How do I setup Virtual Classroom for a course?

← Creating courses and managing catalog
Skill Network Virtual Classroom allows instructors to conduct classes on-line and have full participation of the students in the class using webcam, audio, multi-user whiteboard and other instructional tools that make teaching real-time online sessions not just possible but effective.

Instructors also have the ability to record their online sessions for students to review later or to enable students who missed a class to catch up.

End Goal

By the end of this guide, your course's Virtual Classroom section should look like this:

1. Getting Started


For this guide we will assume you have a course and are familiar with configuring it.

First things first, we must be in the studio environment to configure our course. Once we are in studio we should see a view of our course outline like below.

2. Add a Unit


In order to create a Virtual Classroom, we must first create a unit within our desired course subsection. Once you click "New Unit" you should see a view like below.

3. Add the Virtual Classroom Component


Click the green square titled "Advanced" and select the "LTI Consumer" option.

4. Retrieve Your Credentials


  1. Enter your admin dashboard. E.g.. myportal.skills.network/admin
  2. In the left menu, navigate to Courses > Create/Edit Courses
  3. Take note of your LTI Client Key and LTI Client Secret which are required in the next step.

5. Configure the LTI Passport for Your Course


  1. Now back in Studio enter Advanced Settings
  2. Scroll down to LTI Passports and enter the following using the credentials from step 4.
    ["virtualclassroom:<your_client_key>:<your_secret>"]

    If you already have existing passports, use a comma to separate the passports within the square brackets.
    E.g.
    ["old_passport", "virtualclassroom:<your_client_key>:<your_secret>"]

6. Configure the Virtual Classroom Component




  1. Click "EDIT" as shown above.
  2. Change the Display Name. I'll use Lecture & QA Discussion in my case.
  3. Fill in LTI ID with virtualclassroom
  4. Fill in LTI URL with this value: https://lti.virtual.skills.network/tool
  5. If the following fields are present, set:
    • Request user’s username - True
    • Request user’s email - True
    • Send extra parameters - True

Once you save your changes, you should see this error message.

This means that you cannot view the component in Studio. You must instead Publish your changes and click View Live Version to exit studio.

Using Virtual Classroom


1. Creating Your First Session


Click the “Schedule a Session” button to start.

Fill in the required information such as the session name, start time, etc…

Once you reach the presentation field, you can provide a web URL to a PDF or image resource you would like loaded in at the start of your session. To do this by uploading your resource to your portal, refer to the next step.


2. Uploading a Presentation (Optional)



To upload a presentation resource to your portal, head over to the studio environment in a new tab. Once there, click Content > Files & Uploads


Upload the PDF or image you would like to use for the session.


Once uploaded, you can click “Web” to copy the web URL for the resource.

Finally, head back to your new session form and you can paste the web URL to the presentation field. Always click “Check Link” to make sure you’ve provided the right resource!


3. Finalize Your New Session


Read through the additional options and check the settings you would like applied to your session. Once you’re ready, click “Save” at the bottom and your Virtual Classroom should let you know you’ve successfully created a session.

You can click “Join Now” starting 10 minutes before your session is scheduled to start. The button will disappear after the duration you set has run up.

If your session is scheduled to start in the future, adding to your Google Calendar or iCal/Outlook is recommended by clicking the blue buttons.

4. How do I View Virtual Classroom in a Student's View?



At the top of your screen, you should have a dropdown available which controls your view of the course. Using this you can switch to see how your students will see a session.

Feedback and Knowledge Base

(thinking…)