Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience

Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience is a fully redesigned, high quality, browser based web
conferencing solution that makes distance teaching and learning simple, crystal clear and worry-
free. Customers will benefit from the simplicity and convenience of this new approach, enabling faster
launching, simpler deployments with less hand-holding for end users and broadened device support,
including Chromebooks.

What are the main benefits of Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience?

• Simple, Convenient and Java Free:

o Moving Collaborate away from Java dependency and into the browser for simple
deployment, convenient access all from the browser with nothing to install.
• High Quality
o High quality audio, video, and application sharing leveraging standards based WebRTC
technology
• Modern, Redesigned User Experience
o Focused on education and deeply integrated with Learn redesigned for simplicity,
accessibility, and supporting academic workflows.

Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience General

Questions

1. What are realistic expectations we should be setting with customers?

a. We need to be clear about the strategy of Collab with the Ultra experience and how that
strategy will benefit customers throughout the year. We are leading the innovation
charge in web conferencing in education with the new Collaborate and WebRTC. We
are, over time, replacing the Java client with a solution that embraces an open web
and employs modern web technologies. This effort will take some time. The GA release
of Collaborate with the Ultra experience was intentionally designed to meet a modest
sized segment of customers by providing some of the most common functionality across
all use cases. It was the foundation of Collaborate with the Ultra experience with several
major benefits including WebRTC, which provides high quality audio, video, app share
and file share experience, and a modern interface. Many more features have been
release since, including an update user interface, recording, and much more. So for use
cases that are not covered in Collaborate with the Ultra experience, or for customers
wanting to move more slowly, access to Collaborate with the Classic experience is
available in parallel with the Ultra experience which provides the flexibility to support
the entire institution.
 b. The current release of Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience (Dec 2015)
supports classes maxing out around ~100 participants. We will be increasing the use
case options to include larger sessions throughout 2016 with the goal to go up to 1,000.
If this is a barrier to adoption for some users, Collaborate with the Classic experience
will accommodate the larger classes until Collaborate with the Ultra experience
introduces support for them.

c. Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience now supports the WebRTC experience
in both Google ChromeTM and Mozilla Firefox and the Flash® experience in Microsoft
Edge and Internet Explorer® and Apple Safari® browsers. The WebRTC experience in
Firefox provides an almost identical experience with Chrome. This means that the
moderators can now do the following on their Firefox browsers:

i. Share applications
ii. View up to four videos at one time
iii. View videos in both grid and follow-the-speaker views

Firefox version 43 or higher is required for the WebRTC experience.

2. What services can I attach to Collaborate with the Ultra experience Sales?
Blackboard Consulting has updated our Implementation and Training services to
accompany the new Collaborate release. Our new approach to Implementation takes
the focus off of stand-alone products; instead it reaches across platforms holistically.
Our consultants help clients:
i. adjust to the new look and feel of our latest releases,
ii. incorporate use case based best practices for implementation planning, and
iii. align with overall institutional educational technology objectives.

Using this approach, Blackboard Consulting can also guide clients through a complete
review of current educational technology implementations, as well as the their vision,
mission, and goals to support those technologies particularly as they relate to student
experience, instructor adoption, and institution brand. We provide facilitated
workshops to guide clients through use cases and risk analysis including stakeholder
inputs, and develop a detailed action plan, which provides for future growth and fosters
adoption. This service may be delivered to new clients, to clients who need help
upgrading, or to clients who just want to review their implementation for growth and to
accommodate new use cases.

Our updated Training offerings walk clients through the new user experience and how
to best take advantage of features to support faculty and staff using Collaborate.
The current offerings include:
Blackboard Collaborate Essentials for Web Conferencing will provide participants with
a foundation in Collaborate with the Ultra experience, enabling them to successfully
deliver live, interactive web conferencing sessions. Participants will learn how to
 effectively manage the session communication tools, display PowerPoint content, share
an application or desktop, and record sessions for later playback.

Collaborate Session Administration System (SAS) Training will provide a solid

foundation in the Collaborate SAS interface, including a review of system roles and
users, meeting management, and guidance on switching between usage of Collaborate
with the Classic experience and Collaborate with the Ultra experience.

Clients may receive Collaborate with the Classic experience training (standard
workshops: Essentials, Beyond the Basics, Putting it all Together) or Collaborate with the
Ultra experience training, depending on their use cases. At GA, our Essentials training
for Web Conferencing will be available. Additional training workshops will be made
available as additional features are added. Collaborate with the Ultra experience
Essentials training will include moderator and participant interface review, methods of
communication, session management, and tools/feature training. Clients will receive
training along a continuum over the course of the timeframe specified in the SOW. We
will work with them to deliver services for Collab with the Ultra experience as new
features are added and as they map to customer use cases.

Pricing:
There is no change to Learning Solution Pricing, and our updated services for
Collaborate with the Ultra experience are included in the Learning Essentials bundle.
When positioning services only to a current Collaborate customer or otherwise
independent of a Learning Solution, list pricing is as follows:

Separate list prices (In CPQ, you will need to select these services to create an
opportunity, contract and SOW, working with the Services Market Lead). These are not
based on FTE and they are fixed.

Training Services:
-Blackboard Collaborate Essentials for Web Conferencing (CL-TRNOL-WCLAB)
-Blackboard Collaborate Technical Services SAS Essentials Workshop CL-TECHOL-ADMIN

Implementation Services:
-Academic Technology Planning Service (AS-ACTECHPLAN-FFP): $14k (As of 4/27/15,
CPQ currently reflects this service as $18.5k and the Consulting team is getting this
adjusted to $14k. For now we will discount this service.)

If you have any questions or for support with positioning, please contact Adrian Powell.

Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience Accessibility

3. Does Collaborate with the Ultra experience meet accessibility standards?
 Blackboard is committed to the highest level of accessibility for all our products and services.
We design and build our products in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility (WCAG)
Guidelines 2.0 Level AA.

The August update to Collaborate included significant improvements for supporting screen
readers and keyboard-only use cases. A formal audit of compliance with these standards is
underway and formal documentation including a VPAT (Section 508) and WCAG compliance
statement will be issued when the audit is completed. Accessibility issues should be reported
through standard support channels.

Blackboard Collaborate Session Experience Questions

4. Does Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience use HTML 5?

Yes, Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience is based on modern web
technologies including HTML5. The in-session experience for presenters, moderators
and participants using the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers is HTML5 and
javascript based and also utilizes the WebRTC standards for audio, video and app share
functionality. Other browser vendors (Microsoft, and Apple) are still finalizing their
WebRTC/ORTC specification support. Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience
will utilize Adobe Flash for audio, video and viewing AppShare in these browsers until
WebRTC support is finalized. In all cases the end-user experience is completely within
the browser. The Java requirement is removed.

5. How many talkers and videos are supported in Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra
experience?
Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience employs modern user experience
design to optimize the in-session experience for all users. The session dynamically
adjusts to focus on the most important content while also providing options for users to
modify their view.

The audio, video and application sharing infrastructure in Blackboard Collaborate with
the Ultra experience is based on WebRTC technology. With WebRTC, all presenters,
moderators and participants can turn their microphones and video cameras on at any
time. Collaborate with the Ultra experience will dynamically prioritize the video and
audio streams to display. Presenters and moderators can always mute participant
audio, if necessary.

Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers provide the optimal Collaborate
experience for all users. Chrome supports all of the functionality necessary to run a full-
featured new Collaborate session through its support of WebRTC. Other browsers
(Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer and Safari) are fully supported but are limited in
functionality due to their current lack of WebRTC support. These browsers will become
 more and more functional in time as they adopt the WebRTC or ORTC standards.

The number of viewable videos is one instance of where Chrome will provide the optimal
experience.

Google Chrome and Firefox Users

Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience dynamically displays up to 5

simultaneous videos (where one is always the end user’s) based on available bandwidth
when AppShare is not enabled. The 4 other videos in view will always be the most
recent speakers. Support for additional viewable videos is under consideration for
future versions of Collaborate. When AppShare is enabled, users will see their own
video and the speaker’s video along with the AppShare.

Other Browsers

Blackboard Collaborate displays both the user’s video and the current speaker’s video
simultaneously. These will be displayed along with AppShare when enabled. Support
for additional viewable videos will be possible as browser vendors adopt and support
WebRTC.

6. What will the support be for Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer?
Google Chrome and Firefox provide the optimal experience for all users:
The optimal new Collaborate experience for all users is with Google's Chrome or
Mozilla’s Firefox browsers. Both support all of the functionality necessary to run a full-
featured Collaborate session through its support of WebRTC. Note that hosting an "App
Share" requires a Chrome extension provided by Blackboard. Chrome Extensions are
simple add-in modules in the Chrome browser itself. They do not require a restart of
the session or Chrome to function. Users will be prompted to enable the extension the
first time they use App Share or File Upload. Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra
experience also supports Flash experience in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple
Safari browsers.

7. How responsive is App Share? What type of quality can be expected?

App Share in the new Collaborate is noticeably faster than Collaborate with the Classic
experience. App Share also utilizes the new WebRTC encoding. The result is a high-
definition experience with superior image quality. The clarity is comparable to what you
would expect from a high quality Skype session.

File Upload Support and Quality

Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience supports uploading .PPT, .PPTX and
.PDF documents for file sharing. These files are converted to SVG. SVG provides a very
high quality image that can be scaled easily while maintaining quality. The quality of file
sharing in Collaborate with the Ultra experience is far superior to Collaborate with the
Classic experience.
 Recordings
Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience allows for the recording of MP4 video
of the session. This recording includes the audio, video and visuals displayed during and
throughout the session. Recordings are available shortly after the session is completed.
While closed-captioning is not yet available, the MP4 file itself can be closed-captioned
by a 3rd party.

8. What are the plan for integrating the telephony?

The December 2015 release now includes the telephone integration. Moderators and
participants can call into a session using their phone. Each phone user is identified as a full
session participant. Please note that entering the meeting via the web first is required. The dial
in information will be generated AFTER the participants joins the web portion. Local numbers
(not toll-free) will be generated and will respond to the numbers that are currently used within
Blackboard with Original experience. All International numbers remain the same as within the
Original experience. For example, a UK number will be used for clients hosted in AMS/EU and
Sydney number for clients hosted in SYD/AU.

9. How many participants does Collaborate with the Ultra experience support?
As of December, 2015, the session can host up to 100 participants.

10. What are some of the chat features?

The chat offers a modern experience incorporating not just the ability to interact with each
other but emoji’s as well. In addition, moderators can chat with each other in a private chat
channel while in session. Collaborate with the Ultra experience makes it really easy to switch
between chatting with moderators and chatting with everyone in the session.

Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience Integrations

& Access
11. How will Learn customers access Collaborate with the Ultra experience?
The Blackboard Collaborate integration for Enterprise Learn customers is now available.
Enterprise Learn customers can upgrade their building block to a new version that
includes access to Collaborate with the Ultra experience and their current version of
Collaborate. Users have a seamless way to run sessions with Collaborate with the Ultra
experience and then choose when to make the switch from the earlier version.

When an institution with a Collaborate license upgrades to Learn SaaS, integrated

access to Collaborate with the Ultra experience will be included.

12. How will non-integrated users access Collaborate with the Ultra experience?
 Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience includes a scheduling option in the
Session Administration Server (SAS) for Collaborate with the Ultra experience sessions
while still supporting scheduling for older versions of Collaborate. Customers without an
LMS or LTI integration can access the new Collaborate via SAS.

13. How will Moodle customers access Collaborate with the Ultra experience?
The new Blackboard Collaborate integration for Moodle is now available. Moodle
institutions can install a new module that provides access to Collaborate with the Ultra
experience. This module is available both to Moodlerooms clients as well as other
Moodle instances.

14. How will LTI users access Collaborate with the Ultra experience?
Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience includes a scheduling option in the
Session Administration Server (SAS) for new Collaborate sessions while still supporting
scheduling for older versions of Collaborate. A recent update to SAS now also includes
LTI-compliance support. System Administrators are able to simply integrate their LMS
directly with SAS via LTI with the SAS update.

15. What about other integrations?

Clients may be using custom integrations developed by Bb Services. They will need to
work with Services to update these integrations. Clients may be using integrations they
developed themselves, or something offered by a third party. The D2L integration is a
good example. This integration is developed and maintained by D2L, and will need to be
updated for those users to gain access to Collaborate with the Ultra experience. This is
not something we expect to happen, and D2L customers should be encouraged to use
the LTI integration. It will be possible to use both their current D2L integration and the
new LTI integration concurrently, accessing both versions of Collaborate from the same
course.

16. What about BbIM integration?

There are no plans to update BbIM at this time. Invitations to web conferencing from
within BbIM will continue to launch the current version of Collaborate.

Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience Hosting /

Cloud Questions
17. How much of the new Collaborate is cloud-based and which parts?
Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience is delivered by Blackboard as a
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. The components that require elasticity or on-
demand scale, such as session and media servers, leverage cloud technologies.
18. How is bandwidth managed?

In Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra experience the user's experience is modified to
accommodate their connection speed. This means that participants can continue to
participate in sessions in spite of slower internet connections and poor network
conditions.

Collaborate dynamically adjusts to sending and receiving connection bandwidth for

audio and video both in WebRTC with Chrome, and other browsers with Flash.

Some situations may require additional adjustment. Collaborate now adds explicit
experience changes to accommodate a wider range of connectivity blips.

When the experience changes for a participant, they are notified and told why.

Video Encoding Efficiency

WebRTC video encoding (applies to video and AppShare) dynamically adjusts the bit
rate to meet a certain quality level with a minimum and maximum bit rate applied. This
is referred to as "Variable Bit Rate Encoding" or "VBR". In practice, what this means is
that if the client does not need the extra bandwidth to provide the stated quality level it
simply won't use it.

The following outlines the details of how bandwidth allocation works, so the minimums
and maximums. These should be considered "best or worst case" because in practice
the encoders are very efficient and will very rarely utilize the allocated bandwidth.

Sending Audio and Video (or Appshare)

The WebRTC infrastructure (aka “MCUs”) instructs each web client on their respective
settings (e.g. video upload bitrate) based on bandwidth constraints.

Audio is sent between 4-40kbps depending on the need. WebRTC will adjust the speed
dynamically as the speaker is idle or speaking.

When a user starts sharing video or AppShare, Chrome will attempt to send this stream
at 200kpbs. If it can sustain this speed it will gradually increase the bit rate allocation
until it encounters a limitation, up to 400kbps, where it will max out. 400kpbs is a very
high quality stream for video with a moderate amount of motion. If it cannot sustain
the original 200kpbs it will gradually decrease the allocation until it reaches a speed it
can sustain, down to 80kbps, where it will stop. While video is being presented, the
client will only ever use the bandwidth it needs to maintain a quality stream, with
80kbps being the minimum it will send, and 400kbps the maximum. If at any time a
user’s bandwidth improves or degrades during the session, the MCUs will dynamically
 adjust the bit rate allocation accordingly. If network conditions degrade substantially,
the video experience for those receiving the video will degrade.

Sending audio and video in Flash works much the same way, except Flash will generally
only adjust the bit rate allocation for the quality it needs by about 10% in either
direction when network conditions degrade. This can result in a lower quality
experience if the original bandwidth test was high and the network degraded
substantially.

The maximum upload bandwidth required for higher motion video with audio sharing is
440kbps.

Receiving Audio and Video (and Appshare)

Bandwidth requirements and adjustment when receiving audio and video (and
AppShare) are subject to the streams being sent. In a video conference, the receiving
client will require the download bandwidth to support all active sending streams from
both Chrome and Flash. This can total up to 1.8Mbps with 4 participants sending full
quality streams if all sending clients are utilizing the full allocated bit rates As noted
earlier, this is very rare. When receiving Appshare and one video, the bandwidth needs
can reach up to 840kpbs. Again, requiring this much bandwidth is very rare given the
efficiencies built-in to the encoders in the sending client.

Bandwidth in Practice

In real-world scenarios, Blackboard's testing has demonstrated that WebRTC is very

efficient in providing a high quality experience at very low sending and receiving
bandwidth. Often times, Chrome will keep the receiving bandwidth between 200-
400kbps even with a full video conference or high quality AppShare.

Minimum Requirements

The minimum required download bandwidth to participate in a session by listening to

audio and viewing either speaker video or AppShare is 128kbps.

Deeper Technical Questions

Please visit Technical Questions for Blackboard Learn / Blackboard Collaborate with the Ultra
experience