Collaborate via Moodle

Creating and accessing sessions via Moodle, for staff and students.

The Course Room

There is a Course Room automatically created in each Moodle Course to which all staff and students on that course have access. However, you may wish to create your own sessions so that students know when a Moderator will be present or if you wish to hold concurrent sessions.

Creating a session via Moodle

Collaborate is integrated with Moodle. If you are a user of the Moodle, you can use the Collaborate service.

There are two ways to create a Collaborate session within Moodle: a LTI Integration and a Plugin. For a comparison of the options, please see the comparison grid in the Staff Moodle Help Course:

Collaborate: Moodle plugin vs LTI connection (requires access to Moodle)

Please follow the instructions on how to add a Collaborate session to a Moodle course:

Moodle LTI Integration Guide - Collaborate Ultra (1.16 MB Word)

Moodle Plugin Integration Guide - Collaborate Ultra (739.48 KB Word)

Adding an access restriction to Moodle Groups (Plugin only)

Collaborate sessions created in Moodle are visible to everyone on the course. If you need to restrict a session to a particular group of students, then you need to create a group in Moodle and use the Moodle plugin to create your session. Teachers can then add a group access rule to the Restrict Access section of the settings for the session. Only group members will be able to access the Collaborate instance within a group and they can join the group session at the time set and enter as Participants only.

Please see the help page in the Staff Moodle Help Course for more details:

Restrict Access (requires access to Moodle)

Scheduling repeat sessions in Moodle (LTI connection only)

If you have a series of sessions that occur at the same time, you can use the Repeat Session option to create recurring sessions that occur daily, weekly or monthly. This means that the link to the session will be reopened each time it is required. You can find the Repeat Session checkbox in the Event Details section when you set up or edit a session using the LTI Connection in Moodle.

Recording the session

Recording of a session can be started by any Moderator in that session. The recordings will be visible in Moodle after the session has ended; they can be downloaded as an MP4 file (if the download setting is enabled), saved locally, then shared or archived..

Please see the Recording and Storage Management page for more details:

Recording and Storage Management

Accessing a session

All members of a course can access sessions via the link to Collaborate added to a content area in Moodle whether using the plugin or the LTI connection. For the LTI connection, click on any active session, followed by the Join Session button, to enter the session – inactive sessions are greyed out. For the plugin, just click on the Join Session button – this will only show when a session is active. Note that rooms may allow for early access so that participants can check their audio and video set up. If enabled this will make a session active a minimum of 15 minutes before the scheduled start time.

Inviting an external user to a session (via a guest URL)

When creating a session, a guest URL can be enabled, copied and emailed to external participants or speakers that do not have access to your Moodle course. Note that guest links are entirely open and you should be careful how you share such links – e.g. do not publish on a public web site or social media. If you need to share as part of a public outreach event then this should be done by email or via an event registration process. For more details see the following guide:

Session Security Tips for Using Blackboard Collaborate

If you require further assistance:

Contact the IS Helpline