Guide for Live Course Induction Sessions via Blackboard

This advice note assumes that you wish to deliver a live induction session to students on a course.

1. A course Blackboard site is automatically set up for each course code on the student record system (SRS).

2. You can use the course Blackboard site to set up a live Collaborate session for students on the course.

3. Any student temporarily or fully enrolled (TE or FE) on the course on the student record system will be able to access the course Blackboard site.

4. The link to the course Blackboard site will normally appear to students under ‘My Modules & Courses’ (link on the left-hand side of the page they see after signing in to Blackboard).

5. When a student clicks to open their Course Blackboard site they then click ‘Join Session’ under ‘Blackboard Collaborate’ on the left-hand side of the site and select the session they need to join.

NOTE 1: A guest link can be generated for any Collaborate session set up in any Blackboard site and this can be sent to anyone who does not have access to the Blackboard site in which the session was created. They can then join the live session as a guest. However, it is always best practice to get students to join a Collaborate session as outlined in 4 and 5 above if possible. When they take this route, they have to sign in and their attendance can be automatically recorded as a consequence. Only use the guest link option if you know a student is not either TE or FE on SRS.

NOTE 2: By default, every Blackboard site will have one Collaborate Session permanently set up in it called ‘Course Room’. This session can be used for induction sessions if you wish. However, any Blackboard site can have multiple sessions set up within it. So, if you wish to give a session a specific name you can do this by setting up a new session in the Blackboard site (see guide below).

How to set up a Collaborate session in a Blackboard site

NOTE 3: After setting up a Collaborate session it is advisable to create an Announcement in the Blackboard site alerting students to the date and time of the Collaborate session and guiding them to follow the point 5 above.

How to set up an Announcement

Hopefully, students will have had some opportunity to understand how Collaborate works before they come to your session. However, it is advisable to put a link to our Guide to using Collaborate for Students in the Announcement.

NOTE 4: When you create an ‘Announcement’ it is now possible to send the Announcement as an email to students. You do this by checking the box ‘Send an email copy to recipients’ under the box in which you type the Announcement text.