Blackboard Collaborate Ultra (Online Rooms) Instructor Guide

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Blackboard Collaborate Ultra (or simply Ultra) is an online video conferencing software that is available to all courses with a D2L Brightspace account. With Ultra, you can easily use video or text chat with your students and share files and even your screen with your students.

Ultra works best with the Chrome browser. Though all browsers will work with Ultra, Chrome provides a cleaner picture and audio, and provides extra functionality like screen and file sharing. You’ll also have a better experience if you ask your students to keep their mics muted unless they are talking. Headsets help improve the experience as well by reducing background noise and feedback from participant microphones.

Accessing Ultra from D2L Brightspace

You can find Ultra under the Other Tools tab on your main menu bar. Currently, this menu also contains a link to the old Blackboard Collaborate, listed as Online Rooms. The link to the old version of Collaborate will be removed at the conclusion of the Summer 2016 term.

Setting up a Room

Once you have clicked on the Online Rooms (Ultra) link, you will be taken to the Ultra Session Scheduler. One room has automatically been created for your course.It is listed directly below the black bar at the top of the screen, titled Your Course – Course Room. To access it click Get secure link, then Join Course Room.

There is also a link on this page to create additional sessions for your course. Click the Black Create Session button at the middle bottom of this window to create a new session.

The new session will prompt you to name the session, and designate a start and end date and time.

There is also an option for No End (Open Session). Check this box to leave the session open indefinately. This choice will help ensure that the room is always available to you and your students, and will help minimize the time you spend setting up your course.

You may also chose to Repeat Session. This option will help you set up sessions that you will conduct regularly, without having to set each one up manually. After checking this box, you’ll be presented with choices to repeat weekly, daily, or monthly. You’ll be able to designate a frequency (every day, every three days), and an end point (end after ten occurances.)

You can also designate an Early Entry period. This is when particpants will be allowed to enter the room before the scheduled start time. The default is 15 minutes.

You may also Add a description for the room if you like.

Under the Session Settings group you can customize the permissions your students will have in the room.

A Checkbox will allow your students to download recordings. As the instructor, you will have permissions to download the recording without checking this box. Students will also be able to watch the recording online without checking this box. Downloading allows students to save the recording to their computer and watch it offline.

A checkbox allows you to disable profile pictures for your students.

A serises of checkboxes allows you to remove permissions from your students. By default, they are allowed to share their audio, video, post to chat, draw on the whiteboard, and join the session using a phone number. Unchecking these boxes removes the permisions for them to do these things.

Save the event to return to the Sessions screen.

There are some more options available for your room from the sessions screen. Next to each room is an elipses icon. Your options here include:

Get a guest link this will allow you to invite participants from outside of your course into the session.
Edit Settings, where you can change the permissions for the room.
View Reports, where you can get information about who attended a session, including their join time, exit time, and duration in the session.

Using a Room

Clicking on the Join Room link in the default Course Room, or the name of the room in any of the additional rooms you create will allow you to join the room.

Audio and Video Setup

When you first join a room, you’ll be prompted to setup your microphone and camera. Click Yes on the first prompt, you’ll be taken to the audio test, where you can see if your mic is working or choose a different mic. Click Yes, It’s working to advance to the video test. Again, you can see a preview of your webcam, or choose a different camera. Click Yes, It’s working to exit the setup. You can access these anytime you need to by clicking on the icon at the bottom left of the Ultra window.

Ultra Room Layout

The Ultra room contains a few sections.

The sessions menu contains tools for your course room, including recordings, a help link, and a phone number participants can use to receive course audio over a phone connection.

, The main portion of your screen is the viewer window. This is where you will see the video feed from your students.

Below this is the Ultra toolbar, where most of your controls are.

The bottom right corner contains is the Collaborate Panel, where you can access chat, the participant list, settings,screen and file sharing, as well as the white board.

The Session Menu

Start Recording begins a recording of the session. These recordings are stored in a tab on the launcher screen that opened when you first clicked on the Online Rooms (Ultra) link in D2L Brightspace.

It also contains a tool for generating a phone number for accessing meeting audio. This is useful for students who are having mic problems, or who are trying to use an internet connection that is too slow. Clicking “Generate Number” will provide a phone number and access code for them to use to connect to the room. This is not a toll free number, and they will incur long distance charges if their phone plan doesn’t provide long distance minutes.

The session menu also contains a link to contact Blackboard support for Issue Reporting.

The Ultra Toolbar

My settings also contains a link to contact Blackboard support for Issue Reporting.

Share Micand Share Video

Share Mic and Share Video are toggles that turn on your mic and camera. These icons will change color to indicate when they are active. Share video will show you a video preview before activating the camera.

Raise hand

Raise hand allows your students to indicate they have something to add or that they have a question. You can clear a hand raise by clicking on the notification that appears

Chat

The chat tool opens a text chat. Instructors use this as a back channel so students can talk about the topic, to collect questions, and get feedback from the class. In addition to text, users have access to emoji. Most of these are “smiley” faces, but the emoji also include a thumbs up, thumbs down, applause and wave. These emoji can be useful for gauging class mood or simple polling.

Open Participant list

This allows instructors to see the participants in the room. An instructor can also change permission level a user has to the room from this list. This is useful for elevating a student to “Presenter” so they can share their screen, or for removing permissions from students that are being a distraction in class.

More Tools

More tools contains a link to your session settings and the Start recording button. Session settings lets you change the permissions students have (sharing audio or video, posting to chat, or drawing on whiteboard).

Collaborate Panel

Share content (located at the top right corner of the Ultra window) provides access to three tools; Share Blank Whiteboard, Share Application, and Share Files

Chat

Open Participant list

his allows instructors to see the participants in the room. An instructor can also change permission level a user has to the room from this list. This is useful for elevating a student to “Presenter” so they can share their screen, or for removing permissions from students that are being a distraction in class.

My Settings

My settings contains a link for redoing the Camera and Microphone setup wizard.

My settings allows you to change your Notification settings. You can toggle visual or audio cues for whenever someone joins, posts a message, raises their hand, and other items.

My settings also contains a link to contact Blackboard support for Issue Reporting.

Share Content

The Share Content tool gives you access to tools for sharing your content with others

Share Blank Whiteboard opens a white screen and tools for the class to interact with it. Tools include an Arrow and Pointer cursor, a drawing tool, a shape tool, a text tool, and an eraser. When the drawing, shape or text tool are selected, a color selector circle appears as well. Users can choose a color and use the mouse to draw or write on the whiteboard.

Share Files works similarly to the whiteboard, but puts the file that is uploaded into the background of the whiteboard.

Share Application allows the instructor to share content from their computer to all of the participants in the session. You can choose to share your entire desktop, or a single application window. Any application you have on your computer, webpages, documents, or images can be shared through the application sharing tool.

This allows you to show class PowerPoints in the same manner as you would in a classroom, providing traditional lecture with the supporting PowerPoint visuals.

When sharing applications with students, most instructors find that it is easier to share their entire screen with the student (just be sure to clean up your desktop first). This helps to avoid awkward fumbling with PowerPoint presentation windows.

The first time you use application sharing, you will be prompted to install a Chrome extension called “Desktop Sharing” the installation is simple and will only require two clicks from you to install.

The polling tool allows you to create Yes/No or multiple choice type questions for surveying your students.