Instructional Design & Online Course Support

University of Wisconsin

Technical Considerations for Collaborate Ultra

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If you’re using Collaborate Ultra for small or large group meetings, be sure to reference the technical considerations included below.

Room Permissions

  • If you want users to facilitate meetings (as opposed to just watching a lecture or presentation), set up the sessions/rooms so users have Moderator access (so they have the ability to record and share content). Users who are watching a presentation only need Participant access. Click here for information on how to create collaborate rooms.
  • There is no way to restrict the sessions/rooms posted in your Canvas course to a specific group of students. If you want to create a private session for a one:one meeting with a student, set up Collaborate Ultra sessions from the Web Conferencing widget on the MyUW portal and for the Guest role, give them Participant access. Then message the student directly with the Guest link.

    Click on the dropdown menu to give students in the Guest role access as Participants.

Recordings

  • Use the Session menu to switch between the sessions and the recordings. If you are requiring students to locate their own recordings, you will need to show them how to use this menu.
  • You cannot control the file names of the recordings. Session recording names are generated from the room names, and the list of recordings can become very long. Use a good naming convention for the rooms, so that if users report that they can’t find their recordings, you can be sure that you’re both looking for the correct file name. For example, you might create one room for each student or one room for each group, with the students’ names in the session name.

Visuals

  • If you are grading on non-verbals or other criteria that require a visual of the students, note the following circumstances in which you may not have a visual of students in the recordings:
    • The Collaborate Ultra recording only captures one channel, so if a user has a web cam on, and then shares content, such as slides, in the recording you will only see the content and not the web cam. You would need to attend live to actually see the students, or instruct them to turn on their web cam and not to share content.
    • If more than one user has a web cam on, the cameras may not “flip” back and forth in the recordings, which means you may only see one person. If users are going to do interviews or meetings, you may end up seeing webcam video of only one person.
    • Because you may not have a web cam visual of users in the recordings, it’s helpful to ask your users to add a profile picture in Collaborate Ultra. Users can add their profile picture in My Settings. The Collaborate Ultra overview video shows this and other basics of using the session rooms:
  • To help prevent audio and/or video delays, advise users to use only one or two web cams at a time during a session.
  • To prevent audio feedback, users must do at least one of the following:
    • Mute their microphone when they are not speaking
    • Use a headset microphone
    • Use ear buds

Meeting Size

  • The UWEX Keep Teaching website states that Collaborate Ultra meetings of 50 or more people will likely not work well. In addition, it states that only 25 can call in to the phone audio option, although others can join via computer audio.

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Julia Lehman Caldwell
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