See more students with Gallery view in the update Blackboard Collaborate
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
Video: Gallery View in Blackboard Collaborate introduces Collaborate's Gallery view.