Teaching Through COVID-19 Pandemic Using BlueJeans
March 20, 2020
Teaching Through COVID-19 Pandemic Using BlueJeans
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with BlueJeans
BlueJeans is the web conferencing platform supported by Georgia Tech and that we are encouraged to use. To my knowledge, BlueJeans is used in multiple units across the campus. I have no data on which teams use BlueJeans the most. In general, I use BlueJeans for meetings - at least two per week. I work in the Center for Teaching and Learning as the TA Development and Future Faculty Specialist. In this role and among other duties, I teach at least one course per semester and hold one-on-one consultations with my team's client base (graduate students and post-docs who plan to go into a faculty position). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, my campus has shifted to remote learning, meaning that I will now be using BlueJeans for synchronous and asynchronous teaching and for holding consultations and other meetings. So, it is truly addressing the problem of needing to stay connected with colleagues and students when unable to meet face-to-face.
- Connection is Easy: I have used other similar platforms where connecting to a meeting was not always intuitive, making it a frustrating process.
- Recording: I like that I can set a meeting to auto-record because I often will forget that the meeting is to be recorded. I also appreciate that BlueJeans sends a link to the recording almost immediately after the web meeting is over.
- Share Screen: I often need to share my screen during a meeting, and I like that this feature is easy to use and thus far has been reliable.
- Gallery View: I would like to be able to control the number of people shown in the gallery view. I realized this just yesterday. I am telecommuting because of COVID-19, and my weekly staff meeting was held in BlueJeans. There are only 12 of us, but because of this setting, I could only see 9 of us at a time.
- Chat: I am not aware of a way to save chat dialog. While running a meeting, I don't always have the opportunity to read the comments; therefore, having the chat saved would be beneficial.
- Breakout Rooms: I believe the breakout rooms are recorded, but I'm not sure if the content within the rooms is also saved. Having this feature would be helpful.
- Background: An option to create a faux background.
- Easier to find consistent meeting times because no travel is involved and no room reservations required.
- I find that we use our time during the meetings more efficiently, sticking to the set time.
- Having a record of the meeting benefits those who were not able to attend, but it also helps when writing yearly reports if we need to refer back to a particular discussion.
- Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate
As far as just general meetings, I think BlueJeans is in the same class as Zoom and Blackboard...basically. BlueJeans does lack certain features, like being able to save a chat. BlackboardCollaborate does online learning so well that it would be my goto for that purpose. I would like to see BlueJeans expand in that direction. Because my campus supports the BlueJeans platform, and because of the COVID-19 crisis that caused an unexpected move to remote learning, I do hope BlueJeans looks into how the platform could have been better suited for this situation.