Abstract:

In March 2020 COVID-19 pandemic caused lock-down in many countries and industries around the world. Consequently, many academic institutions, so the School of Economics and Business at the University of Sarajevo, were forced to transfer all teaching and academic activities to online mode using the only in-the-moment available resources and technology. Unfortunately, many of our servers were not designed to work with a large number of simultaneously active users, and under such an extreme utilisation experienced difficulties and down-time. To provide a robust and fail-safe e-learning experience for students and teachers, we had to rethink and redesign our virtual classroom infrastructure.

This work presents the successful design of an adaptable high-availability virtual learning architecture implemented using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) based on the Moodle Learning Management System and BigBlueButton virtual classroom software. The capability of this system to work with more than a thousand simultaneous users achieved with elements such as single-sign-on, load balancer, clustered servers and shared storage.

Findings presented in this paper can be indicative adaptation hints for information technology departments and administrators in many academic institutions with the same technology on how to make the necessary steps and improve online learning experiences for all stakeholders in future terms.

Keywords:

Virtual classroom, load balancing, open-source, server clustering, BigBlueButton, Moodle, high-availability.