New Features Coming to Blackboard in Winter 2015
Software upgrade is part of migration to managed hosting
As announced earlier this week, Winter and Spring 2015 courses will be hosted by Blackboard directly instead of by DoIT. As part of this change, we will also be upgrading to the Spring 2014 version of the software (Bb discontinued numbering their service pack releases, but we are essentially operating now with their Fall 2013 version). New features will include the following:
- Integrated SafeAssign
- SafeAssign will be fully integrated with the Assignment creation and grading workflow, allowing you to use embedded feedback tools and rubrics.
- Student Preview
- While in Student Preview mode you can interact with the course as if you were a student, including taking quizzes/tests, submitting assignments, posting to discussions, etc.
- Anonymous & Delegated Grading
- Whenever you want to add another layer of fairness and impartiality to your grading, you can use the anonymous grading feature. Using grades and feedback from more than one grader via delegated grading helps to promote reliability and remove bias. These tools can be used together or separately.
- Achievements for Competency Based Learning
- You can use the achievements tool to create opportunities for students to earn recognition in the form of badges or certificates for certain work and other competency based learning.
- Course Messages Updates
- Anyone enrolled in a course can now receive a notification that they have new course messages from the Updates area in My Blackboard, in the What's New module on both institutional and course module pages, and from email.
- Grading Improvements
- Blackboard redesigned the My Grades page so students can sort and display their grades by what has been graded, what is upcoming, and what has been submitted, but is not yet graded.
- When you create an assessment or assignment with multiple attempts, you can now specify how Blackboard should calculate the grades (e.g., use the last graded attempt, use the highest grade, average all attempts, etc.). Previously, you would have to edit the grade center column after creating the activity.
- You can manually override the total points possible for a test while maintaining the integrity of the scoring.
- Grading Schemas can now have values greater than 100%
- Blackboard will also offer a mobile grading app, BbGrader, for iPad (iOS 7, iOS 8).
Join the DoIT group to get the latest updates on the migration to hosting, plus information on these new tools, other resources, and much more!
- Test Access Log
- This tool shows a list of every interaction a students engaged in when taking a test. If a student claims to have started a test, the log will show the time the test was started. If a network or internet disruption occurred during the test for example, the log would show an unusual gap in the time.
- Retention Center
- Discover which students in your course are at risk. Based on preconfigured rules and rules you create, students’ engagement and participation are visually displayed in the Retention Center, quickly alerting you to potential risk. You can communicate with struggling students and help them take immediate action for improvement.
- Test Availability Exceptions
- Use exceptions to provide an accommodation to a disabled student, or provide accommodations for technology and language differences. Select one student, several students, or groups of students.
- Test Feedback Options
- By setting up rules, you can set the release of progressive feedback to keep test results secure and prevent cheating. Students also see their submitted answers marked as correct or incorrect and any feedback you provided.
- Date Management
- Use this tool to easily adjust all content and tool dates in your course. You can choose to adjust dates automatically or individually based on the course’s starting date, the term information, or by number of days when you know exactly how many days you want to adjust dates by.
- Group Management
- Easily see which students are in which groups, including which students are not in any groups. Choose and manage membership for groups sets, and create Grade Center smart views for one or more groups on the All Groups page.
Have a question about using any of these tools? Please stop by our walk-in support clinics on Wednesdays, in person or virtually.
Retired tools in Blackboard include:
- Direct uploads of video and audio files.
- The hosted environment of Blackboard is not designed to support streaming media. Instructors can still upload videos to YouTube and embed that content as unlisted videos, or upload multimedia to Box and link to that content.
- SafeAssignments.
- Blackboard internal plagiarism checking tool will be now fully integrated with the regular Assignment workflow.
- Native collaboration tools (e.g., Virtual Classroom).
- These tools were built on an archaic system and are no longer supported by the vendor. Bb Collaborate is a full suite of web conference tools available in all courses.
Need support to migrate your multimedia or conferencing resources? Please contact instructional technology staff to discuss your options!
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Posted: October 3, 2014, 5:58 AM
