In an effort to reduce expense to the university, the Class Collaborate web conferencing tool will not be renewed. It will no longer be available as of August 8, 2026.
Key points:
Class for Web/Collaborate is built specifically for the education environment and helps you build and share engaging content, build instructor presence, and develop a learning community. While it is primarily a synchronous tool, to ability to record sessions is a critical component of any web conferencing tool, enabling students to catch up on sessions they missed or review key content from sessions they attended.
We have finite storage available for recordings, so we are unable to retain all Class for Web/Collaborate recordings indefinitely without incurring significant additional charges.
As a result, Class for Web/Collaborate recordings are retained for 6 months. If recordings are needed for re-use or longer retention, you may download recordings from Class for Web/Collaborate. Recordings that will be viewed frequently can be uploaded to Kaltura. Videos that are needed for long-term retention but which will not be viewed frequently should be stored in Microsoft OneDrive.
There are also benefits to storing recordings on other platforms for long-term use or retention.
We encourage you to download recordings from the Class for Web/Collaborate scheduler at the end of each semester for upload to Kaltura or Microsoft OneDrive. The Division of IT will send notifications to everyone with the Instructor role in a Blackboard Course or the Leader role in a Blackboard Organization prior to the deletion of the recordings.
Recordings are deleted every six months. While specific dates will differ, recordings will be deleted in December shortly after the fall semester ends and in June shortly after the spring semester ends.
Note that Collaborate will only be available until the end of our contract on August 8, 2026. All recordings will be deleted at that time.
To download a recording:
The recording will automatically download to your computer in an .mp4 format.
Note that Collaborate will only be available until the end of our contract on August 8, 2026. Recordings will be deleted at that time.
If you plan to reuse a recording as content in a course as opposed to storing it as an archive, we recommend downloading the recording and uploading it to Kaltura. Videos on Kaltura are also subject to retention guidelines, and Kaltura is not intended for storage of archival video content.
Once your video has been uploaded to Kaltura, you can link or embed the video in your Blackboard course.
If you have a large number of recordings that you need to retain for future courses (i.e., recordings that you will use as content in a future course), please contact the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning using the Ask a Question form. If you provide the course number (e.g., UNIV 101) for the course(s) that contains the recordings, we can work with DoIT to have those moved to Kaltura for you in bulk.
Unfortunately, due to storage limitations on Kaltura, DoIT cannot move recordings to Kaltura for all courses.
Note: These tutorials were developed by Blackboard prior to the sale to Class, so they refer to "Collaborate" instead of the new name "Class for Web". They may be out of date, but Class has not developed replacement materials.
815-753-8100
servicedesk@niu.edu