Live group video streaming in Open edX

Hi all :wave:

During this COVID-19 outbreak I find myself wanting to recommend Open edX to teachers, educators, schools and universities who need to move teaching outside of the classroom. However, I do not know of any good live video conferencing solution that would work out of the box on Open edX. I searched Slack, the (now defunct) mailing list and these discussion forums; I found many people asking about that feature, but there was no satisfying answer.

Did I miss something? Would you be interested in that feature? If yes, would you be willing to sponsor its development?

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Open edX does not have a native conferencing tool. So, I recommend integrating a fully-featured web conferencing solution instead. There are a ton out there (Hangouts meet, Zoom, Webex, etc.) which can be used for the livestream, group meetings, or breakouts depending on the needs of a class.

From personal experience, an LTI integration with Zoom will let you add a schedule block in an edX course. Check with the service provider on whether your institutional license covers this kind of usage.

EDIT: Similar to the complexity of a video pipeline, this is unlikely to be an out-of-the-box feature on Open edX.

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Thatā€™s just great @bpedx :slight_smile: I managed to setup Zoom LTI Pro, created an LTI Xblock on my Open edX platform and scheduled a meeting. It just works! Iā€™ll proceed to creating a video tutorial, if I find the time.

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BigBlueButton is my go-to when it comes to virtual classrooms, and it works great when connected via LTI :slight_smile: Plus open source, woop woop

Cool to hear that Zoom has LTI support though, we use it every day and yet I never even considered integrating it into a courseā€¦

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I had a look at BigBlueButton but did not realize either that it was LTI-compatible. @MHaton Do you run BBB on premises or do you use an instance hosted elsewhere? Is it working well?

Iā€™ve only personally used it with the demo they gave us access to :smiley: But weā€™ve referred people to hosted BBB SaaS providers previously like Blindside networks - we donā€™t typically get into the business of maintaining a billion other SaaS solutions, lord knows Open edX is enough to handle.

Hey. We are trying to integrate zoom on to open edx. Is the LTI Xblock available. How challenging was it to integrate with the open edx platform.

@Diljith,

Check if this will be helpful

https://openedx.atlassian.net/plugins/servlet/mobile?originPath=%2Fbrowse%2FEDUCATOR-4558#issue/EDUCATOR-4558

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@Diljith I didnā€™t have much trouble setting it up but I had to dig in the source code of the lti_consumer xblock. Iā€™m planning on publishing a tutorial or video in the coming days. Unless youā€™re in a hurry?

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Just in case itā€™s helpful, we have this general guide on using the LTI Consumer XBlock, although it is written to work with the version of it weā€™re running on Tahoe. Regardless:

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Thank you Ben. I had a question in a separate thread on AR/VR integration. Is that an area you are familiar with, as well? Thanks for the support in advance.

WebRTC is a good bet. Bit of configuration and STUN & TURN servers to setup though.

Here is the video and tutorial: How To Stream Live Video Classes in Open edX with Zoom https://youtu.be/3OPz3UxvVnc

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Great tutorial Regis :+1:

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Does Open EdX support live/virtual classes delivered by teachers to varying sizes of students?
What are the features that are available for the instructor in such a live/virtual class?

Many thanks

@razakiz,
It is not available out of the box, but you can integrate Bigbluebutton using itā€™s LTI component (https://bigbluebutton.org/)

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This is also discussed in the following thread.

@gabrieldamours Thanks - I have merged the two threads.

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Hey everybody and thanks to @regis for opening this thread
working on integration of Open edX and BBB I found this video from appsembler which is exactly what I need. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByV95k8r8-A
So I want to know that did you customize lti_consumer xblock to achieve this functionality? if you didnā€™t and itā€™s just about configuration, can I ask you to kindly guide me about how can I have the meeting recordings back in my LMS course page?

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Hello Mahyard.
You do need to customize the lti_xblock, because the standard version will not share all the learner information that is needed on the big blue button side.

here is a link to the PR we did in eduNEXT to make the change.

I hope it will help.