New Blackboard Collaborate Whiteboard

A new whiteboard tool has been introduced in Blackboard Collaborate. With the new whiteboard all attendees can enjoy better formatting, usability, and annotation persistence. With the improvements to the annotation tools, attendees can enjoy these features on a session whiteboard or shared file.

• Better formatting: Pencil thickness, fonts and font size, shapes with colour fill, arrows, and more are added to the annotation tools. If you have used Blackboard Annotate to mark-up student work submitted online, you will be familiar with the annotation tools now available in the new Collaborate whiteboard tool.
• Usability: It is easy to copy and reuse elements and paste text. You can now erase part of the annotations or clear all. There are multi line text blocks, text wrapping, and safeguards before clearing all annotations.
• Interaction with breakout groups: You can annotate a file in the main room and then share it with the breakout groups including annotations. You can bring a breakout group’s own annotated file into the main room together with its annotations.
• Annotation persistence: Annotations made to the whiteboard, or on a file, are saved in the session. You can share something new, go to a new slide, or stop sharing. The annotations remain unless you choose to clear the annotations.

When files or a blank whiteboard are shared in a session, annotation tools to can be used to edit and mark up the document during the live session. Upload a blank file of several pages to have a multi-page whiteboard. These tools are available for both the moderator and participant roles unless the moderator turns it off in Session Settings.

Document view settings:

• Pan: Move the whiteboard or shared file on the page.
• Zoom and Fit: Zoom in and out of the page or adjust the view to fit the page or width.

Annotations:

• Drawing, Brush, and Eraser: Draw freehand on the page with various colours, thickness, and opacity. Select the eraser to remove annotations. You can erase parts of a freehand drawing with the eraser or select the Delete icon to delete the whole drawing.
• Text: Add text directly on the page. You can move, edit, and change the text and select the font, size, alignment, and colour of the text.
• Shapes: Choose Line, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, and Polyline. Each shape has its own settings to change the colour, width, opacity, and more.
• Clear Annotations: Annotations are saved in the session. You can share something new, go to a new slide, or stop sharing. The annotations remain. Moderators can use Clear Annotations to delete all annotations from all pages.
• Highlighter: Select areas on a shared file to highlight. As you highlight text on the page, an additional menu opens. You can highlight, strikethrough, underline, squiggle, or comment on the highlighted section. The highlighter is only available on shared files. It is not available on the whiteboard.
• Pointer: As there is not a pointer, you create an arrow with the Shapes tool and move the arrow to point to different areas of the whiteboard.

Further guidance:

• Whiteboard for moderators
• Whiteboard for participants

Or contact the Digital Learning Team for support.