Climate Change | Technology Handbook (Index)

Blackboard Collaborate

The majority of tutorials, large group sesions and non-programme specific events such as those carried out by the library or IAD are carried out on Blackboard Collaborate. Blackboard Collaborate is freely available to all students at the University.

For all sessions run for the programme, you will be able to find the link to join Collaborate Sessions on your Blackboard Learn (via the related course), or, in many cases, will also receive the link via email. Any non programme related sessions will likely have their joining link in the event description, or provided to you by email. If you cannot find the link, please contact the event coordinator prior to the session starting.

To find the link via Blackboard Learn just sign on to your Learn area as normal (see Learn guidance in Tech Handbook), then access the course in question and click on Virtual Classroom from the panel on the left hand side. Within this menu, choose the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra folder. Here you will find a list of all the scheduled events and recorded events (you will need to use the drop down at the top to navigate between recorded and future events).

The University provides some Blackboard Collaborate guidance here: http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/learning-technology/communication/collaborate/collaborate-students

Collaborate Recordings

To watch any recorded Collaborate Sessions back, on that same page within Learn, use the 3 parallel lines button to go to the Recordings area. You can then select the session you want to watch back, which will open in a new tab/window.

In its ulitmate wisdom, Learn only shows Collaborates's "Recent Recordings". To access those sessions recorded more than a week ago please follow video guidance in the Resource list of this page.

You can access the chat in the recordings in the same way as in the live sessions. Just click on the purple tab on the bottom right of the screen.

Troubleshooting the Adobe Flash Plugin in Chrome

The following guidance has been kindly put together by one of the 2016-17 cohort, Yaw (thank you!)

If get the ‘Flash plugin failed to load’ error when you attempt to view the welcome session videos in the Collaborate section (or otherwise get a blank page when you try watching any of the other videos), you may find the following troubleshooting steps useful.

Type “chrome://plugins” in the browser window and hit the enter key.
Left-click on the “+” next to ‘Details’ on the right hand upper side (circled in red below).
Make sure that the box titled ‘Always allowed to run’ is checked
Close and restart Chrome, then go to www.climate.ed.ac.uk and try playing the video recording in question.
If it still fails to run, you may have to try updating your version of Adobe Flash Player plugin to the most current one. You can find and install this by following the instructions found at https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
Finally, if issues persist, check if Chrome is blocking pop-ups, and if so, enable them for the Collaborate page.

Mobile Apps

You may want to use join our Collaborate sessions or watch recordings from your phone/tablet. If so, you will need to download the Blackboard Collaborate App.

Profile Picture

If you would like to put a profile picture on Collaborate, the instructions to do so can be found here: https://help.blackboard.com/Collaborate/Ultra/Participant/Get_Started/Add_a_Profile_Picture