I am glad to announce you that we have improved and released the most recent version of BigBlueButtonBN Activity Module. This is as part of our efforts to offer this community an always better solution to integrate Moodle and BigBlueButton.
In this release we basically added two features. The first one is the support for separate groups and the second one the activity access filter to prevent guests or any configured role to get into BigBlueButton sessions.
The separation of groups is based in the basic implementation that Moodle offers. That means that it does not support grouping. The feature was added having in mind that for big classes, teachers could require organize the interaction with students setting up meeting sessions for small groups where an small number of students and moderators would be enrolled.
From the BigBlueButtonBN point of view, all the configuration is in the Common module seting box where the selection of [Separate groups] is required. Be aware that only the two first modes has been implemented.
The good performance however relays on the group configuration. And there is where the administrator would establish who belongs to which group.
In this example a number of different students have been enrolled for the groups 101 and 102, although any of them could be enrolled in more than one at the same time. And the same principle can be applied for teachers, tutors or any other customized role.
On the access interface there is only one change. Before joining the meeting when the user belongs to multiple groups, there will be an intermediate page where the group to be accessed need to be selected.
Moderators or students having direct access to the meeting would see a menu like this:
And students waiting for moderators would see an interface like this.
The second feature can be exploid when the administrator wants to give a preview of the courses to guests, not allowing them to access the activities.
The configuration is in the roles definition. Just make sure that the role you are configuring doesn't have access to neither Join Meeting nor Moderate Meeting.
We hope you enjoy this new features.
Regards,
Jesus Federico