Release Notes for Learn SaaS - 2023
Learn SaaS release 3900.65.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.65.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 11 April 2023 | Release to Production: Thursday, 4 May 2023
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.65.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.65.0-rel.17+fc3b8f5 to Production servers to take place on 18 May 2023.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
May 2023 – 3900.65 Release
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
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- Grading attempt selector improvements
- Question Banks - Reuse Questions option
- Add Exemptions via the gradebook grid view
- Rubrics improvements
- Send Messages from the Submission page
- Remove category assignment requirement when editing LTI items via the gradebook
- Hotspot question zoom in / out
- Drag and drop desktop folders to upload to the Course Content page
- Instructor’s Notes on Student Overview
- Improved conversion for Flickr Mashups
- Improved conversion for Discussion Forums and Threads
Instructors and students:
All users:
Administrators:
Assessment and Grading
Grading attempt selector improvements – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Multiple attempt assessments can be a beneficial assessment option. Multiple attempts allow students to learn from their mistakes. It may also help students improve their understanding of the material.
At the same time, managing multiple submissions introduces some complexity for instructors. To help, we have added an attempt selector on the grading page. By default, the grading page displays the most appropriate attempt based on the “grade attempts” setting:
Table 1. Attempt displayed based on Grade Attempt Setting and Grading Status
| Grade Attempts setting | Grading completion status | Default attempt displayed |
|---|---|---|
| Last attempt with a grade | Any | Most recent attempt |
| First attempt with a grade | Any | Fist attempt |
| Attempt with the highest grade | All attempts are graded | Attempt with the highest grade |
| Attempt with the lowest grade | All attempts are graded | Attempt with the lowest grade |
| Average of all attempts | All attempts are graded | Most recent attempt |
| Attempt with the highest grade | There are ungraded attempts | Oldest ungraded attempt |
| Attempt with the lowest grade | There are ungraded attempts | Oldest ungraded attempt |
| Average of all attempts | There are ungraded attempts | Oldest ungraded attempt |
This allows instructors to quickly evaluate and grade student work. When the grade calculation method requires additional grading tasks, the instructor is taken to that task. If not, the most appropriate graded attempt is displayed.
Image 1. Instructor view of the attempt selector on the grading page
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Question Banks - Reuse Questions option– 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
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.
Image 1. Instructor view of the Reuse Questions option in the drop-down menu when working in a question bank
Image 2. Instructor selects four questions from another question bank and chooses to copy them into the current bank
Image 3. Instructor receives a notification that the four questions successfully copied
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Prevent backtracking in tests with page breaks – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Effective assessment settings are essential for accommodating various instructional scenarios. For example, instructors can insert page breaks into an assessment to create sections. Now instructors may prevent backtracking in paged tests. This option ensures that students progress through the pages of an assessment in a predetermined sequence. This option will be helpful when upcoming questions provide hints or reveal answers to questions on previous pages.
Instructors can activate this setting in assessments that contain questions.
Image 1. Assessment Settings panel with prohibit backtracking for a test using page breaks
Once a student answers the question on a page and proceeds to the next page, the student cannot go back. If a student skips a question, an alert informs the student that they cannot go back to the question on the previous page.
Image 2. Student view of a paged assessment with backtracking prohibited
Image 3. Alert if a student tries to skip a question
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Add Exemptions via the gradebook grid view – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors may need to excuse specific students from assessments or activities in a course. In the past, instructors could apply an exemption from the submissions page and student detail view. Now instructors can also access the option to exempt students from the gradebook grid view.
When an instructor exempts an assessment or activity:
- The exempted item is not factored into the Overall Grade calculation.
- The exempted item is not marked late for students who do not submit.
- The students with an exemption will not receive an automatic zero.
Students can still submit work for exempted items. Instructors can assess and provide feedback on these submissions for exempted items.
Image 1. Add or edit exemption from the gradebook grid view
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Rubrics improvements – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Rubrics play a critical role in the grading process for many educators. We've made significant enhancements to the rubric-based grading experience.
Performance level descriptions are now hidden by default. This change streamlines grading when instructors are familiar with the performance level requirements. Instructors can choose to display the performance descriptions if needed for grading.
Sometimes instructors change their minds when grading. Now it’s possible to deselect a performance level if choosing another level of performance isn’t appropriate. Criterion feedback is also collapsible, allowing for a more streamlined view of the grading panel.
Making Blackboard Learn inclusive and accessible is important to us, so we’ve improved keyboard navigation of rubrics. Navigate between rubric criteria with tab and use up/down arrows to select a performance level.
Image 1. Option to show criterion descriptions
Image 2. Option to collapse criterion feedback
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Send Messages from the Submission page – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
During an assessment, instructors may need to communicate with students. For example, an instructor may wish to send reminders to non-submitters. Or an instructor may want to notify students about their grades. To support this need, now instructors can message students from the Submissions page.
To get started, instructors can search or filter to find and select recipients. Then, select the "Send Message" button to open the messaging interface to craft the message.
We understand that student confidentiality is important. Thus, when an instructor selects more than one student as a recipient of a message, the recipients will be on BCC. This ensures that students’ identity and contact information remain confidential.
Image 1. Instructor view - Submission page filtered by “No Submission;” the instructor may select desired students to send a message
Image 2. Instructor view of the messaging page with selected recipients
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Remove category assignment requirement when editing LTI items via the gradebook – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors may need to adjust the due dates for third-party activities in their courses. In the past, when making such changes, instructors also had to assign these activities to a specific category within the gradebook.
Now instructors can edit gradebook columns for LTI-based activities without assigning them to a category. This change streamlines the process without forcing category selection.
Image 1. Instructor view of editing the grade column of a LTI item
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Hotspot question zoom in / out – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
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.
Image 1. Instructor view – Zoom In / Out and Full-Screen controls
Image 2. Instructor view – Full-Screen view
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Richer Course and Content
Control where Web Links open – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Opening links in a new window is generally considered best practice, especially for external websites. This avoids browser security features blocking content from loading. There may be situations when an instructor or course author prefers linked content to open in a panel in the Ultra course.
When content is hosted on the Learn environment or on the institution’s website, the content is less likely to be blocked. In this example, opening content in a panel in the Ultra course is a better experience for students.
We understand that instructors need to have control over this aspect of their course design. Now instructors may specify where linked content should open - in a panel in the Ultra course or a new window. This option gives instructors and authors greater flexibility in designing their course content. Opening content in a panel in the Ultra course can be particularly beneficial for content authored with tools like Articulate Storyline, Articulate Rise, Adobe Captivate, and Adobe Dreamweaver.
Image 1. Instructor view – Option to control where the web link opens; default is new window
Image 2. Student view – link opened in new window
Image 3. Student view – link opened in a panel in the Ultra course with banner with option to open content in a new window/tab
Some content will not display on a panel in the Ultra course. A banner appears warning the student that some content may not be displayed unless opened in a new window. The student can choose to open the content in a new window or close the banner.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Drag and drop desktop folders to upload to the Course Content page – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
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 does not 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.
Image 1. Locating folder on computer to drag and drop on the Course Content page
Image 2. Dragging folder from computer to Course Content page
Image 3. Dropped folder and files uploading to the Course Content page
Image 4. Folder added to the Course Content page
Image 5. Files inside folder displayed after being dragged and dropped on the Course Content page
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Symbol font removed in Original Course View – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Original Course View
Impact: All Users
Unicode is a standard encoding system that allows popular fonts to support characters across various languages. In the past, specialized mapped fonts were used, which replaced one character for another. However, both the author and viewer had to have the exact same font installed on their device, making communication difficult.
In the Original Course View Content Editor, the Symbol font is an example of a mapped font for Greek. Some browsers and operating systems no longer support the Symbol font. This can result in students seeing Latin characters when authoring and instructors seeing Greek ones when reading. This has caused confusion for instructors trying to grade student work.
To avoid this confusion, we removed the Symbol font from the Content Editor in Original Course View. Instead, users can choose other common fonts that support Greek characters. To type in Greek, add the Greek language and keyboard layout to your device's operation settings. This feature is supported in Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.
Existing content formatted to use the Symbol font will remain in that font if the browser supports it.
For administrators: This change is for all Original courses. There are no configurations needed.
Data & Analytics
Instructor’s Notes on Student Overview – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
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, colors, styles, and font size.
The most recent notes appear at the top of the list.
Image 1. An instructor adds a note using different formatting options
Image 2. Notes taken about a particular student by an instructor and a teaching assistant
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 behavioral issues or a history of academic dishonesty.
- 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.
Image 3. An administrator gives the delete notes privilege to a role in the administrator panel
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed. We recommend reviewing which roles are granted the ability to view, author, and delete notes to align to institutional policies.
Option to turn off “How Am I Doing?” Report for Students– 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Students, Instructors, Administrators
The “How am I Doing” report allows students to see how they perform in comparison to the class.
Certain institutions may prohibit the sharing of this information with students. To support institutions' preferences, administrators can now control the visibility of this report.
Image 1. An administrator toggles the “How Am I Doing?” report for students to “Off”
When report availability is set to "Off" the following changes occur for students:
- The pie chart icon in Grades tab in base navigation no longer appears.
- Prior notifications from the “How Am I Doing?” report are removed in the Activity Stream. No new notifications related to this report are sent.
- The “My grades and activity” section in the Activity Stream notifications settings panel is removed for students.
Image 2. When the “How am I doing?” report is available to students, the pie chart icon in the Grades tab of the base navigation is visible
Image 3. When “How am I doing?” is set to “Off,” the pie chart icon in the Grades tab of the base navigation is removed
Image 4. When the report is "On,” students receive Activity Stream notifications related to the “How am I doing?” report; students can access links to the report. When the report is not available, these options do not appear to students.
When the report is turned off, instructors and administrators also experience changes. The option to notify students related to the "How Am I Doing" report no longer display. Instructors will not be able to notify students based on these course alerts in the Course Activity report or Gradebook.
Administrators will no longer see options related to the report in the Notification Settings page.
- No Recent Activity
- Grade Low or at Risk
- Grade Dropped
- Low Class Activity
- Grade Increased
- Grade in Top 10%
- Class Activity in Top 10%
- Grade Below Threshold
Key considerations:
- It may take up to 15 minutes to hide all stream notifications after an administrator turns the report off.
- If an admin turns off the report and then turns it back on, prior data and notifications will reappear after several minutes.
For administrators: Administrators can find this setting on the Ultra Experience Management page in the Administrator Panel. The default setting is "on" to maintain consistency with existing behavior. This feature requires a cloud service update, which administrators can expect within a week of the 3900.65 release (on or before May 11).
Integration, Extension, and Management
Login As Permission Improvements - 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Impact: Administrators
In the February release, administrators gained the ability to impersonate end users. This is helpful for troubleshooting purposes. Now we are improving the permissions structure to offer better controls. Some of these improvements include: When using the institutional hierarchy, node administrators with login as permissions cannot impersonate users from a different node. No user can ever impersonate a full administrator (z) role.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn environments. The privilege “Administrator Panel (Users) -> Users -> Login As” can be assigned to system roles. These roles can be applied to system and node administrators.
Reduced email notifications when purging data sources – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Impact: Administrators
In the past, when an administrator purged data in the Data Sources page, they would receive an email for each deleted record. When purging hundreds or thousands of records, the administrator would receive an overwhelming number of emails.
To improve the user experience, administrators will now receive only one email when purging a Data Source. This change simplifies the email notification process and reduces the clutter in the administrator's inbox.
For administrators: This feature is available for Learn environments. There are no configurations needed.
REST APIs to read Goals alignments – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Administrators
Learn courses offer a unique opportunity to see how institutional objectives align with each other and how the objectives relate to internal or external goals. This information can be invaluable to educators and administrators who wish to measure the effectiveness of their curriculum and ensure that their goals are being met.
To make it even easier for institutions to access this important data, we are pleased to announce the release of our new Goal Alignments Public API. This API includes a set of GET endpoints that allow users to retrieve goal alignments data for their courses.
The endpoints included in this API cover two main use cases:
- retrieving all goal alignments from a course
- retrieving all alignments for a specific goal across all courses
By providing access to this data in a simple and easy-to-use format, we are empowering educators and administrators to make data-driven decisions. This helps to improve the overall effectiveness of our clients' curriculum.
For administrators: The REST integration user must have the privileges “Course/Organization > Goals Alignments, View” and “Administrator Panel (Tools and Utilities) > Goals” to make use of the new endpoints.
Personal information restricted in passwords – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Impact: All users allowed to reset their passwords in Learn
Some institutions use an identity provider, such as Azure Active Directory, to manage and authenticate users. Sometimes, user accounts are created in Learn. These users can set their own passwords. To bolster security, we are now restricting the use of personal information in user passwords.
Personal information includes fields such as first name, middle name, last name, username, and student ID. Users will now be unable to incorporate this information when creating a password. The system will notify users if they attempt to use profile information as part of their password.
Image 1. User is informed about not using profile information when changing a password
For administrators: This feature is always on, and it doesn’t require any configuration. Administrators should also avoid using personal information when setting a password for another user.
Toggle records between enabled and disabled states – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Administrators
Various record types have different states. For example, an enrollment can be unavailable. This allows instructors to continue to grade student work and submit a final grade even when the student can no longer access the course. An enrollment can also be set to disabled. In this state, the enrollment is locked and hidden from users. A student information system (SIS) might disable an enrollment when a student drops the course.
Previously, administrators had to rely on data integration processes to change a record’s enablement state. This could require processing a file through the integration framework.
Now administrators can toggle the enablement state in the administrator panel. They can modify user, course, organization, and enrollment records. This allows administrators to temporarily re-enable a course or user to access information. It can also allow a help desk representative to grant access to a user waiting on an institutional data process.
When a user first enables or disables a record in the user interface, they must accept a disclaimer. It must only be accepted one time. Manual record changes are captured in the system logs.
Image 1. Administrator manually disables a course
Image 2. Administrator re-enables an enrollment record
For administrators: By default, only a full System Administrator (role Z) can use this feature. There are 5 new privileges that can be configured to distribute this privilege to others at the user or node level. This allows granting access specifically to the types of records one should manage.
- Administrator Panel (Courses) > Courses > Edit > Enrollments > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Courses) > Courses > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Organizations) > Organizations > Edit > Enrollments > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Organizations) > Organizations > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Users) > Users > Enable/Disable
Course Upgrading
Improved conversion for Flickr Mashups – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
In the past, Flickr Mashups conversions resulted in unexpected outputs. The description of the mashup was not transferred correctly. Instead, the image metadata took its place. The link associated with the image directed users to the wrong page. This made it difficult to find the intended image.
Image 1. Flickr Mashup in Original Course View
To provide a better experience, we updated the conversion process of Flickr Mashups. The description of the Flickr Mashup is now transferred as expected. We also corrected the link issue so users go to the correct page.
Image 2. Flickr Mashup converted as a Web Link in Ultra Course View
Image 3. Web Link displaying the correct Flickr Image
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Improved conversion for Discussion Forums and Threads – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
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.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
