June, 2011
To Whom It May Concern:
This letter is to verify that Blackboard Collaborate Inc. is the sole publisher of the Blackboard Collaborate™ platform,
which consists of Enterprise Instant Message (formerly Wimba Pronto™), Web Conferencing (formerly Elluminate
Live!™, Elluminate Plan!™ and Elluminate Publish!™) and Voice Authoring (formerly Wimba Voice™). The
specifications necessary to manufacture the Blackboard Collaborate™ platform are proprietary to Blackboard
Collaborate Inc.
The platform has, to the best of our knowledge, the following unique combination of features.
Enterprise Instant Messaging
1. Presence and Instant Messaging & Collaboration
• See the presence and availability of peer students, faculty and school services
• Instantly start a chat discussion with an individual or a group.
• Instantly start a voice discussion with an individual or a group.
• Instantly start a videoconference with an individual or a group.
• Instantly start sharing an object oriented whiteboard with an individual or a group.
• Instantly start sharing your desktop with an individual or a group.
2. Integrated with Learning Management System
• Automatically populates your “buddy list” with peer students and faculty from enrolled course
information.
3. Customized office hours
• See presence of professor for office hours
• Waiting room area for students
• Students with common questions can be handled simultaneously
4. Help Desks
• Online access to student services through Help desks
5. Broadcast Messages
• Send a message “en masse” to all students and instructors at once.
Web Conferencing
1. Full multiple platform support.
• Similar full functionality for users on supported versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu Linux
systems.
2. True low bandwidth support.
• Supports bandwidth as low as 28.8kbps.
• Data is shared at highest quality, with the server automatically compensating for individuals with low
speed connections
3. Intelligent individual bandwidth monitoring.
• Status indicators that alert the instructor as to the data throughput status of application sharing, audio,
video, and whiteboard data for each participant.
www.blackboard.com/collaborate
June, 2011
4. Bandwidth management that ensures all participants in room are in sync and no content is lost, even after a
brief Internet interruption.
• Dynamically accelerated audio playback that compensates for Internet delays and maintains all
participants in real-time.
• Server automatically and continuously compensates for each participant’s unique available
bandwidth—even for low speed connections without reducing the communication speed for all
participants to lower speeds.
• Automatic reconnection for any user who experiences an Internet interruption.
• Instructors are able to be on low speed connections.
5. Object oriented whiteboard.
• Objects can be moved, copied, resized, colored, filled, aligned, distributed, and grouped.
• Objects can be moved to and from the background.
• Whiteboards are persistent during sessions. Moving between whiteboards screens does not remove
any changes made to previous screens.
• Presentations can be marked up or built on the fly.
• All changes to every screen are retained during a session and each participant can save screens in
native whiteboard format (which retains all individual object properties) or as a .PDF document (for easy
distribution).
6. Breakout room functionality.
• Breakout rooms can have any number of collaborative whiteboards.
• Whiteboards can be saved and reloaded and/or shared with other participants in other breakout rooms
or in the main room.
• Groups can break-off, work separately, and then reconvene and share all of their work.
7. Activity lights that indicate individual usage for each feature.
• Who is using chat.
• Who is talking.
• Who is drawing on the whiteboard.
• Who is hosting and who is controlling application sharing.
• Who is sharing video.
• Who is entering and viewing closed captions.
• Who is using the graphing calculator.
8. Chat messages are readily visible and color-coded.
• The complete history of received chat messages is always available within sessions.
• Chat messages can be saved if required.
• Announcements can be sent to all users or only to moderators and be sent to users in any room,
including breakout rooms.
9. Synchronized Notes
• Users are able to individually capture notes during the live session and can add or edit notes while
watching a recording.
• Notes can be saved, shared, combined and edited.
• Notes are played back in synchronization during the recording.
www.blackboard.com/collaborate
June, 2011
10. Mathematical content
• Users are able to load customized mathematical symbols onto the whiteboard.
• Graphing calculator can be enabled allowing users to interact in a private or shared mode.
11. Active Content
• Clickable URLs in the chat and whiteboard window.
• Files transferred can be saved by every user.
12. Accessibility and ADA 508 Compliance Features:
• Tested with popular screen-reading software such as JAWS.
• Separate Closed Captioning facility which allows input from court-report keyboards as well as voice
recognition software.
• Keyboard shortcuts for the most commonly used participant actions such as hand raise, polling, turning
the microphone on/off or using the emotion indicators.
13. Interactive and Indexed Recordings
• Recordings truly represent all interaction from the live session. Capturing all audio, messaging,
whiteboard, multimedia and video content.
• Files transferred are accessible from the recording.
• Indices marking all key activities and manually inserted are captured.
• Intelligent elimination of indices is included.
• Small file size of recordings allows creation of asynchronous content.
• Periods of inactivity in the live session are compressed during the recording.
14. Audio Conference Integration
• The Telephony feature enables you to conduct your Audio communications with other session
attendees via telephone conferencing, while continuing to use your computer for all other features.
• Mixed audio support - Audio conference users will be fully integrated into the session: can communicate
with users not connected via teleconference (the traditional microphone and speaker users utilizing
VOIP) and communications will be captured in session recordings.
• Teleconference volume level adjustment – moderators have the ability to adjust (increase/decrease) the
volume level of the teleconference.
• Visual indicator in session of audio conferencing users.
• The moderator is able to mute all users on the audio conference and all attendees see a visual mute
indicator in session.
• Break Out Rooms support telephony integration with mixed audio sessions (VOIP and teleconference)
i. Telephone conference participants and the telephone conference bridge can be moved to their
own break out room and they will not hear the VOIP audio from other participants in other
breakout rooms
15. Web Tour Technologies
• Moderator led web tours controlled from within the webpage itself.
• Ability to turn tour guide mode on or off as needed for individual exploration
16. Recordings can be leveraged
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June, 2011
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Recordings can be played locally from the user’s computer without the need for an Internet connection
while maintaining their interactive features such as file transfer and user profiles.
Recordings can be converted to audio files in multiple formats including MP3, WAV and Ogg Vorbis
Recordings can be converted to multimedia files in multiple formats including FLV, MP4, MOV, WMV,
and others
17. Pre-session planning
• Allows moderators to prepare session content prior to the virtual classroom session
• Planning tools allow moderators to script actions in a session and load necessary content in a single file
• The live session can then be controlled with a single button.
• Session plans can be shared with others
• Moderators can view presenter notes during the session
Voice Authoring
1. Voice Podcaster
• Create or upload podcasts for subscription in standard podcast aggregator tools
2. Voice Presentation
• Add live web content alongside voice messages to add context to content.
3. Voice Discussion Board:
• Post and listen to voice messages in an organized, threaded discussion group.
4. Voice Authoring
• Record and listen to voice on a course web page. Easily add listening exercises and voice messages
into any LMS course page.
5. Voice E-mail:
• Send and listen to voice through email messages.
6. Automatically update Blackboard LMS grade books with the results of voice board assessments.
Sincerely,
Mike Mabey
Chief Technology Officer
Blackboard Collaborate Inc.
www.blackboard.com/collaborate