Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
Online lectures are more accessible than ever, giving instructors and students the chance to exchange information and communicate in an educational environment while having the luxury of not being confined to an on-site location. The RUG offers possibilities for online education through the use of an application called Blackboard Collaborate, which has been fully integrated with Nestor. This guide will help you set up an online lecture in your Nestor course.
Where to find Blackboard Collaborate
Creating a session
Once you have entered Collaborate, you are able to start a session. A Course Room is already available, which is a session with no time restrictions that can be either locked or unlocked, restricting or allowing access respectively. To start a regular session, press the Create Session button.
The bottom Create Session button only appears if no sessions have been made yet.
Attendee roles
In a Collaborate session, there are three possible roles attendees can have:
Participant: You can participate in the chat, share audio and video and draw on shared files and whiteboards (if enabled in settings).
Presenter: You have all the rights of a participant, but you can also share files, share a whiteboard and share your screen.
Moderator: You have all the rights of a presenter, but you can also edit the settings of the session and create a poll or breakout groups.
Editing general settings
Editing Event Details
Editing Session Settings
Options C and D can also be configured in the session itself.
In a large scale session, participants can not share audio, share video, or draw on whiteboard and files. The posting of chat messages is disabled by default, but can be activated again in the session itself.
Inside a session
Once you have joined your session, you can do the following (the letters are referring to the image):
A. Here you can find the session menu. In here you can turn on the recording of the session, as well as leave the session.
B. Here you can assign a status to yourself as a form of feedback.
C. Here you can turn your microphone on or off.
D. Here you can turn your camera on or off.
E. Here you can raise your hand, indicating to all attendees that you want to share something that is on your mind.
F. Here you can open the Collaborate Panel. See the next section for more details.
Inside the Collaborate Panel
In the Collaborate Panel there are four sections at the bottom (the letters are referring to the screenshot):
Sharing documents or slides
To share documents or slides, use the “Share Files” option in the content sharing section. Click “Add Files” to upload a new file. You can upload images, PDF documents, and Microsoft PowerPoint .pptx files. Blackboard Collaborate will convert the files to make them ready to share. Click the document you want to share and click “Share Now”, then click the page/slide you want to share to start sharing the file.
When uploading slides in .pptx or .pdf format any animations and transitions are lost. If you want objects to gradually appear on slides, duplicate the slide instead of adding transitions.
To stop sharing the document, click the Stop button in the top right corner. To move between pages, click the left and right arrow buttons below the content.
Gallery View
Gallery View lets you see multiple webcams at one time. You can view up to 25 attendees on a page (this depends your browser, device and session size). Videos are displayed in alphabetical order, moderators appear at the top of the list.
Using Gallery View
The default view within a session is the Speaker view, you can switch to Gallery View by clicking in the upper right corner on the icon with four squares and choosing the Gallery View.
Controls
You can use the arrows on either side of the screen to move between the pages and use the zoom icons on the right side of the screen to see fewer and larger videos at the same time.
Point to an attendee and select the Attendee Controls to send them a private chat, promote a participant, mute the attendee, or remove the person from the session.
Different Views
You can choose between the Tiled and Speaker views. These views show 5 videos, one large video and four smaller ones. This larger video shows who is speaking so people know who is speaking more clearly. The larger video automatically changes to the active speaker. The only difference between the Tiled and Speaker views is the layout (see the picture down below). The default view within in a session is the Speaker View, you can switch between them by clicking on the icon in the upper right corner and selecting the view you want.
Speaker view
Tiled view
Pin Videos
You can choose to pin a few video’s so you can pay closer attention to a few people. Videos that ar epinned are always in view. When you pin a video, it moves the video to the top of the list. Videos appear in the order they were pinned. Only you know who you pinned and they are only pinned in your view. Nobody else sees who you pinned and the people who you pinned aren’t notified.
Gallery View isn’t available in Safari on iOS or iPad OS at this time. In Firefox you can only view 2 video’s at the same time. In sessions with more than 250 attendees you can also view 2 video’s at the same time.
Recordings
Sessions can be recorded so that students can watch the lecture (again) at a later time. Recordings will be visible for all students in the course by default.
Recordings include all activity in the live session:
Audio
Any content shared or active speaker video. If both are shared during the session, only the content shared is recorded.
Captions entered during the live session or added later by a moderator. Only one caption track is available. If your session had more than one caption track, only the first available one is captured.
Chat messages in the Everyone channel. Private messages and chat messages in breakout groups are not recorded.
When you want to start recording the session click on the Session Menu in the top left button in the window and select Start recording. When your session is complete you should stop the recording in the same menu. The recording will automatically be stopped when all participants have left the session.
Access recordings
Range filtering
If you cannot see you recording change the Filter by setting by clicking on “Recent Recordings”.
Download Recordings
Recordings can be downloaded in an .mp4-video format. To allow students to download the recordings be sure to change the session settings:
This only contains the primary content: the main speaker or shared contents. It does not contain the chat, or secondary video streams, like the webcams from other participants. The chat can be downloaded separately.
Last modified: | 6 December 09:51 AM |