Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Display Pronouns and Pronunciation in Original Course View - 3900.44
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Original Experience
Original Course View
Impact: All users
The November 3900.26 and February 3900.32 releases included these features for Ultra Course View. This release adds full support for Original Course View. It also adds limited capabilities for Original Experience without Base Navigation enabled.
This release continues to deliver on planned diversity and inclusion improvements. Institutions can allow users to express their personal pronouns. This fosters greater respect among students and with faculty.
Institutions can also enable name pronunciation. Users can add text guidance to describe the pronunciation of their names for other users. Users can record the pronunciation of their names. The recording tool counts down to when the recording begins. The recording may be up to 20 seconds long. For accessibility reasons, text guidance must be allowed if name recording is enabled. Recordings are compressed and included in storage use calculations.
If a user has pronoun or pronunciation information, it is displayed on a profile card. Selecting any avatar icon in Original Course View displays the profile card. All avatars are selectable in user lists, course tools, and grading workflows.
Image 1. Pronouns and pronunciation for a student when the instructor views an assignment submission.
Image 2. Pronouns and pronunciation in discussion.
Base Navigation is required for the following features:
- Administrator can enable pronunciation recording
- Administrator can configure pronoun options for user choice
- Users can select their own pronouns
- Users can create or play back pronunciation recordings
All deployments support the following, including Original Experience:
- Display pronouns and pronunciations in Original Course View
- Integrate pronoun and pronunciation guidance text from a user information system
- Administrators can manually set user pronouns and pronunciation guidance text
- Users can manually set pronunciation guidance text
Known issue in Safari browsers: There is a known issue creating or playing pronunciation recordings in Safari. The issue is because of a mismatch of compression codecs that Safari supports.
For administrators: Manage these features in Administrator Panel > Customize User Information. You may add pronouns and pronunciation guidance text through data integration. This includes REST, flat file, LIS, XML, and IMS methods.