Video conferencing/Practice Groups

Practice groups in teaching are usually unable to establish personal contact for collaborative work in large lectures, especially for first-semester students, because personal meetings and encounters before and after the lecture are missing. However, collaboration in exercise groups is an essential point for collaborative problem solving in teams. Under the restrictions of COVID-19, for example, this phase of personal exchange before and after a lecture is missing. For functioning collaborative structures in advanced semesters this aspect may not be as strong, but for first-year students any personal exchange is missing.

Procedure - group formation with breakout rooms in BBB edit

  • BBB Create room.
  • Via mailing list/mail distribution list: Invite students to join.
  • BBB: Create breakout rooms: assign the group of students randomly.
  • In the breakout rooms, students are given small individual tasks that promote joint problem-solving.
  • In the breakout rooms of BBB students can make first contacts in smaller groups and get to know each other thematically with the small task in the subject, the group does not have to function.
  • Personal contacts can then be followed up in a private setting, e.g. on Jitsi or in the group's own BBB rooms
  • Ideally use Chrome (or better Chromium) when meeting jitsi from exercise group.
  • With Jitsi, the connection via WebRTC runs directly between clients as a small group. A URL determines the meeting point
  • In student groups should choose cryptic ID which one does not advise https://jitsi.example.com/ANA89X21V94, which are only known to the group. https://jitsi.example.com/Analysis are rather unsuitable.
  • As a lecturer in the plenum, ask for a joint video conference if any of the students are still looking for a small group. If this is the case, they should stay in the BBB room after the video conference. The remaining students are randomly distributed to breakout rooms or the students can go to individual group rooms and ask if they still want to form a group.

See also edit