas about adding a "breakout vision" capability into BigBlueButton which we show the activity from multiple breakout rooms in a single page.  That's still an idea for the future.

> Can conferences be automatically recorded (maybe through some kind of script)?

If you update to the Premium Tier hosting, we could configure your account so every session is recorded (and remove the Start/Stop recording button to stop the recording).  

For information on upgrading reach out to your CSM.

> Can breakout rooms also be automatically recorded?

At the moment we don't record breakout rooms.  There is a bit more work ahead as we need to give the instructor (or institution) choice on who sees the breakout rooms recordings.  It would be one of (a) the instructor only, (b) the instructor and the participants of the breakout room, (c) all participants in the main session.

We do plan to add recording for breakout rooms in the future (but no timeline is set yet).

Regards,... Fred

BigBlueButton Developer

[rachel_groft]

Thank you so much for your help!  That is great information!  Grid-view breakout rooms will be an awesome feature, as will breakout room recordings!  Look forward to seeing those features 🙂