Web Conferencing Alternatives
Web conferencing allows real-time point-to-point communication as well as multi-task communications from one point to many in separate locations. Depending on the service, either an application (additional software) is downloaded and installed or a web-based application is launched in the attendee’s browser.
There are so many alternative services to use for web conferencing. In this document, we will give information about the ones that can be integrated into RADIX LMS fully or partially. These web conferencing services may not be integrated into your Radix LMS site. School administrators should contact Radix support if they want to have any of the services added to their sites.
Fully integrated services are usually the ones that a teacher can add to the course via activity chooser, share the recordings within the course, and share the conference link without going back and forth between the web conferencing app's site and Radix LMS.
Please note that none of these plugins are managed by Radix LMS. If you have any issues with these conferencing tools that you are subscribed to, you must contact the service provider.
BigBlueButton
(Full integration)
BigBlueButton is a web conferencing system for online learning powered by Blindside Network. This activity enables instructors to effectively engage remote students. It supports live online classes, virtual office hours, and group collaboration with remote students.
BigBlueButton supports real-time sharing of slides (including whiteboard), audio, video, chat, emojis, breakout rooms, and screen. It also records all content for later playback.
BigBlueButton is a free, open-source web conferencing service and has certain limitations in terms of the number of participants, and the number of concurrent sessions that can be handled. Your connection may slow down or be interrupted if these limits were reached. If you would like to upgrade to premium service to be able to host more concurrent users/meetings, please contact Radix LMS support.
Detailed instructions about how to use BigBlueButton can be found here.
Features
- Create activity links to online sessions within the course via activity chooser
- Restrict students from joining a session until a teacher (moderator) joins the session
- Create a custom welcome message that appears at the top of the chat window when joining the session
- Specify join open/close dates for the session that appears in the calendar
- Record a session
- Recordings are automatically associated with the activity, allowing students (or teachers) to go back and view past sessions from within the activity.
- Ability to hide, rename, or delete recordings from an activity.
- Moderator controls attendees webcam, microphone, public/private chat and seeing other people's cameras
- Breakout rooms, Polls, Whiteboard
- Access via mobile browsers on IOS and Android without needing to download an app
- Students can't change their names since they are connected via the course
- Ability to create a custom group of attendees among the students.
- Moderator may control joining the meeting
Pros/Cons
- Con (for free version): Limit to 25 participants per session. This is not a hard limit but more participants than 25 will reduce the audio/video quality. If only the host uses the webcam, the limit could be higher.
- Con (for free version): Limit to 2 concurrent sessions at the same time. This may be higher if the sessions do not have too many participants or not using the webcams.
- Pro: Meeting access is restricted only from within the course to logged-in users. No external access to the virtual meeting so no need for password protection.
Zoom Meeting
(Full integration without recording access)
Zoom web conferencing is a paid service that can be somewhat integrated fully with the exception of accessing the recordings. Zoom has developed a plugin that is integrated into Radix LMS and allows teachers to create Zoom meeting activities from within the course without needing to go to the zoom website. This integration requires a paid subscription to zoom's enterprise-level service.
Features
These features are related to Radix LMS integration. Zoom meeting features may change based on the subscription level. Please visit their site for a full list of the meeting features.
- Create activity links to online sessions within the course via activity chooser
- Specify join open/close dates for the session that appears in the calendar
- Restrict students from joining a session until a teacher (moderator) joins the session
- Set password in the activity settings
- See the participation report after the meeting ended.
Pros/Cons
- Pro: 100+ participants/hosts with a paid subscription
- Users outside the Radix LMS can join the meeting with the link and password
- Con: Students can change their joining name
- Con: Must download the app to join via a mobile device.
- Con: If the subscription doesn't allow recording to the cloud, the teacher must download the recording and upload it to the course for students to access.
WebEx Meetings
(Full integration)
An activity plugin that is created by Cisco allows you to schedule, host, and attend WebEx meetings from within Radix LMS. Moderators can manage and view recordings for the meetings from within the course as well.
These features are related to Radix LMS integration. WebEx meeting features may change based on the subscription level. Please visit their site for a full list of the meeting features.
Features
- Schedule meetings by adding the activity.
- Host or join meetings from within the course.
- Hosts can view a sharable link for non-Radix users to join the meeting.
- Recordings are automatically associated with the activity, allowing students (or teachers) to go back and view past sessions from within the activity. (requires the purchase of cloud storage)
- Ability to hide, rename, or delete recordings from an activity.
- Admins can use the module to help manage all recordings in WebEx.
Pros/Cons
- Con: Only Meeting Center and Training Center are currently supported.
- Pro: 100+ Participants with paid subscriptions
- Con: If the subscription doesn't allow recording to the cloud, the teacher must download the recording and upload it to the course for students to access.
Jitsi Meet
(Full integration without recording access)
Jitsi Meet is an open-source (Apache) WebRTC JavaScript application that uses Jitsi Video bridge to provide video conferences. The Jitsi Meet client runs in the browser, without installing anything else on the computer. You can try it out at https://meet.jit.si. Jitsi Meet allows very efficient collaboration. Users can stream their desktop or only some windows. It also supports shared document editing with Etherpad. Jitsi plugin allows teachers to create the meeting sessions from within the course.
Features
- Create activity links to online sessions within the course via activity chooser
- Will use Radix username by displaying the username and picture in videoconferences.
- Can use the free public server provided by Jitsi (meet.jit.si) to start using the service.
- Schedule video conferences and make them accessible with the minutes as you want.
- Meetings can be recorded and uploaded to DropBox
- Live stream meetings to YouTube
- Speaker stats
- Background blur
- Secure with password or token
- Chat rooms, desktop sharing, raise hands.
Pros/Cons
- Con: Limited to 35 participants, quality drops after this number
- Con: Students can change their names
- Pro: Live streaming to YouTube
- Con: No Whiteboard
Microsoft Teams Meeting
(Partial integration)
There is no integration available for Microsoft Teams video conferencing. Single sign-on can be established between Microsoft and Radix LMS which allows students and teachers to access their teams with one click. Once a single sign-on is established, teams meetings can be created in the text editing box (with a label or assignment definition) which will place the Teams Meeting link into the course. See the below video for details.
Google Meet
(Partial integration)
There is currently no integration of Google Meet with Radix LMS. Having said that, teachers can still share Google Meet's meeting link with their students on the course page. Another way of sharing Google Meet information with the students is by calendar subscription. Once this is done, any event created in your Google Calendar will have a Meet link integrated into it. Integration of the Google Meet link into the calendar is a setting you can turn on/off in your google calendar settings.
Here is how you subscribe to a Google Calendar to your course.
First, create a class calendar on your google account and gather its "Secret address in iCal format". It is a long address like below:
Use the iCal link to subscribe to your google calendar in your course following the steps below. Make sure to select "Course" as the type of calendar so that all students (and parents) can have access to the events you create in your google calendar.
Web conferencing allows real-time point-to-point communication as well as multi-task communications from one point to many in separate locations. Depending on the service, either an application (additional software) is downloaded and installed or a web-based application is launched in the attendee’s browser.
There are so many alternative services to use for web conferencing. In this document, we will give information about the ones that can be integrated into RADIX LMS fully or partially. These web conferencing services may not be integrated into your Radix LMS site. School administrators should contact Radix support if they want to have any of the services added to their sites.
Fully integrated services are usually the ones that a teacher can add to the course via activity chooser, share the recordings within the course, and share the conference link without going back and forth between the web conferencing app's site and Radix LMS.
Please note that none of these services are managed or hosted by Radix LMS. If you have any issues with these conferencing tools, you must contact the service provider.