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BigBlueButton

bigbluebutton · Video conferencing

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What is BigBlueButton?

BigBlueButton is a virtual classroom that you install on your own Ubuntu server. It was designed for teachers: slides with whiteboard annotation, polls, shared notes, breakout rooms and recordings are part of the session, and moderators get a dashboard on who attended and took part.

BigBlueButton is a web conferencing system built for online classes. It shares audio, video, slides and screens, and adds a multi-user whiteboard, polls, shared notes, breakout rooms and recordings. Greenlight, an LGPL room manager, and LTI tools connect it to your site or learning platform.

Core capabilities

  • Teach with uploaded slides, a multi-user whiteboard, polls, emojis and shared notes.
  • Split a class into breakout rooms and review attendance in the Learning Analytics Dashboard.
  • Record sessions for playback and connect through Greenlight, LTI or plugins for Moodle and others.

Built for teaching

Presenters upload documents, annotate slides on a whiteboard that can be opened to all students, and run polls whose results feed the Learning Analytics Dashboard. Shared notes let a class write together, breakout rooms split groups, and moderators can approve guests, ask for consent before unmuting and share screens and webcams. Sessions can be recorded for playback.

  • Whiteboard
  • Polls
  • Breakout rooms
  • Shared notes
  • Recording

Greenlight and LMS integrations

BigBlueButton has no built-in account system, so a front-end creates meetings through its API. The docs recommend Greenlight, an LGPL-3.0 room manager with local accounts and OpenID Connect login, installed with the bbb-install script. LTI tools serve Open edX, Blackboard and other LTI platforms, and the docs reference plugins for Moodle, WordPress and others.

  • Greenlight
  • LTI
  • Moodle
  • API

Self-hosting and licence

The code is licensed under the LGPL-3.0. Production needs a clean, dedicated Ubuntu 24.04 server with 8 CPU cores, 16 GB of memory, a hostname with a valid SSL certificate, TCP 80, 443 and 3478, UDP 3478 and UDP 16384 to 32768, and 250 Mbit/s of bandwidth. The bbb-install.sh script sets it up, and the docs also describe Docker use for document conversion.

  • LGPL-3.0
  • Ubuntu 24.04
  • bbb-install
  • Ports

Where it fits

Use cases

  1. 01

    Hold a live class with slides and polls

    Upload a PDF or Office file as the presentation and annotate it on the whiteboard. Run a poll to check understanding, then open shared notes for the class to write up the answer together.

  2. 02

    Split a class into group work

    Create breakout rooms from the moderator panel and assign students to them. Join a room to help, then bring everyone back to the main room when time is up.

  3. 03

    Add video classes to the learning platform

    Install the BigBlueButton plugin for Moodle or the LTI tools, then add a room to a course. Teachers start sessions from the course page and students find the recordings there.