Quickstart

1. Go into your the Details & Actions menu of your course and click the ellipsis (...) next to Class Collaborate and then Manage all sessions. 
2. Click Create Session.
3. In Session Name,  type an appropriate name that will be meaningful to the students for this event (e.g., “Week 1 Tutorial”).
4.  The Join Session button is how you join the session.
5. Anonymous Dial-in can be used for people to access the session via their phone, they will appear anonymous in the session.  
6. Tick Guest Access, if you want to allow users external to Learn and the University to join the session. You can change the Guest Role to Presenters, Moderators or Participants.
7. Set the date and time the session starts and ends. You can choose to keep a session open or repeat.
8. Set Early Session Entry. This allows participants of the session access to the event up to 60 minutes beforehand.
9. Type a detailed description of the meeting. This helps students prepare for the session.
10. Open Session Settings and decide on the following:
    1. Default Role for students entering the session
    2. If students can download recordings
    3. Anonymise chat messages in the recordings
    4. Share profile pictures
    5. Use audio, video, chat and editing tools
    6. Allow users to join via telephone
    7. Participants can only chat privately with moderators
    8. Supervise the private chat
    9. Large Scale Session for  250+ attendees
    10. Profanity filter - This is primarily intended for primary and secondary school use, please see more information here before you choose this option.
11. Select Save.
12. The session will now appear in the All Upcoming Sessions list.

Please follow the instructions on how to add a Collaborate session to your Blackboard Learn Course:

Learn Collaborate Ultra integration guide (2.84 MB Word)

1. Navigate into your course in Learn and go to the Details & Actions menu.
2. Click the ellipsis (...) next to Class Collaborate and then select View all recordings. 
3. You can change the filter to either see "Recent Recordings" (last 30 days) or "Recordings in Range".
4. Select your recording and then click on the ellipsis (...) to see Recording Options. From here Instructors can Watch, Download, manage the settings, copy a link, or delete the recording.
5. Choosing Recording settings will allow you to edit the name of your recording and enable, download, and upload captions.
6. Students will be able to watch the recording in the browser and possibly download as an MP4 if this option has been chosen by the Instructor.

Please follow the instructions on how to find your Collaborate Recordings in your Blackboard Learn Course:

Learn Collaborate Ultra integration guide (2.84 MB Word)

Related links:

Recording and Storage Management of Collaborate sessions

 View Session reports (how to view attendance and poll results in Learn and Moodle).

Auto-captions are now available to use in recorded Collaborate sessions created in Learn or Moodle. The auto-captions generated for a recording can be edited manually to ensure accuracy. The document below details step by step instructions on how to enable, access and edit captions on your Collaborate recordings. 

Auto-captions and Transcripts in Collaborate (143.26 KB Word)

The Course Room

Each Learn course has a ready-made session by default. It can be left unlocked for anyone in the course to join the session at any time and provides a convenient room for impromptu meetings or unsupervised student meetings. You can choose to lock the course room to prevent confusion with scheduled sessions. More information about the course room is available on Blackboard Help.

Student-led sessions

By default, students in your course will enter Collaborate sessions as participants. You can give students moderator or presenter permissions in the following ways:

• Promote attendees during the session from the Attendees Panel
• Start breakout groups to facilitate small group collaboration. Everyone assigned to a group will have moderator permission irrespective of the role they joined the session with.
• Change the Default Attendee Role in Session Settings. Anyone entering the session will be assigned your chosen default role.

Securing your session

The Collaborate integration in our VLEs (Learn and Moodle) provides the most secure access to sessions because students must be enrolled on the course in order to gain access to the Collaborate tool. Do not enable guest access to your session unless it is necessary. For more information visit our Collaborate Security webpage  or Blackboard’s Help page.