Teaching Tip: Blackboard Collaborate rooms are for everyone
May 26, 2015
Collaborate is a web conference system that is part of the Blackboard learning management
system. Each Blackboard course shell contains a connection to Collaborate. The interface
provides a way to meet with your students synchronously, no matter where you or they are.
There are three types of available rooms:
- Course Room — Requires no scheduling and is available as long as the course is open. The room can be set up to allow students to join as moderators; otherwise they join as participants. This would be a great place for students to give a presentation.
- My Room — Requires no scheduling and is for the instructor. My Room will last as long as the instructor is in the system. This room is a good place for asynchronous office hours. It is not specific to a course, so the instructor can manage students across all of his or her courses through this room.
![ScheduleSession](http://news.uaf.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ScheduleSession.png)
- Schedule a Session — Allows the instructor or teaching assistant to create a session
at a scheduled date
and time. This room allows guest enrollment, and sessions can be recorded and downloaded. For more details on creating a session, see: http://elearning.uaf.edu/go/tt-collaborate-session.
If this is your first time joining a Collaborate room, you will need to download the Blackboard Collaborate Launcher. The Launcher provides an easy way to connect to the Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing system from your computer. Collaborate Launcher uses a ".collab" file, which uses a stable version of Java.
Read more about Blackboard Collaborate at http://elearning.uaf.edu/go/bb-collaborate on iTeachU.
— Teaching Tip by Dallas Budden, https://iteachu.uaf.edu/author/dbudden/, UAF eLearning instructional designer