Overview: Collaboration and Communication Tools

Blackboard offers a number of built-in tools as well as partner extensions to help faculty and students collaborate both asynchronously and synchronously.

Direct Communication

Send Email

Send email messages to all students or select students. Students receive these messages in their university email account inbox.

Course Messages are similar to email but all communication remains within the course. Course Messages are useful for when interactions between students or between students and faculty are part of the graded academic experience, such as weekly check-ins with an adviser.

Asynchronous Collaboration Tools

Discussion Board

Video Discussions offer a more personal way to engage with your students asynchronously

Journals

Journals can be used for private communications between instructors and students or for self-reflection projects that require students to document opinions, ideas, or experiences over a period of time.

Wikis

Wikis allow students to contribute and modify one or more pages and provide a means of sharing and collaboration. Students can create and edit pages quickly, and track changes and additions, which allows for effective collaboration between multiple writers. Wikis are a great tool for group projects since multiple users can contribute to a single page and each users contributions are tracked.

Blogs

A blog is an online journal that is frequently updated and intended to share with others. Most blogs also have a commenting feature, so that people can respond to one another's thoughts. Blogs are a great for research assignments where students need to gather information, share it with one another, and get feedback.

For more information and ideas about when to use Discussions, Journals, Wikis, and Blogs visit https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Interact/Best_Practices/Interactive_Tools_Best_Practices

VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a 3rd party learning tool that allows instructors and students to create, share, and comment on images, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, videos, audio files, documents, and PDFs.

Synchronous Collaboration Tools

Collaborate Ultra

Collaborate Ultra by Blackboard is a web conferencing system fully integrated with Blackboard Learn. It’s a great way to take your synchronous course sessions online. Sessions can also be recorded so that students who were unable to participate can watch them later.