What is Collaborate?
Collaborate is an online synchronous application for moderating classes, meetings, or other group collaborations where participants can share whiteboards and screens, chat by voice or text, and engage in other ways like taking polls and answering questions. Video and audio capabilities are also available.
Best Practices When using Web Conferencing
By following these best practices, you will increase the success of your conferences for both you and your participants.
Getting Started in Two Steps
Planning
How will you use Collaborate?
- Classroom Facilitation or Lecture Capture: Without the constraints of a physical space, your classroom web conferencing activities can hold many people who are interested in attending. You can also co-facilitate with a colleague from another institution, invite guests, take polls and surveys, moderate discussions in smaller breakout chat rooms, and share a recording of your presentation later with attendees or those who were not able to attend.
- Facilitate Meetings and/or Office Hours: Schedule meetings without worrying about travel arrangements or booking rooms. Take advantage of the interactive whiteboard to brainstorm and work out ideas, share documents, and enable the session recording to have an archive of your meeting. You can have a maximum of 25 video participants at the same time depending on the size of your screen, in addition, there are unlimited attendees without video capabilities. Learn more in Video in Collaborate or Private Virtual Office Hours (Best Practices).
Setting Up the Web Conference within Blackboard Learn
For best results, follow the Supported Browser suggestions.
Setting up web conferencing depends on where you plan to use it.
For Blackboard Course Members
Impromptu meetings
- From within your Blackboard course, under the Details and Actions click Blackboard Collaborate: Join Session.
- Click the Course Room option. NOTE: The session will open in a new tab.
- Be aware that the course room will have default settings already applied. They can be altered if desired by going to the ellipsis (...) menu beside Blackboard Collaborate and choosing Edit course room settings.
Scheduled Sessions or Office Hours
Create Sessions
- From within your Blackboard course, under the Details and Actions click the ellipsis (...) menu beside Blackboard Collaborate.
- Click the Manage all Sessions option. NOTE: This session will open in a new layer within Blackboard.
- Be aware that the course room will have default settings already applied. They can be altered if desired.
- If you would like to create sessions for specific uses or custom settings, click the Create Session button on top of the page.
- You are now on the Create Session form. Complete both tabs on the form and click Save.
Students accessing Scheduled Sessions or Office Hours
- When students click on the Join Session button, they will have the option for the Course Room and all scheduled sessions created by the instructor which are currently available based on the dates entered in the settings.
For Guests Outside of Blackboard Course Membership
- From within your Blackboard course, under the Details and Actions click the ellipsis (...) menu beside Blackboard Collaborate.
- Click the Manage all Sessions option. NOTE: This session will open in a new layer within Blackboard.
- For the session used with guests without course membership, select the ellipsis (...) menu and Edit. Check the box next to Guess Access and choose a role for the guests. You can then copy the guest link to share with guests via email or post in another Blackboard course as content.
Additional Resources
See these additional resources from Blackboard Learn:
For more information on using Collaborate, please see the links below.
User interface tour of Collaborate