Schoology Conferences Guide for Educators

As the admin for your course or group, you must click the Start Conference button within the app to begin the video conference. Even if the Start Time has passed, your conference will not begin until you start the session.

After you launch or join a conference, BigBlueButton opens in a new tab. Follow the prompts to test your audio and microphone.

As a moderator (teacher), you can moderate the session. You can

• Make anyone a presenter (you are a presenter by default).
• Lock features to prevent students from using public chat, private chat, shared notes, sharing a webcam, displaying other students’ annotations, or displaying other students' cursors on the whiteboard.
• Start or stop recording.
• Start and manage breakout rooms (for example, assigning students to specific breakout rooms).
• Change a user’s role (for example, moderator to attendee).
• End a session.
• Display the Learning Analytics Dashboard to monitor student engagement.

During a conference, Admins may lock some conference features to disable members from using them.

Conference features include:

• Share webcam.
• Share microphone.
• Display other attendees' webcams.
• Send Public Chat messages.
• Send Private Chat messages.
• Edit Shared Notes.
• Display the names of other attendees in the Users list.
• Follow other attendees' cursors.
• Review other attendees' annotations.

To lock conference features for members:

1. From the Users panel, click the gear icon.
2. Select Lock viewers.
3. Click the Status toggle bar for each feature you want to lock or unlock for members.

Private chat messages and Shared Notes are locked by default.

After you begin a conference, course and group members can join your session.

1. Click Conferences.
2. Click the conference Title.

• Members can only join sessions with a status of In Progress, which indicates that the Admin has started the session.
• Members of courses with linked sections can join the same conference when accessing the Conferences app on the course menu.
• Admins in schools with Premium BigBlueButton licenses may also invite guests into a session via an invite URL.

To end the conference, the course or group admin must select End Conference within Schoology. Participants can exit a conference by closing the browser.

Conferences saves recorded sessions for 7 days. To review a recorded session during this time, select the Completed tab within the app and click Play.

• It may take several minutes after the conference has ended for recordings to display in the Completed area