Updates for Blackboard Learn: what it means for you

Blackboard will be upgraded to the Q4 2017 release on May 20, 2018.
During the upgrade, Blackboard will be unavailable beginning at 3:30 am on May 20th and may be unavailable for up to 20 hours. 

The new Q4 2017 release will provide new features and enhancements that may simplify some of your everyday tasks, offer a better mobile experience, and improve accessibility, assessment and grading. Here are some of the top highlights of this new version:

• Improved mobile experience. When accessing Learn on your mobile device, look for the new hamburger icon that makes navigating BbLearn even easier; plus, many tools are now mobile-friendly including blogs, journals and discussion boards.
• More efficient Grade Center cleanup. You can now delete multiple gradebook columns at once making managing the gradebook easier.
• Discussion board “Replies to me.” Keeping up with discussion posts is simpler with unread replies to your own posts called out.
• Collaborate for groups. Increase student group engagement by offering web conferencing tools. Synchronous collaboration, content sharing and whiteboarding are sure to get your students involved.

Here are a more resources you may find useful:

• Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series (BITS): Blackboard hosts BITS webinars to share strategies and best practices for increasing educator efficiency and improving learning outcomes. You can register for live webinars or watch recordings of past events.
• Blackboard Community Educator Group: Connect with other educators across the world that are using Blackboard through Blackboard’s Community Site.
• Blackboard Help Site: Find detailed documentation on all the features and functionality in Learn on Blackboard’s Help Site.

Blackboard Upgrade to Service Pack 14 (SP14) - May 21st!

Blackboard will be upgraded to Service Pack 14 on May 21^st.  Blackboard will be unavailable during this upgrade beginning at 8:00 PM on Wednesday, May 21^st with an expected completion time of 1:00 PM on Thursday, May 22^nd.  

New Blackboard Features Available with SP14:  Achievements, SafeAssign and Grade Center Improvements

Achievements
The Achievements tool allows instructors to designate criteria for issuing rewards to students in the form of both Badges and Certificates. Students can see which rewards they’ve earned and what is required of them to receive additional rewards. Students are able to publish badges to the Mozilla Open Backpack, transporting evidence of their learning outside of Blackboard.

For more information on Achievements, click here.

SafeAssign (Turnitin will not be available as of Summer 2014)
SafeAssign, which replaces Turnitin, is a plagiarism prevention service offered by Blackboard. This service helps instructors prevent plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in student papers. In addition to acting as a plagiarism deterrent, it also includes features designed to aid in educating students about plagiarism and the importance of proper attribution of any borrowed content.

For more information on SafeAssign and how it compares to Turnitin, click here.

Grade Center Improvements
Several improvements have been made to grading and the Grade Center:

• My Grades Ordering & Design Update – The page provides a new default option for the order in which grades are displayed.
• Instructor can define the “Score Attempts Using” setting from the “Options” page for tools (assignments, tests) that allow multiple attempts – This makes it easier to select the scoring option on an assignment that has multiple attempts. This is a workflow improvement to ensure that instructors know about and can easily find this setting for tools that support multiple attempts.
• Test total points adjustment – This enhancement addresses several related needs from instructors, all revolving around the total points possible for tests, and needing to adjust the total points possible.
• Grading Schemas greater than 100% – There is now an enhancement to allow for schema percentages to be greater than 100%.

For more information on the Grade Center updates, click here.

New Blackboard Feature of the Week: Inline Assignment Grading and Retention Center

Inline Grading for Assignments

Previously, instructors had to download student-submitted files in order to view, grade or edit assignments. Now, instructors can view, comment on, and grade student-submitted assignment files without leaving the Grade Assignment page.

Additionally, annotation tools are now available via the inline viewer, enabling instructors to provide feedback (e.g. comments, highlights, and annotations) directly on the document. Supported document types that can be graded this way are Word (.doc, .docx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), and PDF (.pdf). Once you have saved your feedback, you can download the original (unmarked) assignment file or a marked up version in PDF format. If a student submits an assignment via the Assignment Manager that is not in one of the aforementioned formats, you will have to download their submission and view it using the native application as you did before.

Note:  If you work on grading a student’s assignment for more than 30 minutes without saving, you may receive the following error message and be returned to the Grade Center:

“The requested page could not be displayed. Please try again. If this continues, please contact your system administrator for assistance.”

Your input will be saved and you can resume grading the assignment.

For more information on Inline Grading, click here.

---

Retention Center

The Retention Center, which replaces the Early Warning System, helps instructors identify which students are at risk of failing a course. Based on both pre-configured and customized rules, students’ engagement and participation are visually displayed, alerting instructors to which students are at risk. From the Retention Center, instructors can communicate with struggling students and help them take immediate action for improvement. The Retention Center is on by default and visible in the "My Blackboard" menu. It is also accessible in the Evaluation section of your course Control Panel. The information in the Retention Center is for instructors only and is not visible to students.

For more information on the Retention Center, click here.

For video on Getting Started with the Retention Center, click here.

For further details and videos on the new Blackboard 9.1 SP13 interface and features, please visit What's New for Faculty - Blackboard 9.1 SP13. Here you will find a list of new features and links related to this new service pack. Please visit this site and get acquainted with the new features available this fall semester.

Update: Bb Upgrade Issues

eLearning Services has been working with Blackboard to rectify the problems we have encountered since the upgrade to Service Pack 13 (SP13).

Resolved: Problem opening and deleting Discussion Board threads
Opening discussion threads can take up to 3 minutes, and deleting discussion threads take a VERY long time and may result in error messages.

Status:  This issue has been resolved. 

Issue:  Interface color scheme is not consistent
You will notice that the color scheme on various Blackboard pages are not consistent (some banners are blue and others are gray, some text is black, other text is white).

Update:  We have updated most of the interface colors, but have a few places where there is light colored text on a light colored background, which makes it impossible for the end user to read. We have found unreadable text in the inner menu pages of the Roster Manager, and Insert/Edit image and Insert/Edit Media on the Content Editor tool bar. If you identify pages that have unreadable text, please email us so that we can be sure these pages are corrected.

Status:  We are working with Blackboard to resolve this issue.

New Issue:  Browser Inconsistencies
We are finding that some features in Blackboard operate inconsistently in different web browsers.  For example, cut and paste (Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V) functions work differently in Firefox version 17 than in Firefox version 22 and 23. 

Solution/Workaround:  For the time being, Google Chrome has tested to be the most stable web browser for the current version of Blackboard. We suggest you use the Chrome browser until we have more stable information on the various versions of Firefox. You can download the Chrome web browser here.        

Note:  Internet Explorer is still NOT recommended and will not be supported.

New Issue:  Calendar Does not Load
We have noticed that the calendar does not load for some users. This problem is directly related to the number of courses to be loaded on the calendar. For those people who only have a few courses, the calendar will load with no problem. For those people who have “lots” of courses, the calendar will either take a long time to load or does not load at all.

Status:  We are working with Blackboard to resolve this issue.

Thank you for your patience as we work through these issues.

Blackboard Upgrade and Maintenance

The college’s Blackboard system will be upgraded to Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 13 (SP13) beginning Thursday, August 15th at 10:00 PM. 

Blackboard will be completely unavailable from Thursday, August 15th at 10:00 PM until Saturday, August 17th at 11:00 PM.  

WHAT'S NEW IN Bb 9.1 SP13?

Bb 9.1 SP13 contains several new and exciting updates that should hopefully make your lives a little easier. Please see below for a list of the new features available with SP13 and look for our “New Feature of the Week” emails that will highlight each feature.

Feature enhancements include:

• Verify Student Activity or Lack of Activity During a Test
• All Questions Are Now Retained in Exported and Imported Tests
• Redesigned Discussion Interface
• Calendar
• Retention Center
• Inline Assignment Grading
• Test Enhancements
• Math Formula Editing
• Quick Links Tool
• Mobile Support for Mashups
• Video Everywhere
• Notifications

For more information and videos on the new Blackboard 9.1 SP13 interface and features, please see What's New for Faculty - Blackboard 9.1 SP13 .

'EMERGENCY' Blackboard Upgrade **December 20 - 22, 2012**

**Attention all Faculty and Staff using Blackboard**

Blackboard will undergo an ‘emergency’ upgrade to Service Pack 9 (SP9) to repair a problem with the course copy function.  Blackboard will be unavailable starting on Thursday, December 20th at 2:30 am until Saturday, December 22nd at 12:00 pm.

Until further notice, please do the following when setting up your Bb course site:

1. Rather than copy individual items between courses,   do a full course copy (from the control panel) and move/delete items as necessary.  Note: you should only do a full course copy once per course or you may create duplicate items and gradebook columns.  For instructions on full course copy, visit:  http://www.pgcconline.com/technicalSupport/CourseCopyInstructions/
2. Wait to receive the course copy confirmation email before making any changes to the course.
3. If you have not received a course copy confirmation email within 1 hour, please contact eLearning.  DO NOT copy the course again.

Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this issue.  We will provide an update once the upgrade is complete.