Managing Collaboration Sessions

The Collaboration tools let you create and participate in real-time lessons and discussions with your students. There are two versions of the collaboration tool: the Virtual Classroom and the Lightweight Chat. The Virtual Classroom lets instructors and students browse the web, participate in question and answer sessions, and participate in chats. The Lightweight Chat only features the Chat tool. Both collaboration tools give you the ability to record archives that can be made available to students.

Creating Collaboration Sessions

Unlike past versions of Blackboard, the collaboration tools are no longer only available in a fixed area of the classroom. Instead, they are organized in sessions that you create, and can have names and dates of availability. By default, two collaboration sessions are created when your course is created—one is the “Lecture Hall” session, which uses the Virtual Classroom tool, and the other is the “Office Hours” session, which uses the Lightweight Chat tool. To create more sessions:

From the Control Panel:

1. Click the Collaboration link in the Course Tools box on the left.
2. Click the Create Collaboration Session button.
3. Enter a name for your session in the Session Name field.
4. In the Schedule Availability area, select the dates of availability for your session.
5. In the Collaboration Tool area, select either Virtual Classroom or Lightweight Chat.
6. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Submit button.

More Information

Q: I only see the Lecture Hall and Office Hour sessions.
A: If you have not yet created a session these are the default sessions for the course. You can sort sessions, filter them, and search by criteria.

Q: While creating my sessions, how can I organize them (date, time, alphabetical)?
A: Sessions are sorted alphabetically by default, so if you want the session to appear in a particular place, name it accordingly (of course, you could also use the sorting tools).

Q: I would like to set the release date of the session for my students to view.
A: By default, the session will become available immediately and will never expire. You can also choose to make the session unavailable (without using a trigger date) by choosing the No radio button in the Available area.

Filtering Collaboration Sessions

You can filter your view of collaboration sessions to see all collaboration sessions, collaboration sessions that are currently open (can be joined), collaboration sessions that have archives, or collaboration sessions that will be available in the future.

From the Control Panel:

1. Click the Collaboration link in the Course Tools box on the left.
2. In the Filter area, select the appropriate choice from the drop-down menu:
   a. Show All: displays all collaboration sessions.
   b. Open Rooms: displays collaboration sessions that are currently available to join.
   c. Rooms With Archives: displays all collaboration sessions for which you have recorded an archive.
   d. Rooms Available in the Future: displays all collaboration sessions which have an availability date in the future.
3. Click the Go button.

More Information

Q: I know I have a particular session, but the search tool doesn't show it.
A: If you had any Search options in effect when you applied a filter, you will only see collaboration settings that fit your search criterion as well as your filtering criterion. Filtering options remain in place until you change them or exit and re-enter the Collaboration area (at which time they are reset to Show All).

Q: I set up a session to for the future, but students say they can't access it.
A: The Rooms Available in the Future option displays all collaboration sessions which have an availability date in the future, but does not check to see if they have been manually made unavailable. Thus, a session may appear in the Rooms Available in the Future list but not be automatically made available when the availability date is reached. By the same token, the Open Rooms filter looks only at availability dates. A session that is set to unavailable will be listed by the Open Rooms filter even though students may not access it (or even see that it exists). Oddly enough, you can only see whether a session is available from the “Manage Session” area (or by checking the Student View to see if the session appears for students).

Searching Collaboration Sessions

You can search collaboration sessions to find sessions that meet set criteria. It appears from the panel that you can search by session name, start date, or end date. However, the start date and end date search tools do not work.

From the Control Panel:

1. Click the Collaboration link in the Course Tools box on the left.
2. In the Search area, click the Session Name, Start Date, or End Date radio button.
3. Click the Search button.
4. Your results will be listed below. Note that if you had any filtering options in effect when you searched, only results that meet your filter criterion as well as your search criterion.

More Information

Q: Why can't I get the search to work with a Start or End Date?
A: If you are searching for Start Date or End Date, be sure to enter your date in the MM –DD –YY format—note the spaces before each dash. If you omit the spaces you will get an error. However, the search function still doesn't’t find any matching dates—neither Start Date nor End Date seems to work.

Q: Why can't I get the search to work with the session name?
A: The Session Name search is a substring search, not a search of the initial letters.

Sorting Collaboration Sessions

By default, collaboration sessions are organized in alphabetical order by Session Name. However, you can also sort them by the collaboration tool that will be used, the start date, or the end date.

From the Control Panel:

1. Click the Collaboration link in the Course Tools box on the left.
2. Click on the Triangle icon above Session Name, Tool, Start Date, or End Date.
   a. Sorting by Session Name: will display sessions in alphabetical order by session name. Sessions with the same name will be sorted by date of creation.
   b. Sorting by Tool: will display sessions that use the Lightweight Chat tool followed by sessions that use the Virtual Classroom tool. Sessions that use the same tool will be sorted by date of creation.
   c. Sorting by Start Date: will display sessions that have no start date, followed by sessions that have start dates in chronological order of start date. Sessions that have the same start date will be sorted by date of creation.
   d. Sorting by End Date: will display sessions that have no end date, followed by sessions that have end dates in chronological order of end date. Sessions that have the same end date will be sorted by date of creation.
   Note: Your current sorting option will be indicated by an orange triangle icon (the others will be white).

Changing Options for a Collaboration Session

From the Control Panel:

1. Click the Collaboration link in the Course Tools box on the left.
2. Click the Manage button to the right of the session.
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Submit button.

Removing a Collaboration Session

From the Control Panel:

1. Click the Collaboration link in the Course Tools box on the left.
2. Click the Remove button to the right of the session.
3. Click the Delete button in the confirmation screen.

Note: once a session has been successfully deleted, there is no way to retrieve the file.