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See more students with Gallery view
Gallery view isn't available in Safari® on iOS or iPadOS at this time.
Built for education, we understand that instructors want to be able to see their students' faces clearly. Body language and facial expressions help instructors tell if their students are paying attention and understanding the material. For this reason, moderators can see up to 25 videos at a time in Gallery view. This is the ideal maximum number of videos to show at one time and still see enough detail for the non-verbal feedback instructors are looking for. With the zoom controls, Tiled view, and Speaker view moderators have even greater control over how they want to see their students.
The number of videos you see depends on the size of your screen and if you have the Session menu or Collaborate panel open. Limitations on the number of videos imposed by browser support or large sessions (250+) setting remain.
The Gallery view zoom controls give you the ability to zoom in on fewer videos at a time, making each video larger. While the Tiled and Speaker views emphasize who is speaking. These views show up to 4 videos with one video larger than the others. This larger video shows who is speaking so you can see them more clearly. As the discussion unfolds, the larger video changes to match the active speaker.
In Gallery view moderators can use the previous and next buttons to see all of their students. Moderators can also point to an attendee video and select the Attendee Controls to send them a private chat, promote a participant, mute the attendee, or remove the person from the session.
In this first release, you share content, you can switch between all videos and the content in the bottom right corner. In a further release you'll be able to see videos and content side by side and this workflow will likely change a bit.
While Gallery view is made available only to moderators in this first release, we're going to expand availability to students as soon as scalability monitoring allows. Making it available to students won't require downtime so this may be made available outside of the monthly release schedule.
Gallery view
Speaker view
Tiled view
Watch a video introduction of Gallery view
The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube, navigate to More actions, and select Open transcript.
Video: Gallery View in Blackboard Collaborate introduces Collaborate's Gallery view.
User experience improvements
Based on instructor feedback, we made a couple improvements to Collaborate.
- We made the the whiteboard editing tools easier to see.
- We also updated the Clear whiteboard tool. Clear is now a trash can to better represent that the tool clears the entire whiteboard and not just a selected element.
To delete just one thing off the whiteboard, select the item and press Delete on your keyboard.
- We moved the Remove attendee option so it is now the last option in the Attendee controls menu. The option is now also red to make it easier to see. We made these changes so that moderators don't accidentally remove people from a session when trying to mute them.
Sessions that run for very long are automatically disconnected
Based on user feedback, we've changed the time from 8h (previously announced) to 12h. In future releases, we'll be looking at providing a shorter duration with an option to extend the length while in the session. Learn more on the Community site.
By default, sessions that last longer than 12 hours are disconnected. While sessions can be scheduled for any length of time including no end date, it's unusual that anyone stays in the session for more than 12 hours at a time. We assume it is unintended and disconnect the room. Attendees can rejoin the session, if they need.
Collaborate Support chatbot available in more places
Now, attendees have more access to immediate support when they need it. The Collaborate Support chatbot, released in January in sessions, is now also available on some error pages, as well as on the Report an Issue panel.
