What is Collaborate?  Collaborate is a web conferencing program which enables a group of people to interact with one another in a virtual online meeting environment. Collaborate can be accessed “live” anytime from anywhere attendees have access to a computer and an Internet connection. Meetings in Collaborate can be recorded, so those unable to attend the live meeting are able to play back the meeting at a later time.

Why Collaborate?  ECU strives to provide state-of-the-art technology and leading-edge collaborative environments. Achieving this goal requires us to understand the learning-based technologies market, identify those technologies that will enhance the instructional needs of our faculty, and pilot those technologies in an active educational environment.

Collaborate is integrated directly into Blackboard enabling faculty and students to log into a single interface to access both their Blackboard course material as well as their online web conferencing meetings. In addition, Collaborate empowers faculty to setup their own meetings from within Blackboard. Collaborate also includes a simple tool for adding links to meetings to content areas throughout the course.

Tell me about the pilot.  During the  Fall 2012 semester we began piloting Collaborate in the College of Business and the College of Nursing. We had 27 faculty participate in the Collaborate pilot. At the end of the Fall semester, faculty and students that participated in the pilot completed a comparison survey comparing Collaborate to SabaCentra. Based on the moderate results of the Fall 2012 survey, we have decided to offer another small Collaborate pilot during the Spring 2013 semester with an all new group of faculty. After the Spring 2013 semester pilot with our new faculty group, our results of the survey were more positive than the result from the Fall 2012 semester. Thus, we will be piloting Collaborate again, possibly on a larger scale, for the Fall 2013 semester.

Collaborate Support:  For generic technical questions about Collaborate, faculty and students participating in the pilot may contact Blackboard Collaborate support directly at 1-877-382-2293 or collaboratesupport@blackboard.com.

ECU Collaborate Support: Anyone involved in the pilot can contact ITCS Collaborate Support at 252-328-9122 or Collaborate@ecu.edu.