Home / Course Management / Communication Tools / Collaborate: How students access sessions

Collaborate: How students access sessions

In a Blackboard Ultra course students can access the class room and scheduled sessions via the link in the Details and Actions panel. There is a short cut link to open sessions and a link via the three dot menu to view all sessions.

Please share our student facing guide on Class Collaborate “What is Collaborate” with your students.

Join Sessions Link

In the Details & Actions panel under Class Collaborate is a Join Session link for quick access to any open rooms or sessions.

Course Room Disabled

When a session has been scheduled but not yet open, the Join session link will not appear.

When a session opens – i.e. the time of the session plus the early access time (15 mins by default) the link will be visible and the session listed in the dropdown menu.

Course Room Enabled

If the course room in enabled the Join Session link is visible at all times.

When a session opens – i.e. the time of the session plus the early access time (15 mins by default) the dropdown menu will list the scheduled sessions and the Course Room.


View All Sessions page

To access the All sessions page students can go to the Details & Actions panel, click on the three dot menu next to Class Collaborate on the panel and select View All Sessions from the contextual menu.



The Sessions page lists all the upcoming and previous sessions on the course.

Students’ view of Sessions

The scheduled sessions will appear to student as a chronological list.

  • A course room link will appear at the top of the sessions list, unless it is disabled.
  • Future sessions, not yet started, will be greyed out.
  • Any sessions currently open show as “in progress”
  • Where recurring session have been set up use the down arrow to reveal all sessions.


Student start session

Clicking on the session name opens a panel on the right of the screen.

  • Join session link will appear in the panel
  • If you have allowed telephone connection the details for students will appear here.

Session views

Anyone accessing a Collaborate session can make use of the new Gallery view, which enables you to see up to 25 participant videos on screen.

Click on the View icon (four squares) top right to switch between views.


See more on Gallery view on the Blackboard help site.

Gallery view isn’t available in Safari on iOS or iPadOS at this time.

If you are the Moderator of a Collaborate session, then you can control your students’ access to and view of Gallery View.

After the session

The Sessions page will allow you to view a list of past sessions by selecting “All Previous Sessions”.

  • Each past session will be labelled as “Ended”.
  • All will list the date and time that the session ended.

If your session was recorded students will click the three dot menu and select View All recordings

Recordings will move to YuJa on a fixed schedule of very 31 days.

Scroll to Top