Tips, Tricks and Advice on Using BlackBoard Collaborate Ultra from Teachers
I work at a university as an instructional designer in e-learning. And like most every other educational institution, we’ve been forced into some serious adaptations to how teaching and learning takes place. At our school we (the E-Learning Office) provide BlackBoard Collaborate Ultra to teachers as a tool for synchronous and asynchronous online instruction.
We are currently offering a support page on our learning management system that provides a great deal of information on how to teach resiliently during this time. That page includes information on using Collaborate. And Black Board Collaborate themselves have a great technical support section on their website. It’s very easy to use and to find most of what you’re looking for.
However, what I thought would be a good addition to the topic of Blackboard Collaborate tech support would be some tips and advice that comes directly from the folks who are and have been using it for a while now. They’re the individuals who know Collaborate’s strengths and weaknesses really well and have probably — through trial and error — found ways to get the most out of the software.
Charlene Van Leeuwen, Applied Human Sciences and Education
Give everyone a practice run or two at going into and coming back from the breakout rooms. Figure out in advance if you are doing this at random or if you want to have certain people in different groups.
Ask students in the class to take a turn at monitoring the chat if you need to really focus on what you are doing. Some students will never turn on the mic to ask a question and the chat can get very busy if you invite/ask students to respond to a question and you all of a sudden get a tsunami of messages.
Sometimes it takes 2–3 tries before you can log in. Encourage students to persevere.
Invite students to stay “after class” to ask individual questions.
I encourage students to wave hello to each other at the start and end if they want, but I don’t require them to keep their camera on.
Invite students to suggest a playlist to run when we are pausing for them to type into the chat. Instead of having silence in the recording.
Frank Lavandier, Sociology, Faculty of Arts
When sharing a file Collaborate will only accept image files, PowerPoint files and PDFs. I found that when some of my PPTs contained images, they weren’t as ‘stable’ to cycle through and view. I got around this problem by turning the PPT into a PDF.
Kristy McKinney, Multimedia Specialist, E-Learning Office
For using any new technology — especially if you weren’t originally planning to try it out — the best thing you can do is try it and try it again. I always find the first few times you do things it is easy to be discouraged because it isn’t how you imagined but it just takes time to get used to, in this case, talking to a screen or camera instead of a room of students!
I really like the idea that it makes the experience more one-on-one. Instead of imagining the entire room it might be helpful to think of it as a conversation.
Something good about recording from home though is being able to make the space comfortable for you, making some tea or sitting in your favourite chair or having a pet nearby can make things more comfortable.
I’ve seen a lot on twitter about sharing vulnerabilities like your home and your kids if you want then it almost “humanizes” your course, which is a term I like. Letting your guard down a little in this situation because it is unprecedented and I think that is okay to share with your students if this is new. Also allowing space for students to do the same.
Jason Stull, Health Management, Atlantic Veterinary College
My biggest learning error was not checking to ensure the mic was turned on when starting a recording. It was turned on, but once you start messing around with the settings, it automatically turns the mic off. From now on I always check that my mic is moving up and down before I hit record.
Frederic Fovet, Faculty of Education
If students are doing presentations, always meet them fifteen minutes ahead to help them get a grasp of the way it functions; explain to them they will not be able to share videos.
As an alternative to sharing your screen, get comfortable sharing videos by posting links in the chat box and giving time for people to open and view in their own pop up window.
If you are going to run a synchronous session, think of students who may be in other time zones when scheduling.
Post reminders of your sessions on Moodle. Students are currently over-solicited.
Jason Hogan, Instructional Designer, E-Learning Office
For a synchronous session make sure to build interaction into your lecture. If you are asking students to attend synchronously you want to make sure you are taking advantage of them being present in the moment, rather than asking them to participate in ways they would be able to do asynchronously.
Delmar Corney, Economics, Faculty of Business
Using the right web browser is key. I wouldn’t consider myself ‘tech savvy’ and so was using Internet Explorer and Collaborate’s functionality is really impaired. Now I use Chrome, which Blackboard recommends (Firefox too) and things work the way they’re supposed to work.
Xiao Chen, Management, Faculty of Business
Recording live sessions. I found it better NOT to record the entire 75-min session with one recording. Instead, I now record the lectures by topics. I assume the student attention span may be short, so a lengthy video could be overwhelming.
Proctoring a (closed-book) test. A student’s in-person make-up test had to be canceled (and thus, rearraged to be on-line) due to the COVID-19 campus closure, I ended up having the student log onto my Blackboard Collaborate room writing the make-up remotely. I asked the student to turn on both the audio and video so that I was able to see and hear him/her. Ideally, the student shall use a different device to log onto the Blackboard, because the students usually use the same device signing onto the Blackboard and accessing the test — this way, we can only see the student’s face while s/he is writing the test.
On-line office hour. I have held both one-on-one as well as team consultation meetings, following a pre-arrange schedule. For example, for team consultation meetings, I assign each project teams a 20-minute slot.
Ensure better audio quality. In my recent lectures, the audio quality was not stable. So try clearing the browsing data (cached images and files).
Joel MacDonald, Instructional Designer, E-Learning Office
When it comes to posting the link of your recording, make sure that you copy the link from the email you receive notifying you of the recording’s availability. If you open the recording up in your web browser and then copy the URL that appears there, it will play a recording but it won’t play the proper one.
