Creating and starting a Conference

You can create a conference in a course to host virtual lectures, hold virtual office hours, and student groups.

Creating a conference is a course permission. If you cannot create a conference, your institution has restricted this feature. Contact your Canvas Administrator for more information.

Conference invitations are sent out when the Conference is created in Canvas. We recommend creating course events in the Calendar to alert invitees of upcoming conferences, then creating the conference 30 mins prior to the host time. 

To create a new conference

In your course navigation select BigBlueButton[1]. Next, select the New Conferences [2] button.

Afterwards, the New Video Conference Setting Window [3] will prompt you to add your conference details:

By default, all members in the course will be invited to the conference.  To select specific members who can see the conference (and it's associated recordings), unselect Invite All Course Members and select individual members.

2021-10-07 -- You can now select members by Sections and Groups, making it easy to have the conference (and its associated recordings) visible to only a specific section or group.

To do this, uncheck 'Invite all course members', then the option to invite sections, groups, and users will become available. 

The following video gives you an overview of the new selection by Sections and Groups.

Be sure to select Update to save the conference settings.  

To start a created conference

Click Start to launch the Conference - selecting this will automatically redirect you to your BigBlueButton Conference.