Cisco today announced a preview version of its video conferencing service that"s geared toward students and teachers as the education sector shifts to remote learning. Webex Classrooms is designed to connect educators and students through a secure online environment.
The new platform allows teachers to set up and launch online classes, schedule virtual office hours, and auto-lock sessions to admit only signed-in students while guests wait in a virtual lobby. There"s also an option to group students into smaller teams where they can share content and solve problems together. For an organized experience, there are hard-mute options to remove distractions and gain better control of virtual classes. Teachers can also accept questions through "hand-raisers".
For students, Webex Assistant for Meetings allows them to follow along a lesson with live transcripts. Plus, they can review their classes using action items, highlights, and recorded class sessions. They can also collaborate with their classmates using Webex Teams. In addition, parents can virtually connect with teachers one-on-one through Webex Teams to keep tabs on the learning progress of their children. They can also review classroom notes and highlights using Webex Assistant.
Webex Classrooms supports several templates for education users and security settings for virtual classroom experiences. Meanwhile, Webex Education Connector, which combines Webex tools into learning management systems, now also works with Schoology.