Richer Course and Content Design
Inline file rendering of files in Course Content, Folders, and Learning Modules – 3900.44
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Content creation and presentation are key for designing engaging courses. Various files will now render inline in Course Content, folders, and learning modules. Instructors can set the behavior of these files for users:
- view and download (default)
- view only
- download only
Image 1. Instructor view - Edit File Options
Supported file types:
| Adobe Acrobat Documents (PDF) | Microsoft Word (DOC, DOCX) | Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX) |
| Microsoft Excel (XLS, XLSX. XLST, CVS, TSV) | OpenOffice Documents (ODS, ODT, ODP) | Standard text file (txt) |
Non-supported file types will always be downloadable for users.
For the file types: .xlsx, .xls, .xlst, .csv, and .tsv, inline viewing is only supported for files up to 10 Mb in size. Files over 10 Mb are downloadable only.
Some image, video, and audio file types will now open in a large panel. Users can view or play back media in the browser:
Images:
| JPEG | GIF | PNG |
Audio:
| m4a | mpeg | mp3 | ogg |
| mp4 | flac | wav |
Video:
| mp4 |
Image 2. Several types of files in Course Content
Image 3. Audio recording - inline display and playback
Image 4. Document inline display
Image 5. Image inline display
Image 6. Presentation inline display
Image 7. Video inline display and playback
For administrators:
- Inline rendering applies to new and existing files in the course. Existing files will be set to ‘view inline and download’ by default. Instructors can change the files to 'view only' or 'download only' if preferred.
- We convert supported content types to PDF on demand when a user accesses them. This conversion provides an improved user experience. We cache these files for 30 days. Files converted to PDF as part of this feature do not count towards your storage quota.
- Hyperlinks in files are disabled.
- Inline file rendering is not available for Gov Cloud clients.