Faculty Tools

Managing Collaborative Sessions

The Collaboration tool lets you create and participate in real time lessons and discussions with your students. You can filter or search your collaboration sessions that meet your criteria. There are two versions of the collaboration tool: the Virtual Classroom and the Lightweight Chat. Both collaboration tools give you the ability to record archives that you can make available to students.
The Virtual Classroom tool lets you and your students browse the web, participate in question and answer sessions, take part in chat sessions. The Lightweight Chat tool only lets you and your students participate in chat sessions.

Creating Collaboration Sessions

From the Control Panel:

1. Click on the Collaboration link in the Course Tools section.
   Note: Blackboard contains two default sessions: Lecture Hall and Office Hours. You may use these if you wish.
   
2. Click on the Create Collaboration Session button.
3. Type a name for your session in the Session Name field.
4. Choose Lightweight Chat or Virtual Classroom.
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on the Submit button.

Filtering Collaboration Sessions

From the Control Panel:

1. Click on the Collaboration link in the Course Tools section.
   
2. Choose a Filter option from the drop-down menu.
3. Click on the Go button.
   Note: The filter option you selected remains in place until you change them or exit the Collaboration area.

Filter Options:

• Show All – Use this option to display all collaboration sessions.
• Open Rooms – Use this option to display collaboration sessions that you can currently join. This option only checks the availability dates and not the available option. Therefore, the filter can return rooms that your students cannot access because they have the available option disabled.
• Rooms With Archives – Use this option to display all collaboration sessions that have a recorded archive. This option only checks the availability dates and not the available option. Therefore, the filter can return rooms that your students cannot access because they have the available option disabled.
• Rooms Available in the Future – Use this option to display all collaboration sessions that have an availability date in the future.

Searching Collaboration Sessions

From the Control Panel:

1. Click on the Collaboration link in the Course Tools section.
   
2. Type your search in the text field.
   Note: The session name search is a substring search, so a search for “fice” will return “Office Hours.” The search is also case sensitive, so a search for “office” will not return “Office Hours” but will return “office hours.”


3. Click on the Search button.
   Note: If you turned on a filter option, the search will only find sessions that match your search and filter criteria.

Sorting Collaboration Sessions

From the Control Panel:

1. Click on the Collaboration link in the Course Tools section.
   
2. Click on the triangle icon above Session Name, Tool, Start Date, or End Date.

Sort Options:

• Session Name – Use this option to display your sessions in alphabetical order. Blackboard sorts sessions with the same name by date.
• Tool – Use this option to display all of your Lightweight Chat sessions followed by all of your Virtual Classroom sessions.
• Start Date – Use this option to display your sessions by start date. Sessions with no start dates appear first. Blackboard sorts sessions with the same start date by date of creation.
• End Date – Use this option to display your sessions by end date. Sessions with no end dates appear first. Blackboard sorts sessions with the same end date by date of creation.
  
• Note: Your current sorting option will be indicated by an orange triangle icon.

More Information

Q: Why can’t my students access a session that shows up under the list of “Open Rooms?”
A: The session is set to unavailable. Check the session availability from the Manage Session area.