Microsoft Education Collaboration tools enable real-time, simultaneous editing and sharing of documents between faculty and students. The full capabilities of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are now available within Blackboard (iLearn) for collaborative documents. Students and faculty can work together on the same document in real-time, whether creating new content or editing existing OneDrive documents.
This feature could be used for a range of learning activities that require students to work on a document together, such as reviewing, commenting, annotating a Word document, collectively drafting a piece of writing, creating a presentation, or adding information/data to a spreadsheet.
Share Collaborative Documents in iLearn (Blackboard)
The steps below detail how to share files for collaboration with your students directly in your iLearn course.
- In your course, go into the Content location within which you want students to collaborate on a document, then click the (+) add button, and select Create.
- Select Cloud Collaboration under Participation and Engagement on the menu.
- Choose to either create a blank Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document, or choose Select Existing Document to Browse and find the file you wish to share with your class.
- If you are creating a new document, give it a Document Name and input a Description (optional).
- Click Create.
The collaborative document is stored in a designated folder in a private SharePoint site. The SharePoint site will be generated automatically.
Once the document is made visible in the course, all students can edit it. Release conditions can be set to make the document available to only specific individuals or groups within the course.
Track changes can be enabled by the instructor.