Blindside Networks Accepts Award
Let’s get right to it.
We won the Certified Integration Partner of the Year award of the year for driving the most revenue to Moodle for our integration of BigBlueButton.
That … felt … great.
Blindside Networks, the company behind both BigBlueButton and the BigBlueButton integration with Moodle, took center stage and accepted the award.
Blindside Networks accepted its award for its integration of BigBlueButton in Moodle
Members of the Blindside Networks team at the Global Moodle Moot: Ahmad Farhat, Fred Dixon, Shamiso Jaravaza, Binoy Wilson, and Jesus Federico
Why we won
We’ve been working towards this award for 15 years.
At Blindside Networks, we wrote the first integration with Moodle in 2010. In 2020, Moodle HQ incorporated that integration into the core of Moodle 4.0, making it available to the over 180,000 Moodle sites when the upgrade. We have worked closely with Moodle through 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 5.0, and now 5.1 (see more below).
We like to say that BigBlueButton looks like part of Moodle because it is part of Moodle.
This award not only reflects the integration but adoption of BigBlueButton by Moodle’s customers. But why are organizations choosing BigBlueButton instead of Teams, Zoom, Meet and other video conferencing systems? After all, for many organizations, Microsoft Teams is “free”, so why not use that instead of BigBlueButton?
The answer is this: the classroom is fundamentally different from the boardroom.
The goal of the classroom is not to meet, it is to learn. Video conferencing systems, in contrast, are just sharing bits on the screen. There is an absence of pedagogy, minimal tools for active learning, and no built-in learning analytics. The results are educators do their best to engage students in a one-way session, learners passively learn, and the results are unsatisfying for both.
Pedagogy shows that we, as humans, are not computers. We learn best in a social environment where we can actively learn, make mistakes, get feedback, and connect the new knowledge to a larger framework. The learn-it/link-it approach has, and still, works best in the live classroom.
Moodle focuses on asynchronous learning, BigBlueButton focuses on active learning with live analytics to ensure every student learns. The results are far more effective learning.
“We pretty much use BigBlueButton exclusively for student-facing work, and it’s been critical for delivering advanced math online classes and teacher professional development.”
At the Moodle Moot global, we showcased how this integration is getting even deeper.
Deepening the integration with Moodle
We extended the activity completion to share more data with Moodle, and surface more data in Moodle back in BigBlueButton.
BigBlueButton → Moodle
We created a new Moodle sub-plugin that populates Moodle’s database with the analytics from each meeting. The result: it’s now possible to create a unified view of synchronous + asynchronous reports in Moodle.
For example, it’s trivial to now create an attendance report.
A unified report in Moodle showing student’s time in each BigBlueButton session
Moodle → BigBlueButton
Let’s give the educator greater insight into their learners. Now that Moodle has unified data, let’s surface this in every class so educators have this data at their fingertips. The result: a saving of time and greater insight into each student, yielding more opportunity for personalized feedback during the class.
For example, this is a sampling of data that could be shown to the educator for each student.
Analytics from Moodle at your fingertips in BigBlueButton
The educator can customize Moodle’s analytics visible to them in BigBlueButton
BigBlueButton can use the course roster to show the list of absent students
Here there are two reports for this BigBlueButton activity available with a single click
Also coming in Moodle 5.1, we enabled a sub-plugin to now override the display of the recordings.
The list of recordings can have a whole new look
The Future of Virtual Classrooms
In the age of AI, where many students are using AI to cognitively offload and reduce real learning, the classroom – physical or virtual – is going to become even more important.
In his presentation The future of virtual classrooms built on pedagogy, AI, and analytics, Fred Dixon, CEO of Blindside Networks, emphasized the importance of Authentic Engagement, which is a component of Social Constructivism, the foundation of Moodle, where humans learn best from humans.
Authentic Learning will be even more important in the age of AI
In Social Constructivism, we learn best when we are engaged in social activities for creating and learning together. The learning further extends to learn-it/link-it/teach-it.
Makes it also possible to build foundational skills such as creative thinking, interpersonal skills, leadership skills, communication skills, and problem solving skills. And, the more insight the educator has in a student’s learning journey, the better they can provide feedback.
We don’t need more AI in the live classroom, we need more authentic engagement for learning. One example Fred gave was a new capability for BigBlueButton called Visual Submit, where the educator can ask “Work on this math problem and give me a snapshot of what you are doing. I can then give you direct feedback.”
Blindside Networks is adding capabilities to enable learners to visually submit their in-class work for feedback in BigBlueButton
Summary
This award shows why Moodle chose BigBlueButton in 2020 as their built-in virtual classroom. We continue to deepen the integration for Moodle with:
- BigBlueButton → Moodle: Unified reports
- Moodle → BigBlueButton: Student Alerts and Absentee List
Coming in Moodle 5.1, we will continue to deepen the integration with:
- Once click viewing of reports within the BigBlueButton activity
- Custom displays of past recordings within the activity
The goal of Moodle is empowering educators to improve our world. We share the same goal and it’s our passion to continue to deepen the integration and improve BigBlueButton for educators world-wide to deliver more effective online classes.
To find out more about how Blindside Networks can help you improve the delivery of your virtual classes within Moodle, reach out to your Moodle Partner (we are working with over 25 Moodle Partners that resell our services), or contact us directly.
