Computing desk
< March 11	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 12[edit]

Moodle Videoconferencing/Lecturing?[edit]

Due to current circumstances, we may be forced to move to online lectures for the next few weeks. Our Moodle has some proprietary video conferencing plug-in (I don't know who decides these things, or why), but, oh wonder, the number of licenses is insufficient to move some ~~300000~~30000 students to it in a hurry...

Does anybody know if there is a decent open-source plug-in for Moodle that supports video conferencing/lecturing? Thanks! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:33, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised that proprietary plug-in is even allowed under Moodle's GPLv3+ licensing. I've never used Moodle but there appear to be a lot of plugins for it: have you checked for a list or directory? I know that Nextcloud and Jitsi have video chat, so maybe it is possible to use one of those, or transplant code from one of them into Moodle. 2601:648:8202:96B0:54D9:2ABB:1EDB:CEE3 (talk) 10:39, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not, but that won't be the likely problem. Many organizations avoid security by using a VPN. So, to use Moodle, students likely have to VPN into campus. Does your VPN have the seats and bandwidth to handle an entire campus logging in remotely? Probably not. One university I was at for the last five days (I don't want to name names and shame them) decided to simply extend Spring break by a week because they don't have a VPN to handle the students load and they don't want to pay the money to increase it. So, students get one week less education (or more if they keep extending Spring break). 135.84.167.41 (talk) 12:08, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe try Skype or Microsoft Teams? Have a look on the http://www.edugeek.net forum for ideas - it's run by school IT techies. --TrogWoolley (talk) 13:23, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I would prefer an Open Source solution - if the university wants to use proprietary software, they can figure it out without my input ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:24, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Stephan, do I understand correctly that you seek to support 300,000 (three hundred thousand) users?

If this is true, free access to the source-code is probably the smallest concern: you will almost surely need a commercial-scale service provider to provision storage-space, server bandwidth, video hosting, and so on. Even if you had the source code for everything, would you and your organization be able to scale up to such a volume?

From this perspective, what would be the real use of free and unrestricted access to the implementation-details and source-code? Most of it is only usable by a commercial entity who is specifically in the business of selling the service of scalability. Free-licensing their technical efforts could help their direct commercial competitors, but it probably could not really help you and your students; you'd still have to shop for a service-provider.

Nimur (talk) 14:50, 13 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry - my mistake. We have 30000 (30 thousand) students in total, and I'm really only concerned with about 600 of them who study computer science at our location. We do have the hardware (I hope) to support that. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:49, 13 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nimur, there are very good reasons to want Free and Open Source Software that go beyond being able to modify the source code. You should know this, as you're licensing everything you submit to Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license, and the Wikimedia Foundation supports and promotes open source and free licenses. Just because an application is open-source does not mean it is unsuitable for enterprise application: take Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for example.

In a time when much code is abandonware, free and open-source software provides a way for other interested parties to pick up where the original developers left off, to fork a project when more work is needed, or to audit the code for security purposes. It is very important to support free and open source software for these and many other reasons. Elizium23 (talk) 16:53, 13 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I'm only using FOSS software for my own courses on principle - I don't think it's the university's job to force students to buy proprietary software and/or to lock them into proprietary solutions. I minimise the use of proprietary software in general as much as plausibly (and conveniently) possible in this world - not primarily because of money, but because of longevity and reduced hassle. I can still run LaTeX on my 1992 project thesis, and gcc on the source code (if I disable a lot of warnings ;-). And I don't need to hunt down dead companies for new licenses, or count licenses and (theoretically) be subject to audits and what-not. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:00, 13 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think I am not communicating my point well: I am a huge fan of freely-licensed software with free and unrestricted access to source-code. I only meant to emphasize that unrestricted access to a free-software implementation is not, in itself, a solution to the difficult and expensive proposition of scalability - which is largely limited by a willingness to buy or rent capital equipment.

Stephan, I think perhaps this is a great teaching-opportunity for your students: invite them to expend some intellectual effort thinking about the theory and practice of data-distribution; and how they might improve the rate of distribution using theoretical or practical methods. There are a lot of very fascinating questions that pertain to the theory of telecommunications network topologies; data compression; and video in specific; there are a lot of learning-opportunities to showcase the present state-of-the-art in free- and open-source implementations; and to compare those offerings to the commercial alternatives.

I field questions about video-streaming a lot during my day-to-day - a lot of the questions take the form, "why is it so hard?"

To this end, I often conduct a walkthrough of the inner bits of RFC8216 - the open specification for HTTP Live Streaming, which is (as of 2020) the most popular internet video-streaming technology in the world; and I also bring up one of its commercial implementations, on top of which the software-programmer may implement new code.

I think it's also a great opportunity to talk about free software - what it can and what it cannot provide. As you surely know, there's an infamous old comparison about free software and free beer: these are not the same things.

Nimur (talk) 18:15, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed not - free beer is gone once used. Free software is like Jefferson's candle (it's light does not diminish if someone else lights their candle of Jefferson's). I'm mostly teaching fundamental topics (logic, complexity, formal languages), so video streaming is a bit off my track. But I agree in principle. Thanks! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:51, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is a Skype plugin for Moodle. While Skype is free, I can't guarantee that the plugin is free. Assuming that it is, you can install Skype on pretty much anything. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 16:47, 13 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A friend of mine (teaching for a class of ~40 twenty-years-old) has been using Twitch. If you do not have a strong opinion against using an Amazon service, it is probably the best solution. It solves a fairly similar problem (one person talking to a large crowd online, showing both the face of that person and a part of their computer screen, allowing some viewer feedback via the chat). There might be advertisements though, and check with your employer if the copyright conditions are OK (I suspect the terms of use are the usual "whatever you post here is ours forever"). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 13:43, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My university (90,000 students in total) supports and recommends BigBlueButton for online seminars and lectures and Jitsi for smaller videoconferences. Both can be embedded in moodle courses as "activities". BigBlueButton is said to work for up to about 100 participants, I've heard positive reports from seminars with about 20 to 30 participants over the last few days, and I saw one lecture with more than 100 (120 maybe?) fail today. It has some promising but still rather crude features, like scribbling on your presentation (effectively a whiteboard if your presentation has a blank page), but handwriting with the mouse is obviously a pain. --Wrongfilter (talk) 19:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My sister (a professor of history) pointed me to Jitsi (the shame!), which looks quite nice. I'll check out BigBlueButton, too. Thanks! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:51, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]