How to Create Webinars in Moodle
What if live demonstrations and illustrations of key study concepts in your Moodle courses are delivered to the comfort of your own homes?
That’s what webinars are supposed to do!
Webinars do a great job of simplifying remote learning. They make for a very convenient, cost-effective, and flexible learning solution.
Also, webinars are great because you can connect with a huge audience all at once, share your information in different ways such as PowerPoint presentations, live streaming videos, live chat, share your screen, record and sell your webinars, conduct polls, and surveys, etc. And not to forget, they don’t incur any commuting expenses.
Bottomline – We love webinars. Do you?
Why create webinars for e-Learning?
As e-Learning teachers or instructors, you can easily reach out to your students on your Moodle site with the help of webinars. It’s a great learning experience to gather students virtually once in a while for an insightful study session. Taking your regular online course modules to a webinar breaks the monotony and sparks some interest in your students about the courses they are learning – a great remedy for the shrinking attention spans of students these days.
Plugins to create webinars in Moodle
Talking about the tools for creating webinars in Moodle, there are several options you can choose from. Some of them are BigBlueButton, Adobe Connect, Jitsi Meet Rooms, Zoom etc. There are plenty of plugin options available that enable you to effectively create and conduct live, face-to-face interactions in Moodle.
Popular webinar or video conferencing options in Moodle
Zoom
This plugin offers tight integration with Moodle, supporting meeting/webinar creation, synchronization, grading, and backup/restore. (Business or educational Zoom account required)
OpenMeetings
OpenMeetings is a free browser-based software that allows you to instantly set up a conference on the web. OpenMeetings rooms can be displayed inside a Moodle course in a frame, in a new window, or can occupy the entire window
BigBlueButton
BigBlueButton is an open-source web conferencing system that supports real-time sharing of slides (including whiteboard), audio, video, chat, emojis, breakout rooms, and screen. It also records all content for later playback and can seamlessly integrate with Moodle.
WebEx Meeting
This is a Moodle activity module for Cisco WebEx that readily integrates with Moodle. With WebEx Meeting, you can easily schedule, host, and attend WebEx meetings from within Moodle. You can also manage and view recordings for the meetings from Moodle in a simple way.
Via- Virtual Classroom
The Via activity module provides integration between Moodle and Via – a virtual classroom tool. It is designed to simplify the use of synchronous events within Moodle. Via provides single sign-on between the two systems with easy event creation and management.
Jitsi Meet
This is an open-source video conferencing solution tightly integrated with Moodle. Jitsi allows video conference recording, direct transmission to YouTube, screen sharing, full-screen display, statistics display, and several other features for interactive learning.
In the latest Moodle update (version 3.9), the Jitsi Meet Server has been integrated with the Fordson theme of Moodle wherein automatic meeting rooms can be created for every course. The theme has integrated a button at the top of every course.
This button provides a URL unique for every course. You simply have to add the button text and Jitsi server URL, the Fordson theme will automatically generate buttons and launch Jitsi Meet rooms for every course.
Pro Tip -: If you’re a user of the Fordson theme in Moodle, you should definitely give Jitsi a try. It is one of the most convenient webinar/ video conferencing options after the popular choice – BigBlueButton. Jitsi is great for simple web meetings and quick meets with students.
In case you’re confused about which tool to choose for your Moodle site to facilitate your live sessions, you can read through these video conferencing recommendations supported in Moodle.
Now getting to the practical part! We will take you through the simple process of creating webinars in Moodle using Adobe Connect. The Webinar is a module that helps you conduct Adobe Connect hosted webinars.
8 Steps to create webinars in Moodle
The Webinar module in Moodle allows you to create and host webinars by adding them as an activity in a particular course. It supports Adobe Connect 9 and you also need an Adobe account.
Important – All users attending the session will be required to have Flash Player 10.1 or higher, with the ability to install Adobe Connect Add-Ins in order to share their screen.
#1 Add webinar activity
- Go to the desired course in which you want to create a webinar
- Turn the editing on and select add an activity
- Click Add an activity or resource link
- You will see an exhaustive list of different activities such as Assignments, Chat, Database, Forum, Quiz, Lesson, SCORM Package, glossary etc. Choose the option – Webinar
- Next, you’re taken to Add a new Webinar screen where you have to name your webinar (mandatory field with * mark). There are other fields such as agenda and description where you can add additional details of your webinar but these fields are optional
#2 Edit Webinar
For editing the webinar, you can turn editing on or navigate to Edit settings from the course settings panel. You will be taken to the Updating Webinar page
You can change the description, name and agenda of the webinar here, if required
#3 View Webinar
To view the webinar activity you just need to click on the activity link on your course page. You will then be taken to the view page which displays the title, description and webinar session information
#4 Add a new session
Navigate to the view webinar page and click the Add a new session link on the
On the Adding a new session page you then need to fill in the necessary details such as Host, Capacity of the webinar, the start date/time and the finish date/time.
#5 Edit session
To edit a session open the view webinar page and click the edit icon next to any of the sessions listed. You are then taken to the edit page, when you can change the details as needed.
#6 Edit or View attendees
Only the teacher, admin or the non-editing teacher, authorized to manage the webinar can view or edit attendees of the webinar that have registered for the session. They can also add additional users. Added users receive an email notification from Moodle confirming their registration for the session.
To edit users, from the view webinar page click on the Attendees link. This takes you to the Attendees page where you have the option to add/remove specific users.
#7 User registration
For the user to register for the webinar, the first step is to log in.
The logged-in user navigates to the desired course with the webinar in it and clicks on the link after which they are then taken to the View Webinar page where they can register for any of the available sessions there.
#8 Join the session
- As a user, you only get the option to join session, but if logged in as the session host, you get the option join the session as the host.
- From the View Webinar page you can then select the Join session link
And that’s about it! You can now start organizing your webinar with Adobe Connect or whichever video-conferencing tool you’ve opted for.
Simply stick to the basic process – With your chosen webinar activity module installed and webinar credentials set up, you create webinar instances the same way you create other activities in a course page. This involves specifying the date, start and end times, moderators and learners. Here’s an example of a default setting to make your lives a bit easier – course teacher (s) = webinar moderator (s), enrolled students = webinar participants.
And you’re ready to conduct awesome webinars for your students in Moodle.
Pro-Tip -: Have you thought about selling your unique webinars? It can be a great option for you and can help you earn some passive income from your content in Moodle. You can easily sell your webinars on WordPress with the help of Edwiser Bridge. WordPress is optimized for search engines and therefore a great platform for marketing your courses and webinars created on Moodle.
Conclusion
Hope you found these steps helpful. What do you think about the article? Which tool do you prefer to use to create webinars in Moodle? Do let us know in the comments section below.
