Faculty Blackboard support

The June 2023 – 3900.67 release is robust with features in six areas:

• Assessment and grading;
• Richer course and content;
• Data and analytics;
• Communication and social engagement;
• Integration, extension, and management; and
• Course upgrading

Below are the top five items the Blackboard team has selected to highlight for your information. Read the full 3900.67 release notes.

Announcements in the top navigation bar

To provide a better user experience, we moved Announcements from the Details & Actions menu to the top navigation bar. This reduces the number of items within the Details & Actions menu. This change also improves visibility and prominence of Announcements. Users will be able to access announcements anywhere from within a course. All existing functionality of announcements remains the same.

Additional level of content nesting 

At present, Blackboard Ultra supports up to three levels of hierarchy for content nesting on the course content page. We’ve received consistent feedback from students indicating that they prefer this structure. Many have shared that it improves course navigation. Instructors have shared the same and cited it helps them easily design and layout their courses.

We’ve also heard that some institutions need more than three levels of content nesting to structure their course content. To address this feedback, we’ve added an option to use one additional level of content nesting. This extra level provides instructors with greater flexibility to organize content in ways that better suit their needs. The option to use one more level of content nesting improves the overall usability of the platform for some of our users. Opting for the extra level of content nesting also reduces the flattening effect of content when upgrading courses from the Original to Ultra course view.

Course links improvements

To provide a better experience, we’ve made a series of improvements for course links:

• Instructors have the option to add course links to folders and learning modules on the Course Content page. The option to add course links to folders and learning modules is hidden for nested content containers.
• Instructors cannot move into another folder or learning module a course link to a folder or learning module. A warning message displays if an instructor tries to move a course link in this way.
• Instructors cannot copy into another folder or learning module a course link to a folder or learning module. The option to copy course links to folders and LMs is hidden if an instructor selects the Copy Content option from the + menu while inside a folder or learning module.
• To help users identify course links to folders and learning modules, we have made a new icon. This icon displays a link at the top left corner of the icon for a folder or learning module. In the past, the learning module didn’t have an icon. Learning modules now have an icon, which is the same one displayed for learning modules on the Create Item panel.
• The context menu for a course link to a folder or a learning module now provides these options:
  • Edit Course Link
  • Edit Linked Folder or Learning Module
  • Delete Course Link
• Users can expand a course link to a folder or learning module as they would a folder or learning module. This allows the user to view the nested contents of the target folder or learning module. The contents displayed are read only. An instructor cannot modify the nested contents displayed for the course link. An instructor cannot move additional content into the folder or learning module course link.
• When an instructor makes changes to the nested contents of a folder or learning module, the changes will appear for any related, expanded course link. These changes include:
  • adding/deleting nested contents
  • re-ordering nested contents
  • moving additional contents into the target folder or learning module
  • editing the names of nested contents
  • modifying the visibility or release conditions of nested contents
• In the past, if an instructor copied a course link to an Ultra Document, some of the contents added via Add Content did not copy. This has been fixed. Now the Ultra Document and its contents, along with the course link, are copied as expected.
• When creating a Course Link, an instructor can now select a folder and/or learning module from the Category section of Search Criteria. Additionally, instructors can expand the folders and learning modules in the search results to select one of its contents.
• When upgrading an Original course to the Ultra course view, course links to folders and learning modules are not retained. The conversion report includes an exception for course links and explains their removal.

Upload questions from a file to tests and assignments

Besides course content, assessment questions are one of the most valuable teaching artifacts. Up until now, instructors could only create new questions in tests, assignments or question banks. This process could be time-consuming and inefficient.
 
Now instructors can author questions offline in a text file. Instructors can upload the file into a test for a more streamlined test building workflow. Each question file must be a tab-delimited TXT file. The file should not exceed 250 records to avoid time-out restrictions. For more details on formatting requirements, please review the related Help pages for Original and Ultra platforms.

Instructors can easily edit and use the uploaded questions as they would a question created in a test. Uploading questions saves instructors valuable time and effort.

Supported question types include:

• multiple choice/multiple answer
• true/false
• essay
• fill in the blank
• fill in multiple blanks
• numeric response
• matching

Add exceptions from the Gradebook Grid view and the Student Overview page

We all live complicated lives and special circumstances often arise. When this happens, instructors may need to grant an exception to a student for specific tests or assignments. These exceptions may include the following:

• providing additional attempts
• rescheduling due dates, or
• granting extended access.

These exceptions are available even if the assessment is hidden from other students. Until now, exceptions were only accessible from the submissions page for an assessment. Now, instructors can access the exceptions workflow from the gradebook grid view and Student Overview page.

New Blackboard blog

Starting this month, Blackboard Anthology is producing a corporate blog which will allow a quick grab/copy of screenshots for your change management initiatives. Please visit Anthology.com.

The May 2023 – 3900.65 release is robust with features in five areas:

• Assessment and grading;
• Richer course and content;
• Data and analytics;

• Integration, extension, and management; and
• Course upgrading

Below are the top five items the Blackboard team has selected to highlight for your information. Read the full 3900.65 release notes.

Drag and drop desktop folders to upload to the Course Content page

Efficiency is key for instructors when creating course content. To assist with this, we’ve added a drag and drop support for uploading folders with files to the Course Content page. Instructors may drag and drop a folder from their computer to the Course Content page. If an instructor drags and drops more than 25 files at the same time, a warning message appears. This message doesn’t restrict the upload, but it informs the user that it may take a few minutes to complete. During the upload process, the instructor can cancel at any time. If the upload is canceled, the files are deleted.

Instructor’s notes on Student Overview

Teaching many courses is challenging. Keeping track of student details can be even harder. To help, we’ve created a dedicated space for instructors to take notes about students in each course. These notes are private. Only instructors, administrators, and higher roles can access them. To access the notes, instructors may select the Notes tab on the Student Overview page. From there, an instructor can add notes and review any other notes for a student in that course. They can also review notes added by other instructors in the same course. The text editor for notes includes basic formatting options such as bold, italics, colours, styles and font size. The most recent notes appear at the top of the list.

These notes have many possible uses:

• Tracking the evolution of a student’s progress over time;
• Noting agreements with a student, such as extensions on assignments or meeting times;
• Noting students with behavioural issues or a history of academic dishonesty; and/or
• Recording considerations for grading, such as student athletes.

Key considerations:

• Each note includes the author’s name and a timestamp with its creation date.
• If a note is edited, a separate timestamp for the latest edition is added. This helps instructors keep track of changes.
• Authors can edit and delete their own notes.
• Instructors in the course cannot edit or delete another instructor’s notes.
• Instructors, teaching assistants, facilitators, and grader roles can view all notes in their course and create, edit, and delete self-authored notes.
• Administrators may delete any note.
• Administrators may also assign the privilege to delete notes to other roles.
• An administrator can grant view only privileges. 

Question banks – Reuse Questions option

Aside from course content, test questions are some of the most valuable resources in a course. Instructors invest significant time and effort creating and refining banks of test questions. Instructors use these banks to easily reuse questions across various assessments. Now instructors can copy questions between question banks. To copy a question, an instructor can select the new Reuse Questions option. Additionally, instructors can copy questions from existing assessments directly into their question banks. This process makes it easier to build and expand question libraries.

Hotspot question zoom in/out

When assessing a student’s knowledge of visual content, the hotspot question type is a popular choice. To further enhance this question type, we have added two new features: Zoom In/Out and Full-Screen view. These controls enable instructors to define hotspots more precisely. These new controls are also accessible using convenient keyboard shortcuts.

Improved conversion for Discussion Forums and Threads

Discussion Forums in the Original Course View are an essential feature. Instructors often create discussion prompts as threads within a forum. Students respond by creating a thread or replying to existing threads in the forum. In other cases, Discussion Forums serve as containers. Instructors create a thread for each discussion prompt within the forum. Students respond to the discussion prompt by replying to the thread. To better support each of these use cases, we have updated our conversion process. Now, when the “allow members to create new threads” setting is selected, the Discussion Forum converts to a Discussion in the Ultra Course View. If this setting is not selected, the Discussion Forum will become a folder in the Ultra Course View. All threads within the forum convert to Discussions inside the folder. 

The April 2023 – 3900.62 release is robust with features in five areas:

• Assessment and grading;
• Richer course and content;

• Data and analytics;
• Integration, extension and management; and
• Course upgrading.

Below are the top five items the Blackboard team has selected to highlight for your information. Read the full 3900.62 release notes.

Multiple grading schemas: Add, edit, copy

In the past, Ultra courses allowed only one grading schema per course. Now instructors can add, copy and edit up to 100 grading schemas per course. Items copied from other courses will keep their grading schemas. When copying, any configured schemas copy even if not aligned to gradable items. Instructors can now choose the best grading schema for each assessment in a course.

Gradable Items View usability improvements

It’s important for the gradebook to support efficient workflows. We’ve made several improvements to improve the Gradable Items View:

• Instructors can now sort the records of any column on this page. Sorting helps instructors more easily find the desired information. For example, instructors may sort on Grading Status to locate assessments that need grading.

• Selecting the assessment name now navigates the instructor to the selected assessment.
• Selecting ‘# to grade’ now navigates to a Needs Grading filtered Submissions page. This provides instructors with quick entry into the grading process.
• The new Post column provides instructors with status information for an assessment. This also simplifies the action to post all grades for the assessment.

Course content title search

It’s sometimes difficult to remember the location of a course item. In the past, locating an item was a time-intensive task and unintuitive. Searching for the item would involve opening every folder or learning module to find the item.

You can now search course content titles to find these items on the course content page. The course search icon, a magnifying glass, is easy to find at the top of the course content page. When a user types a few letters, the course search function displays a list of matching items by title. A user may expand the search results to view more information related to the course item(s).

Discussion navigation improvements

Instructors often review various aspects of course discussions to assess and engage students. To improve navigation and increase visibility, we have introduced a new tab navigation:

• Discussion
• Student Activity

• Grading & Participation

Course Activity Report accessibility improvements

We commit to providing accessible and inclusive solutions for all users. Many users navigate Ultra using assistive technologies. To better support instructors using assistive technology, we have made several accessibility improvements to the Course Activity Report:

• The description of the Course Activity Report includes a Learn more link. Now the screen reader states this link, directing the instructor to the related Help documentation.
• Instructors can sort data on any column. Now screen readers indicate if column sorting is in ascending or descending order.

• Instructors can select many students to send messages. Now screen readers state the number of students selected.
• Screen readers now state when an instructor selects or deselects all students.
• In medium and small screens some options of the Course Activity Report combine in a single drop-down menu. Now screen readers state that the three-dot menu contains more options.

On March 4, Blackboard was updated with Release 3900.60 with features in six areas: 

• Assessment and grading;
• Data and analytics;
• Mobile app;
• Integration, extension and management;
• Communication and social engagement; and
• Course upgrading.

Below are the top five items the Blackboard team has selected to highlight for your information. Read the full 3900.60 release notes.

Improved attempt switching when grading student submissions with multiple attempts

Multiple-attempt assessments can be more complicated for instructors because there are more submissions. To switch between attempts for a student in the past, an instructor would have to close an attempt then select a different attempt. This wasn’t intuitive and required extra clicks. Now instructors can navigate directly between a student’s attempts. If a student has multiple attempts for an assessment, an instructor will see an option to switch attempts. This is more efficient. When the instructor clicks a student name in the Submissions list, the most recent submitted attempt will be loaded. 

The attempt selector displays information to help instructors select the desired attempt: 

• Attempt number 
• Submission time stamp 

• File size 
• Grade (if graded) 
• Late indicator (if applicable) 

Course activity report table enhancements

The course activity page helps instructors understand students’ performance. With this information, instructors can: 

• Identify struggling or high performing students based on their grade, hours in course, or days of inactivity. 
• Message students who have a low grade and/or have not accessed the course recently. 
• Receive alerts when a student has not accessed their course in a while or if a student’s grade has dropped.

With this update, we have made the following improvements:
 
New Table – Updated to be more consistent with other features. Those who use progress tracking will find the feel of the new table should be familiar. The new table makes it easier to select and message students. 
 
New Days of Inactivity column – the number of days since a student last accessed your course. Instructors can use this information to identify students that might be falling behind. 
 
Access Student Overview – click or tap a student’s name to see their grades, progress, and activity over the weeks. Instructors can use the Student Overview to get a full picture of a student’s performance and engagement in a course.

Sorting on overall grade column in the Gradebook student list view

Instructors need sorting controls in the Gradebook. These sorting options are helpful for organizing the Gradebook data for various contexts: 

• identifying students with grades at a grade boundary
• ordering students from highest to lowest grade, or vice versa

Now instructors can sort the Gradebook Students list view on the Overall Grade column. Any sorting applied yields a temporary change to the sort order of all columns.

Reschedule announcements 

Instructors have not had the ability to reschedule announcements. If the show on and hide after date fields were set for the future, a pop-up window would not generate. Instructors prefer a pop-up window because it helps students see the announcement. If there is no pop-up, a student may not know there is an announcement for them to view.

Some instructors were recreating announcements from scratch to generate these pop-ups. With this update, instructors can now reschedule announcements without having to recreate them. They can do this by changing the show on and hide after fields to a future date.

When users first enter a course, the rescheduled announcement will trigger a pop-up.

Discussions – Deactivate post activity 

Before this release, the only way to prevent posts in a discussion was by defining a due date. Instructors now have a checkbox option in the Discussion Settings panel. When checked, participants cannot edit or delete posts in a discussion.

On Feb. 3, Blackboard was updated with Release 3900.58 with features in five areas: 

• Assessment and grading;

• Data and analytics;
• Groups;
• Mobile app; and
• Integration, extension and management.

Below are the top five items the Blackboard team has selected to highlight for your information. Read the full 3900.58 release notes.

Exemptions

There are times that instructors need to exempt students from assessments or activities in the course. Now instructors can provide exemptions. Students can view exempted items. A student is not expected to complete an exempted task. When exempted, a student’s overall calculation will adjust for them. The overall points possible or weighting for a student with exemptions may change compared to other students. 

Instructors may exempt any gradebook item in two ways: 

• From the submission list view, select the ellipsis menu of a student and choose to add or edit the exemption. 
• From the student detail view, select the ellipsis menu of the item and choose to add or edit the exemption.

When exempting an item, the item will not be: 

• included in the overall grade calculation;
• marked late for students who do not make a submission; or 
• assigned an automatic zero.

Students can still supply submissions for exempted items. Instructors can grade and provide feedback for these submissions.

Extra credit questions in assessments

There are times when instructors allow students to overachieve on an assessment. Some instructors may allow students to earn back points lost on other assessments or activities.

Now instructors can assign one or more questions as extra credit in an assessment. A correct answer results in adding the extra credit question points to the points earned for the assessment. Students are not penalized for incorrect answers to an extra credit question. In other words, points are not deducted because the question is excluded from the assessment’s possible points. If a student answers extra credit questions correctly, it may be possible for the student to earn a score greater than 100 per cent on the assessment.

Students can discern how many extra credit points are available on the assessment. While students are taking an assessment, they can identify questions designated as extra credit. Students can also filter the test to find extra credit questions if present.

Hotspot question

Instructors may want to assess a student’s knowledge of visual content. The hotspot question type is popular for this type of assessment. This question type is also good for reducing the potential of cueing or guessing.

Hotspot questions present an image without any answer options for students to choose. Students must mark a certain area of the image that is within the area the instructor defined as correct.

Building on the initial hotspot question introduced in the 3900.52.0 release, we’re adding two enhancements to this question type:

• A new polygon shape selector can be used to draw more complex shapes.
• Improved keyboard controls. Instructors can now create and place new hotspot shapes on the image canvas directly via the keyboard.

In Original Course View, instructors can only create hotspot questions using a mouse. In the Ultra Course View, instructors can create the hotspot question using a mouse or keyboard. Students may answer hotspot questions via a mouse or keyboard.

Show course group members

Instructors and students need to see group memberships. In the past, there wasn’t an obvious way for instructors and students to see the members in a group.

From the Course Groups page, users may expand a group set to see a list of groups. Now each group has a Show Members option. Group members are listed alphanumerically in a panel. Users may search for a specific group member. A future release will provide profile cards and options for messaging group members from the search results.

Note: Students see only the groups and members for groups where they have membership.

Progress tracking: Ally alternative format views count towards progress

An accurate representation of course progress is key for both instructors and students. With this latest addition, any Ally alternative format accessed by a student will reflect in their presented course progress.

Students will: 

• see the progress indicator updated to “started” as they download an alternative format using Ally.
• be able to mark an item as complete after accessing any alternative format.

Instructors will see the progress made by each one of their students based on access to the original file or an alternative format.

On Jan. 12, Blackboard was updated with Release 3900.56 with features in five areas: 

• Assessment and grading;
• Richer course and content design;
• Mobile app;
• Integration, extension and management; and
• Course upgrading.

Below are the top five items the Blackboard team has selected to highlight for your information. Read the full 3900.56 release notes.

Essay question model answer

Instructors want to ensure that they grade students’ work fairly and consistently. This can be especially challenging when evaluating student responses to essay questions. Instructors like to have a reference while grading. Now instructors can include a model answer for essay questions. Instructors and graders can see this when grading. 

Students can see the model answer when reviewing their results if the test is configured to show correct answers. Students don’t see the model answer when they take a test.

Test question and page randomization

Instructors randomize test questions to improve academic integrity. In the past, instructors couldn’t randomize questions if the test contained text blocks, files, or images.

Now instructors can enable randomization when the test has text blocks, files or images. The non-question elements are locked in place. The test randomizes questions between those non-question elements.

Instructors can also randomize questions in a test that contains page breaks. Questions randomize within their assigned page. If a page contains non-question elements, the questions randomize between those elements.

When there are pages for the test, instructors can also randomize page order. If instructors randomize the page order, they can also lock the first page into position. This is useful when the first page is a cover page or contains test instructions.

Progress tracking: Status and filters for group submissions

Instructors need clear information about the status of group progress on an assessment. In the past, the submission view of assessments and discussions included two status columns:

• Student status
• Grading status

Now we also show both in the group submission page. This gives instructors greater clarity into group work status. We also separated the filter to allow compound filtering of student and grading statuses. The default filter shows everything. The filter resets every time an instructor accesses the submission view.

Improvements to messages recipient types by course role

In the past an all course members recipient type appeared for all course users. Students could send messages to all course users, on accident or on purpose.

Now students can only send messages to:

• all instructors
• selected course members

Instructors can send messages to:

• all course members
• all instructors
• all students
• selected course members

Additional improvements to unsupported text colour removal

The Original Course View allows instructors to choose any colour for text. This content may be difficult to read or not accessible. Ultra Course View has a curated set of text colours to ensure readability: black, gray, purple, blue and green. During conversion, we remove unsupported text colours. This text becomes black.

This release adds several areas where text colours are corrected for readability:

• Journals
•  Groups within group sets
•  Tests

We remove unsupported text colours during conversion from the following:

• Announcements
• Discussions
• Assignments
• Documents
• Journals
• Groups and Group Sets
• Tests and Question Types

September 2022 highlights

The current student and instructor Blackboard apps (iOS and Android) will end Sept. 30. We encourage faculty to download the NEW Blackboard unified app to replace the older versions.

August 2022 highlights

• Rubrics can now be copied between courses. (Original and Ultra)
• Question banks can now be sorted in Ultra. (Ultra only)
• Discussion replies are available on individual discussion grading pages. (Ultra only)
• Summary list of annotations for inline grading now available. (Original and Ultra)
• Easier access for students to assignment and assessment feedback. (Original and Ultra)
• Microsoft Immersive Reader now added to Ally. (Original and Ultra)
• Display name choice added including preferred name and pronouns. (Original and Ultra)

July 2022 highlights

• Question bank updates! Instructors can now create new, empty question banks in their Ultra courses, view, and search for questions within a question bank, and add, edit, and delete all aspects of a question within new and existing question banks. (Original and Ultra)
• Due date exceptions. Now instructors may accommodate special circumstances by also allowing due date exceptions (Original and Ultra)
• Auto save enhancements for students. There work is auto saved every two seconds when using a content editor tool (Original and Ultra)
• Better cloud integration added for Microsoft. (Original and Ultra)
• Changes to Delete Student Preview mode data. Deletion now includes data removal from the roster, gradebook, gradebook filter, messages, messages recipient, discussions, journals, and conversations. (Original and Ultra)
• Microsoft Teams integration added to Ultra. (Ultra only)
• New unified Blackboard app – replacing the individual student and faculty apps. (Original and Ultra)
• File upload indicator added. An upload animation added when files are uploaded through assignment submission, as a content item, a discussion board posting and a SCORM package.

May 2022 highlights

• Undo and redo in Bb Annotate added. (Original and Ultra)
• New Test Question filtering added! “The question filter supports common test taking strategies. For example, students may complete questions they know first and skip harder ones. The filter enables students to quickly return to skipped questions. Students may also use the filter to find essay questions. If a student submits a test with unanswered questions, a warning will alert the student. The alert shows the number of unanswered questions. The student may choose to submit the test or keep working. If the student chooses to keep working, the unanswered questions filter auto applies. The unanswered questions display automatically. In response to student feedback, students may now choose to hide the timer in timed tests. This may help to reduce pressure and anxiety during assessments. When students hide the timer, the timer icon stays visible. Students may view the remaining time as needed”. (Original and Ultra)
• Session time-out warning added which appears after a period of three hours. This is tool dependent. (Original and Ultra)
• The Content Editor in Original courses allows users to add image attributes, but now it also supports adding the “title” attribute. (Original and Ultra)