Instructional Design & Online Course Support

University of Wisconsin

Creating a Blackboard Collaborate Room in Canvas 

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Add Collaborate Ultra to the course navigation menu 

  1. Make sure that Collaborate Ultra appears on your course navigation menu (Settings > Navigation > Drag and drop Collaborate Ultra to the top list > Click Save). 
  2. Click Collaborate Ultra on your course navigation bar. 

Creating Sessions/Rooms and Choosing Settings 

Every course has a Course Room created for it.  

You can use this room for general course sessions. If you will have multiple types of Bb Collaborate Sessions or will be assigning group work, we suggest creating different sessions for each session type or group. 

  1. Click “Create Session”. 
  2. Enter a name of this session. Use the purpose of the room as the name (i.e. Office Hours). If you are creating these for student groups, name them “Group 1”, “Group 2”, etc. Note: There is no way to restrict a session to a group of students. All students will have access to these sessions.

  3. For Event Details, select a start and end time. In addition, you can choose whether you want the sessions to have no end (meaning the room is always open), if this will be a repeat session, and whether to allow early entry. You can also write a description of the session.

  4. In Session Settings, you can choose specific permissions for your students. Some of these settings can be adjusted during the session, in general, to take time to set this up before the session.  
    • By default, anyone with a participant role is allowed to show their profile picture, share their audio and video, post chat messages, and draw on the whiteboard and shared files.

    • Select the Default Attendee Role (see below for more info on roles) 
    • Recording settings 
      • Allow recording downloads: If you want to let users download recordings, you can set this before the session and recording begins. 
        • You can change this later, if you change your mind. You can choose this option at any time. Either before the session is delivered or anytime after the recording has been created. 
      • Anonymize chat messages: You can make chat messages posted during the live session appear as anonymous posts in the recording. 
        • Any recording made after selecting this option has anonymous chat messages. It does not apply to recordings made before selecting this option. 
      • Show profile picture for moderator only: If selected, participant profile pictures don’t appear anywhere profile pictures are seen in the session. This includes in the Attendees panel, chat, breakout groups, and on the main stage. The default avatar appears for participants instead.

    • Participant-specific permissions 
      • Share their audio: If selected, moderators can mute participants as needed. If not selected, only moderators and presenters can turn on their audio. 
      • Share their video: If not selected, only moderators and presenters can turn on their video. 
      • Post chat messages: If not selected, moderators and presenters can still use chat. Participants can’t use chat but they can see any chat messages posted by moderators and presenters. 
      • Draw on whiteboards and files: If not selected, only moderators and presenters can draw on whiteboards. If you don’t want students to have the ability to do this, you may want to add them as participants, not moderator or presenter. 
    • Enable system telephony 
      • Allow attendees to join a session using a telephone: When selected, all attendees see an option in the Session menu to use their phone for audio during a session. If you don’t select it, telephone is not available during the session. 
    • Private Chat 
      • Participants can only chat with moderators: Private chat is available by default. When selected, participants can only chat privately with moderators. If you don’t select it, participants can chat privately with anybody else in the session. 
      • Moderators supervise all private chats: When selected, moderators can see everything that is said in private chat channels. An alert appears at the top of the private chat channel informing users that the chat is being supervised. If you don’t select it, you don’t see the private chat channels. 

Session Roles 

Moderators have full control over all content being shared. They can make any attendee a presenter or a moderator. Moderators see hand raise notifications and can lower hands. They can remove attendees from a session, but they cannot remove other moderators. Moderators can set the session settings, including deciding what participants can and can’t do. Moderators get email with links to their session recordings. 

The presenter role is designed to allow students to present without giving them full moderator privileges. Presenters can upload, share, edit, and stop sharing content. They can also see hand raise notifications and can lower hands. 

Participants can enable and disable notifications, such as when attendees enter and leave a session or when someone has posted something to the chat. Moderators decide if participants share audio and video, chat, and draw on the whiteboard or shared files. 

The captioner role is designed to provide an accessible learning experience for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as for students whose native language is different from the moderator’s. An attendee is assigned this role by a moderator. The captioner is given an area to type what is being said. Other participants can view what the captioner is typing in real time. You can have multiple captioners for multiple languages. 

Source: Session Roles and User Accounts 

Ashaun Adler
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