Application sharing

Moderators and presenters can share their desktop or a software application to teach attendees about a particular topic. Whenever they move through the application or desktop, their students automatically follow along. 

Application sharing uses the new WebRTC standard giving a high definition experience with superior image quality.

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Attendees

By default sessions can have up to 100-250 attendees depending on your license. Session attendees include moderators, presenters, and participants.

If you expect more attendees in your session, turn on webinar mode.

Audio and video

The Ultra experience uses the new WebRTC standard giving a high definition experience with superior image and sound quality. 

Note: Audio and video turn off briefly for all users when a session first reaches 150 attendees. The session moves to a dedicated server so it can continue to grow.

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Breakout groups

Moderators can choose student groupings or allow Collaborate to randomly group students for them. They can also choose to let attendees switch to another group, and even join a particular breakout group to help facilitate collaboration.

Moderators can share files with one or more breakout groups. When sharing a file with a breakout group, the first slide of the file displays in the breakout group.

Note: Breakout groups can be turned off if you want. Submit a request to turn off Breakout groups on Class Community & Support   (available in English only)

More on breakout groups for moderators 

Caption files

You can upload Video Text Tracks (VTT) caption and SubRip Subtitle (SRT) files to add or replace captions in recordings.

Note: If you used live closed captioning in your session, there are captions with your recording already!

More on adding captions

Chat

Users can chat during a session. Moderators may disable chat in their session. The emoji pack for Collaborate supports diversified emojis and Unicode 8 characters.

Moderators can choose to filter out profanity in chat message before a session begins. The profanity filter is off by default.

Inappropriate emoticons are removed from the emoticon selection tool.

Chat in the Everyone channel is included in session recording. Private messages and chat messages in breakout groups are not recorded. Collaborate’s chat history only has 50 messages displayed at any given time.

File sharing

Upload GIF, JPEG and PNG images, PDF files, or PowerPoint presentations of 60MB or lower to sessions. Moderators can upload multiple presentations, however the total size allowed is 125 MB or lower for any particular session.

Screen reader users can access text from PowerPoint and PDF files shared in the session. This provides an easy way to follow along as slides change. Moderators and presenters must select Share Files and upload the files to Collaborate for screen readers to access the text.

After creating a session, moderators can open it any time and load the files they want to share. These files stay in the session until deleted by a moderator.

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File types supported

Moderators and presenters can upload these files to share:

• Images: GIF, JPEG, and PNG
• Presentations and documents: PDF, PPT, or PPTX of 60MB or lower

Moderators can upload multiple presentations, however the total size allowed is 125 MB or lower for any particular session.

All attendees can upload PNG, JPEG, and JPG files to use as profile pictures.

Framerate

• Application sharing: The framerate when sharing an application depends on the bandwidth available to both the presenter and the recipient. With a reliable broadband network, and still content, attendees may see around 25 to 30 frames per second (fps). If the content is video, the frame rate is also dependent on how big the video frame is and what is happening in the video. Frame rates can fall sharply for big and busy videos on even a reliable network.
• Video: The framerate for video has a 40 fps cap. However, video framerate depends on user bandwidth and camera limitations. On a reliable network, 30 fps is realistic.

Live Closed Captioning

Moderators must make attendees captioners. Captioners type what is being said during a session. Other attendees can view what is being typed in real time. You can have multiple captioners for multiple languages.

Captions are included in session recordings.

More on Live closed captioning

Navigation

Navigation in Collaborate is simple and intuitive. Everything users need is available exactly when they need it. The interface dynamically adapts to all activity in the session, putting the focus on who is speaking and any content that is being shared.

Polls

Moderators can poll attendees at any time using one of five different types of polls: Yes/No and multiple choice (1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5).

Profiles

Users have access to simple profiles with their names and the ability to add profile pictures.

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Recordings

Recordings capture the audio, video, and any content that is shared during a session. Recordings also capture any real time captions or subtitles available during the session. If there are more than one captions available during the session, the recording will capture only the first one. Recordings also capture chat messages in the Everyone channel.

More on recordings

Reports

Collaborate has a number of reports that are designed to provide insights.

• Session attendance: Provides an overview of attendees who joined a session (for attendance purposes), what time they joined the session, what time they left the session, and how long each attendee was in the session.
• Metric: Provides a detailed overview of your Collaborate usage. Information includes the frequency and scale your institution is using so you can make informed decisions about the service.
• Recording: Provides administrators with data about their institution’s recordings. This data will include the recording name, a link to the recording, recording creation date and time and the total duration of the recording.
• Attendee: Provides administrators with an overview of all sessions, and session attendee details, beyond what is in the Session attendance report today. This may include the time the session was opened, the time the session was closed, each attendee’s join time, and their leave time.

More on the reports

Session inactivity

If none of the attendees are active after 30 minutes, the session ends and attendees are removed. This is to prevent long periods of quiet and inactivity at the end of recordings.

An active sessions includes these activities:

• An attendee is speaking with their microphone on
• Chat messages
• Users joins or exit the session
• Polling
• Whiteboard edits and slide updates
• Hand Raise
• Content activity (upload, convert, delete, and so on)
• Breakout Room activity

Moderators for inactive sessions see and hear a reminder that the session is open and will close in a minute. The audio alert sounds like a bounce or spring.

Whiteboard

Users have access to a basic whiteboard, which includes basic annotation and text entry tools for making edits.

More on using whiteboards for moderators