BigBlueButton

BigBlueButton is an open source virtual classroom platform designed specifically for online education. Where general-purpose video conferencing tools adapt poorly to teaching workflows, BigBlueButton is built around them from the ground up: shared whiteboards with annotation tools, real-time polling, a raise-hand queue, breakout rooms instructors can move between, and a recording system that captures sessions for later playback.

The conferencing engine supports audio, video, and screen sharing alongside a multi-user whiteboard where instructors can present slides and annotate in real time. Students can respond to polls without leaving the session, send public or private chat messages, and signal they have a question through the hand-raise feature. Breakout rooms divide a large class into smaller discussion groups and instructors can broadcast messages to all rooms or move between them to check progress.

LMS integration is the primary reason educational institutions choose BigBlueButton over a simpler video tool. The LTI plugin connects it to Moodle, Canvas, Sakai, and other LTI-compatible platforms so students launch sessions from within their course environment. No separate accounts, no external links to manage, and session recordings appear automatically in the course.

Deployment is the main friction point. BigBlueButton is not a simple Docker pull; it requires a dedicated Ubuntu server with specific hardware, open ports, and a configured domain name. The bbb-install.sh script handles the initial setup, but the platform requires meaningful server resources to handle concurrent sessions reliably, and maintenance is an ongoing responsibility.

For educational institutions that need a proper virtual classroom and want full control over their infrastructure, BigBlueButton is the most feature-complete open source option available.