Topic Overview

What can the different roles do?

Users can be moderators, presenters, participants, and captioners in the Ultra experience.

Moderator: Moderators have full control over all content being shared. They can make any participant a presenter or a moderator. Moderators see hand raise notifications and can lower hands. They can remove participants from a session, but they cannot remove other moderators. Moderators can set the session settings, including deciding what participants can and can't do.
Presenter: 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.
Participant: Participants can enable and disable notifications, such as when participants 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.
Captioner: 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. A participant 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.

Where can I find participants?

Open the Participants panel to view all participants. Open the Collaborate panel and select Participants.

At-a-glance you see:

The roles of each participant. They are grouped by roles to make it easier to see who can do what in the session.
Participants with their hands raised. Those with their hand raised appear at the top of their role list.
Participants' status or feedback.
Participants with their microphone turned on.

Browse through the list of participants or open More options at the top of the panel and select Search.

Point to a participant to view more information, such as their network connection. Moderators can select Moderator controls next to a participant's name to promote the, mute them, or remove them.

Participant List Example

Keep the Participants panel open at all times

You can leave the Participants panel open all the time. Chat with others and see everyone in the session at the same time. You can tell who is away, has their microphone on, or is having network connection trouble. All while chatting and participating in the session.

You need to detach the Participants panel to keep it open. There are two ways to do this:

Open the Collaborate panel. Drag-and-drop the Participants icon to the main stage.
Open the Collaborate panel and select Participants. Select More options at the top of the panel. Select Detach Panel.

The main stage adjusts so you can still see everything on it. Any video, content, whiteboard, and application shared are moved to the left to make room for the panel.

Close the panel any time. Select More options at the top of the panel. Select Merge Panel.

Participant permissions

Decide who can do what in Session Settings any time before or during a session. Open the Collaborate panel and select My Settings. Select Session Settings.

By default users with a participant role are allowed to show their profile picture, share their audio and video, post chat messages, and draw on the whiteboard and shared files.

Promote all participants

You can also have all participants join as presenters or moderators. From the list of Sessions, find a session. Select Session options and Edit settings. Select Presenter or Moderator in the Guest Role menu.

This is only available to users with moderator access to the Scheduler, use Collaborate in an LTI compatible LMS, or use Blackboard Collaborate Ultra in their Blackboard Learn course at this time.

Promote participants

Are you sharing moderator or presenter roles with someone in your presentation? You can promote participants to other roles anytime.

Point to a participant in the Participants panel and select Moderator controls. Select the role you want to make that participant.

Promote Participants Menu

Mute participants

Moderators can mute individual participants or everyone in a session. This includes participants using the Blackboard app or the Blackboard Instructor app.

Mute individual participants: From the Participants panel, point to a participant with their audio on. Select Moderator controls. Select Mute.
Mute all participants: Select More options at the top of the Participants panel. Select Mute All.

Mute Participants Option Mute All Participants Option

Muted participants see a notification telling them that the moderator has muted their microphone.

*Note: Participants can turn their microphone back on after being muted.

View session reports

You can view reports from the list of sessions in Blackboard Collaborate

Find the session you want to see a report on, and select the Sessions options menu.
Select View reports.

If you don't see View reports, it is not available on your system.

Managers can view reports for all sessions.

Session Attendance Report

The Session attendance report provides an overview of when participants joined and left sessions. It also gives you an idea of how long participants were present in the session on average.

Session Report Option

If your sessions are used more than once, there is a report for each time it was used.

Multiple Reports for Session

Select View Report to see the full report. See when each participant joined and left the session. With this knowledge, check-in with individual participants to see if they were having any technical issues or need a quick review of what was presented and discussed.

Sources and Relevant Links

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra