Blackboard Collaborate Ultra is a web conferencing/webinar platform designed for use in online teaching. Teaching staff create a virtual classroom and online meeting spaces to share presentation material and communicate with you and the other participants via synchronous audio, video and chat tools. Webinar rooms include a collaborative whiteboard, polling tools and breakout rooms that allows you to interact with peers and your instructor in real-time. Desktop applications and web resources such as multimedia can be displayed directly within the web conference room. An interactive recording can be created for each session allowing students the opportunity to review material following the live online webinar.
The link to your session will have the following icon: It may include additional information in the title such as the name of the module you are doing, the teaching week or similar. You may find your link at the top of the module page or in the relevant week when your teaching session is taking place. All Collaborate links from a module will take you to the modules session scheduler for Blackboard Collaborate with all the online sessions that have been set up for the module. Alternatively, you will have been sent a direct URL to the session that won’t require you to log in to moodle first.
Accessing the session link through moodle will take you to the BB Collaborate session scheduler. Select the webinar or video conference you are attending from the list. If you have been sent a direct link you will skip this step and will be taken straight to the session.
Your lecturer may request that you take part in breakout groups which are separate rooms away from the main online room where all students and staff are initially present. Once breakout groups start you will get a notification that breakout groups are starting and you will then find yourself in a room with other students assigned to your group where you will be able to discuss amongst you the work that has been set. Your lecturer may choose to share some files within your room which you can annotate over (keep in mind annotations cannot be saved on the files). Your lecturer may also provide each group a shared document to work with that you can then share with the rest of the class when the breakout groups have ended and you are back with the whole class.
Joining a group at the request of a lecturer
Your lecturer may also ask you to join your allotted group. In this case, once the lecturer tells you that the breakout rooms have started you will need to navigate to the attendees tab via the collaborate panel. To find the collaborate panel click on the purple tab in the bottom right corner.
To select your group look for the group and click the door icon to enter the room 
. If you go into the wrong room then you can select another group from the attendee panel (see image below).
Your lecturer may record webinar sessions and make them available for download through moodle by posting a direct link to them on your module page or emailing the class the link.
NB Downloading the recordings is not available on mobile. You may still watch it on your phone or download it from a different device for offline viewing.
If your tutor hasn’t disseminated the recording via moodle, click on the moodle link to the Collaborate session. In the session scheduler where your sessions are listed, click on the menu link (3 horizontal lines) in the top left-hand corner and select Recordings.
Please note! The default view shows only recent recordings which covers recordings from the last 30 days. To see older recordings you will need to click on the filter in the top right hand corner and change the filter from’ recent recordings’ to ‘recordings in a range’. This will give the option to search for a recordings between 2 specific dates.
