T.I.P. Blends with BigBlueButton in the Philippines
Like many academic institutions, the Technological Institute of the Philippines (TIP), which specializes in engineering and computing, had to adapt to the requirements of the pandemic with very little warning. Although as an institution they believe that face-to-face is the best approach, they had also been investigating blended learning tools when the pandemic hit. This meant they weren’t completely unprepared.
For starters, they had identified Canvas as their preferred learning management system (LMS) but hadn’t settled on a main online platform. They experimented with a number of tools such as MS Teams, Google Classroom and Zoom. But the teachers and students gravitated to BigBlueButton, citing its classroom approach as preferable to the simple video conferencing approach of the other tools. According to T.I.P. IT Officer Allen Go, they first heard of BBB through their LMS, but BigBlueButton’s classroom features sealed the deal.
We chose BBB as our main online platform because it offers different features suitable for teaching and learning. It\’s seamlessly integrated into our LMS which gives easy access to virtual classrooms with just a click.
Teacher feedback on the new features of BigBlueButton (version 2.4) praised features like the ability to randomly select students.
shy students are reluctant to share their thoughts or raise a hand, so teachers enjoy being able to call on students who otherwise wouldn’t volunteer.
The multi-user whiteboard affords a lot of benefits as teachers and students can collaborate in real-time. Teachers also appreciate the Emoji feature, which gives the students the ability to emotionally express themselves during their online classroom. T.I.P. administrators praised the scalability of BBB and its ability to be run in a multi-server environment. The integration with their LMS offered them a number of advantages such as analytics, which gives them access to statistics on the activities of teachers and students per session.
Polling is useful in getting the ideas or opinions for a particular question. Before the start of the class, for example, educators will ask a question and will poll students to engage them and set the tone for the classroom.
T.I.P. administrators praised the scalability of BBB and its ability to be run in a multi-server environment. The integration with their LMS offered them a number of advantages such as analytics, which gives them access to statistics on the activities of teachers and students per session.
The BBB Learning Dashboard … enables teachers to view student participation and engagement throughout the session, which is very crucial in tracking the learning development of their students.
Allen Go, Chief Technology Officer at Technological Institute of the Philippines said that “T.I.P. has used BigBlueButton for hosting over 150,000 online classes. We evaluated other products and concluded that BigBlueButton empowers our teachers to provide the best virtual classroom experience for their students.”
With its emphasis on innovation and digitization, the move to blended online teaching for T.I.P. wasn’t unexpected. But, like many institutions, the pandemic accelerated the move. “The pandemic has transformed the way we teach and learn. Given the challenges, there is no replacement for traditional in-classroom teaching. But there is room for enhancement. With BBB, teachers become adept with technology and feel that they are still inside their classrooms, all while ensuring that students also have the best online learning experience.”
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We’re firm believers in education playing a role in bettering the world presently, and in the future. To achieve this, our mission is to develop the world’s next-generation virtual classroom application, and it’s through partnerships like this that help bring us one step closer to achieving it.
We’re excited to continue working with the Technological Institute of the Philippines to provide educators and students throughout the organization with an online learning experience that’s effective and affordable.
About BigBlueButton
BigBlueButton is the world’s virtual classroom. Originally created in a Canadian university, it is now built into the world’s most popular learning management systems (LMS), including Moodle, Canvas, Sakai, D2L, Jenzabar, and Schoology – together comprising over 75% of global LMS deployments. BigBlueButton is a growing open-source project, with over 150 developers and commercial companies around the world enhancing the project for teachers and students. Thanks to this community, BigBlueButton is now localized into over 55. For more information, see: https://bigbluebutton.org/.
