This page provides the release notes for Flexible Classroom.
v2.6.x was released on July 29, 2022.
Taking screenshots (Electron only)
v2.6.x adds a snipping tool for Teacher to "take screenshots" of content inside and outside of the classroom, and dynamically add it to the classroom whiteboard. The feature is available in one-to-one classrooms, small classrooms, and lecture halls. This feature is available in the toolbar on Windows and macOS clients. Teachers and teaching assistants can choose to take a screenshot directly or with the current window hidden. The screenshot is displayed in the center of the whiteboard. And Agora provides APIs to expand usage of this feature to include Students and other roles:
Automatic grouping
For the "breakout rooms" feature, v2.6.x supports automatic grouping. Teachers can set up the number of breakout rooms. Then the system randomly assigns the whole class to breakout rooms.
Drag and Drop images from desktop into the classroom whiteboard (Web/Electron)
v2.6.x allows teachers or teaching assistants on the PC to drop local images to the whiteboard area and insert the images into the whiteboard.
Dynamic Size, Resize and Place Teacher Video inside the Classroom
v2.6.x allows teachers to freely drag and drop their own video and the video of students within the classroom window. Teachers can also resize a video window by double-clicking it. Whatever actions the teacher takes with their video window, students will see.
Hiding the stage area
v2.6.x adds a button in the settings of small classrooms, which enables teachers to hide the stage area. After the stage is hidden, the following things occur:
Saving whiteboard contents as images
v2.6.x allows teachers and teaching assistants to save contents on the whiteboard to their local device as JPG images.
Adding web links as courseware
v2.6.x allows teachers to add web links, such as YouTube links and Google Drive links, in My Resources. The suffix of such kind of courseware is .alf
, which is the abbreviation of agora link file. After the upload succeeds, the teacher can open the courseware in the classroom.
This release fixed the following issues:
v2.4.x was released on June 2, 2022.
Breakout rooms (Web only)
v2.4.x adds the "Breakout rooms" feature in the toolbox of small classrooms. With breakout rooms, students can get together in small groups for discussion and brainstorming sessions. The teacher manually assigns students to each breakout room. A class supports up to 20 breakout rooms with a maximum of 17 members in each room. The features that are available in breakout rooms include real-time audio and video interaction, messaging, whiteboarding, and screen sharing.
After the breakout session begins, the teacher and teaching assistants have the ability to dynamically join or leave any of the breakout rooms. They can also send announcements to all the breakout rooms. Students are notified in their chat to check for the announcements.
Support for the teacher role on Android and iOS clients
v2.4.x duplicates the features of the teacher role on desktop experience for Web, macOS, and Windows on mobile clients (Android and iOS).
Ability to turn the whiteboard on and off in the classroom
v2.4.x adds the ability to turn the whiteboard on or off in one-on-one classrooms, small classrooms, and lecture halls. By default, after the whiteboard is turned off, the teacher's video is displayed in the whiteboard area. Developers are also able to use UIStore or UIKit to customize the classroom layout when the whiteboard is off.
This release includes the following improvements:
This release fixed the following issues:
v2.1.0 was released on February 23, 2022.
In v2.1.0, Agora fully optimizes the internal architecture of Flexible Classroom. Compared to earlier versions, v2.1.0 has the following advantages:
New features:
Lecture Hall: Expands audience capacity up to 5,000 students, from 1,000 in the last version.
Web client:
Android and iOS clients:
Redesigns contexts for better abstraction of modular features in Flexible Classroom, where each context can be controlled separately.
Refactors context APIs with the following improvements:
If you have made changes to your Flexible Classroom UI in earlier versions, in order to migrate to v2.1.0, Agora recommends you create a new project based on v2.1.0 and re-implement the UI changes. Please refer to the following Flexible Classroom v2.1.0 migration guides:
If you encounter any problem during the migration process, or need to migrate from Flexible Classroom earlier than v1.1.5, please contact support@agora.io so that Agora technical support team can help.
Answer selector and polling feature
To increase engagement and enhance interactivity, v2.1.0 adds the following teaching tools:
Ability to turn the whiteboard on or off in the classroom
As of v2.1.0, Agora supports turning the whiteboard on or off in the classroom. For details, see Turn the Whiteboard on or off in the Classroom. When using the APIs for this feature, after the whiteboard is closed, developers can use Flexible Classroom UIKit or UIStore to customize their unique classroom with their desired video gallery to fill the classroom window.
Video gallery rotation
Flexible Classroom gives teachers the ability to configure the classroom settings for improved student engagement and video. The Video Gallery Rotation feature lets the teacher automatically rotate the on-stage student gallery view at a desired frequency and sequence, thus eliminating the need for the teacher to scroll or page through the class participants.
Mobile HTML5 support
As of v2.1.0, students can join a lecture hall in Flexible Classroom simply by clicking on a shared webpage link within some mobile social applications that use a web view. After joining the classroom on mobile devices, students can do the following things:
v2.1.0 makes the following improvements:
v2.1.0 fixed the following issues:
v1.1.5.1 was released on October 20, 2021.
Support for customizing the video encoding configurations
As of v1.1.5.1, developers can customize the video encoding configurations, including the width, height, frame rate, and bitrate. When calling the launch
method, developers can set the videoEncoderConfig
parameter in mediaOptions
to customize the encoding configurations for the video stream captured by a camera or the screen-sharing video stream.
The recommended video encoding configurations are as follows:
Students automatically going onto the "stage"
v1.1.5.1 adds the feature of students automatically going onto the "stage" in the Small Classroom scenario. Once the teacher or TA enables this feature, students go onto the "stage" at specified intervals.
Support for setting the latency level of a receiver
As of v1.1.5.1, developers can set the latency level of an audience member. By default, the latency level is ultra-low. Developers can set the latencyLevel
parameter in the launch
method to change the latency level:
The charges for low latency and ultra-low latency are different. For details, see the pricing page.
Support for setting whether students automatically send streams after going onto the "stage"
v1.1.5.1 allows developers to control whether students automatically send audio or video streams after they go onto the "stage". By default, students do not send audio nor video streams after they go onto the "stage". You can change the default behavior by setting the streamState
parameter when calling launch
.
Pre-class device test and local video preview
As of v1.1.5.1, Flexible Classroom adds the Media Context API to allow developers to implement the pre-class test module, with which students can check whether their camera and microphone are functioning correctly and preview how they look and sound before they join a class.
The countdown timer
v1.1.5.1 adds a countdown timer in Flexible Classroom. The teacher can find the countdown time in the toolbox and set an initial value. After the teacher clicks the start button, students see a countdown window.
Support for media device management
As of v1.1.5.1, students can control whether local cameras, microphones, and speakers are on or off during the class. Agora adds the DeviceContext
and IDeviceHandler
classes in the Agora Edu Context and provides methods and callbacks for local device control.
Teachers making notes on their shared screen
As of v1.1.5.1, teachers can make notes notes on the screen that they share with the basic whiteboard tools.
Support for custom user properties and classroom properties
As of v1.1.5.1, developers can customize properties for users and classrooms. These properties can be updated, and the updates can be monitored. For example, developers can set the profile photo as a custom user property. To support this feature, Agora makes the following changes to the Agora Edu Context:
Classroom properties:
updateFlexRoomProps
method in RoomContext
for adding or updating custom classroom properties.onFlexRoomPropsInitialized
and onFlexRoomPropertiesChanged
callbacks in IRoomHandler
for indicating the initial custom classroom properties and subsequent classroom property changes.User properties:
userProperties
parameter in AgoraEduLaunchConfig
for passing in custom user properties when launching a classroom.updateFlexUserProperties
method in UserContext
for adding or updating custom user properties.onFlexUserPropertiesChanged
callback in IEduUserHandler
for indicating user property changes.boardFitMode
parameter in AgoraEduLaunchConfig
for setting the PPT display mode. By default, the PPT display mode is fit, which means uniformly scaling the PPT until one of its dimensions fits the boundary. Developers can change the boardFitMode
to Retain
when calling the launch
method. In this mode, if the student manually adjusts the PPT size, the client maintains this size no matter what class the student joins.v1.1.0.1 was released on July 7, 2021.
Media encryption
To ensure the security during real-time audio and video transmission, v1.1.0.1 adds the mediaOptions
parameter in AgoraEduLaunchConfig for supporting media stream encryption. By default, Flexible Classroom does not encrypt the media stream. To enable media encryption, use the mediaOptions
parameter to choose an encryption mode and set the encryption key. Flexible Classroom supports the following encryption modes:
AES_128_XTS
: 128-bit AES encryption, XTS mode.AES_128_ECB
: 128-bit AES encryption, ECB mode.AES_256_XTS
: 256-bit AES encryption, XTS mode.AES_128_GCM
: 128-bit AES encryption, GCM mode.AES_256_GCM
: 256-bit AES encryption, GCM mode.v1.1.0.1 fixes the issue that the default region was not NA (North America).
v1.1.0 was released on June 18, 2021. This is the first release of Agora Flexible Classroom with the following features: