Session Roles

Introduction

Within Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, all participants have a session role. It is important to understand these roles before creating a session. Those taking part in the session can be either a:

• Moderator
• Presenter
• Captioner
• or Participant.  

Let’s take a moment to review the privileges associated with each session role:

Moderator

Moderators have full control over the content being shared in a session and can end a presenter’s or another moderator’s content share. Typically, this role is reserved for the module co-ordinator whose module is hosting the session.

Moderators have the ability to enable or disable session and notification settings and start and stop a recording.

Moderators can manage participants and can control their interactions. They can promote and demote participants to/from the presenter and moderator roles. Moderators can also lower raised hand notifications and remove participants from the session.

Moderators cannot remove other moderators. In order to remove another moderator, the session’s primary moderator must first demote the attendee to the role of participant and then remove them from the session.

Presenter

The Presenter role is designed to fulfil the student presenter use case. Any participant can be promoted to a Presenter by the Moderator. Presenters have some capabilities beyond that of the default Participant role. Presenters can upload, share and annotate content. By sharing content, Presenters can effectively stop any sharing currently in progress by other moderators/presenters. Therefore, as a best practice, ask presenters to wait to add their content until you are ready to hand over control of the session to them.

Captioner

The Captioner role allows a participant to add live closed captioning content during the session. Moderators must promote a participant to the role of captioner. Captioners type what is being said during a session. Participants can then view what is being typed in real time.

Participant

Participant is the default role for any user accessing the session via a guest web link or session link in Blackboard Learn. Typically, this role is reserved for student attendees. Users assigned to the Participant role have the ability to enable and disable visual and audio notification related to participants entering and leaving the room as well as posting to the chat tool. Default privileges for the Participant role can be removed by the moderator. Participants can also respond to polls and interact with other participants in break-out rooms.