Disclaimer, I know nothing about Jitsi, but I saw that it is open source and though if someone wants to take this and run with it… they should. I have no idea how difficult it would be transform Jitsi into JitsiExams.
As I type this, I am proctoring a university level final exam remotely using Google Meet. There are some things that are not ideal for this application:
- I cannot un-mute a student to see if they are talking.
- If a student talks, all other students hear.
- I cannot see all students simultaneously. The best I can do is see one giant feed (the last one to say something) and 10 smaller feeds on the side. It would be great if I could just tile them all simultaneously.
- A standard feature in most conferencing apps is private chats, but Google Meet does not have it. All chats are public to al students.
- If I enable a whiteboard, I can no longer see my students.
- I sent a personalized exam to each student using Google Drive.
- Students can see each other, which might be distracting.
It seems like there could be a good application for Jitsi if a number of these issues can be addressed.
- Person proctoring (the proctorer?) can un-mute a particular student so only they (not all other students) can hear him. Of course, a discrete notification should be sent to the student to let them know.
- If a student un-mutes themselves to ask a question, only the proctorer can hear.
- By default, all student feeds are visible to the proctorer. The resolution of the feeds does not have to be high since the tiles will be likely small.
- All text chats are private between proctorer and student.
- By default, a whiteboard is available but using it does not hide the video feeds
- This one is not a big deal, but I could share a separate exam to each student simultaneously… That would be awesome…
- Students cannot see each other, by default they would see the exam and the whiteboard.
Anyways… just an idea… Hope everyone is well!