Webinars using Class Collaborate

Benefits of Webinars for Teaching & Learning

You can use webinars to:

Accessibility

Automatic Live & Recorded Captions:

Staff and students can use the live captions option in Google Chrome to view machine-generated captions both during live sessions and when viewing session recordings. Machine-generated captions provide approximately an 85-95% accuracy rate, which may vary based on the audio sound quality of your recording and the topics being presented. Some medical or scientific terms may not transcribe as well as general English language commentary. In instances where you are giving important instructions or guidance (especially when the student's safety is concerned), please check the captions to ensure accuracy, so that no transcribed words are misinterpreted or misguiding for students.

Manual Live & Recorded Captions:

For live sessions, you can invite a guest user and allow them to caption a live session for any students who need this. Information on closed captioning features is available on the Class webpage. A video demo of the captioning feature is available on the Blackboard YouTube channel. For recorded sessions, you can upload a captions file containing a transcript of the session - details are available on the Captions page of the Collaborate website under the 'Upload your own caption file' section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can students download recordings?

Students can't download Collaborate or Panopto recordings by default, but if you need to, you can change the settings for a recording to allow downloads.

How can I show animated slides to my students?

If you upload a file into Collaborate Ultra, any animations won't carry over, but you can use on-screen annotation features, like drawing and circling items, to draw attention to key points. The advantage is that it works well across different connection speeds for both the presenter and participants.

But if you do need to use the Share Screen option, because, for example, the PowerPoint file has animations or embedded videos that won't convert into Collaborate, an alternative is you share your screen with PowerPoint running the presentation in a window. This would let you position the chat window alongside the shared PowerPoint window so you can see both at the same time.

The page and video below cover this use case:

https://www.class.com/support/collaborate/moderator/moderate-sessions/share-content#what_about_powerpoint_slides

https://youtu.be/6H3R-E_pgEY

How can students use the chat in a large session (+250 participants)?

You can use the chat in a large session; it is defaulted to Off in a large session, but can be enabled when participants start joining. Enable the Large Session mode from the scheduler, then once you have joined the actual session, you can turn on the chat via the Session Settings screen (the gear icon to the right of where you access the chat & share files within Collaborate)

Here are the steps if your colleagues need them to enable a large session for over 250 students and then enable the chat once the students start to join:

Any day before the scheduled session is due to start:

1. Go into the module & click on the link to Collaborate Ultra (the exact name can vary by module; sometimes it might be called Online Lectures or similar) in the left-hand module menu
2. Find the scheduled session from the list and click on the three dots to the right, then Edit Settings
3. Click on the gear icon at the top right and scroll down to Large-scale session (250+)
4. Ensure 'Allow 250+ attendees to join' is ticked and click Save - this will automatically disable participants' permissions, such as Chat; this is normal.
5. No further changes are needed from the scheduler in terms of a large session - do not try to re-enable permissions from this screen, leave Large Session ticked.

Once the scheduled session starts

6. Once the actual session starts, join the Collaborate Ultra session as normal. From within a Collaborate session, click on the Collaborate panel at the bottom right (the same panel where you would access the chat, share content etc.)
7. Click on the gear icon to the right of the chat at the bottom  to go to the My Settings Screen (as seen in this screenshot https://help.blackboard.com/sites/default/files/images/2017-10/collab_ultra_moderator_my_settings.png)
8. Click on Session Settings at the bottom of this page
9. From here, you can enable participants' chat permissions

If you want a particular student to use more than the chat, you can promote them to be a presenter - this would allow them to use their microphone, for example: https://www.class.com/support/collaborate/moderator/moderate-sessions/manage-attendees#promote-attendees_OTP-8. You can always make them a participant after they have finished

More details on Large Sessions are available here: https://www.class.com/support/collaborate/moderator/schedule-sessions/session-settings#large_scale_session

How do I access recordings older than 30 days?

Collaborate Ultra only shows recent recordings by default; if you go into the list of recordings, then at the top right click 'Filter By' and change 'Recent Recordings' to 'Recordings in a Range', change the first date to a few months back and you should see all the recordings then. There's a video demo below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMBItXtViVQ

How can I edit a Collaborate recording?

Unfortunately, you can't edit in Collaborate directly, but if you migrate the recording to Panopto, you can edit it in Panopto.

To download a recording from Collaborate:

1. Click into Collaborate Ultra in your module
2. Then, the three horizontal white lines at the top left are used to access recordings
3. Then click on the recording to view it
4. Click on the three horizontal white lines while viewing the recording to download the chat and the video file via the options there.
5. Once downloaded, open the video on your PC to confirm all is okay, and you have a local copy.
6. Then click the three dots next to the recording in the list of recordings and delete it.

You can then upload the video file to Panopto via:

7. Click on the Panopto link in your module, then click Create, then Upload Media.
8. Click and select your video or drag it onto the hotspot.
9. Wait for the video to upload, then close the window.
10. You can click on Settings to give the video a clear name and also decide when it becomes available to students, i.e. don't make it available until after it's edited.
11. Once it's processed, you can edit it and cut out the bit you need to remove
12. You can also attach the chat transcript if neede,d alongside the video (as the video itself does not contain the chat messages)