News and Announcements

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra - Media Management Process Updates (updated)

Posted: 2021-01-14 12:06:56   Expiration: 2021-01-25 12:06:56

Disclaimer: This news item was originally posted on 2021-01-14 12:06:56. Its content may no longer be timely or accurate.

Between 01/19/2021 and 01/26/2021, the University of Wisconsin System will make updates to the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recording management procedures initially outlined in the Media Management Process 12/01/2020 KB News item. The changes are designed to give instructors greater flexibility and control of the process, make exported recordings easier to access, and to enable these procedures to be used with other tools, should that become necessary. These changes will occur in the Canvas instances of all University of Wisconsin institutions (including Madison).

The updates will be made in two phases:

Phase 1 (January 19)

UWSA will make behind-the-scenes changes to the way that Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recordings are copied to Kaltura.

The new process will create a new Kaltura account for each course with Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recordings to be copied to Kaltura, and that new account will be the owner of the course's recordings in Kaltura. In the initial process set up in December, this ownership was instead assigned to a Kaltura Group.

The new process will continue to use Kaltura Groups to manage access to the migrated recordings, but the Kaltura Groups will be granted Co-Editor and Co-Publisher rights (instead of direct ownership).

The naming convention for the Kaltura accounts created in this process will be "CourseMedia-[instance identifier]-[course number]" (ex: CourseMedia-11830-380482). The naming convention for Kaltura Groups involved in this process will be changed to CourseMedia-G-[instance identifier]-[course number] (ex: CourseMedia-G-11830-38048). Existing Kaltura Groups will be updated automatically.

Update 01/19/21: Phase 1 has been completed.

Phase 2 (January 21-26)

UWSA will add two tools to all courses on the Digital Learning Environment instance of Canvas. UW Madison may deploy the tools to its instance of Canvas at a later date.

Instructors (only) will see the following new buttons on the right side of their Canvas course home pages: 

Course Media

An instructor who clicks Course Media in a Canvas course will see a repository of all of the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recordings which have been migrated to Kaltura for that specific course. The instructor can then use the Course Media tool to watch, edit, delete, or grab embed code for any of the videos.

Course Media Settings

An instructor who clicks Course Media Settings will be given access to the following settings

  • Do not include group/course media in Kaltura My Media (this removes the instructor from the Kaltura Group associated with that course media)
  • Do not copy Blackboard Collaborate recordings to Kaltura Course Media (this stops the automatic import of new recordings to Kaltura, although it does not change when those recordings will be deleted from Blackboard Collaborate).

Course Media Settings will also include a log of which course-related recordings have been migrated or deleted from Blackboard Collaborate Ultra.

Update 01/21/21: The Course Media and Course Media Settings tools were deployed to the UWSA Digital Learning Environment Canvas instances.


-- UWSA DLE: Thomas Arendalkowski