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Learn SaaS release 3900.28.0
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For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.28.0 version included below on this page.
Last release: 3900.28.0-rel.22+1a80aa0 to Production servers on 16 December 2021. Replaced by version 3900.30.0 on Production on 6 January 2022.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
Bb Annotations - Save preferences and settings: Delay for release to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, and transparency to our users, we’re delaying the Bb Annotations: Save preferences and settings release previously scheduled in tandem with version 3900.28.0 on December 2, 2021. This will now be included in the 3900.30.0 release to client Production sites on January 6, 2022.
Learn SaaS release 3900.28.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We're releasing an updated version of 3900.28.0 (full release number 3900.28.0-rel.11+732fc84) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, November 30, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the way the system handles an error produced while a document is uploaded again to the Annotation server, changed. Now the Annotation server provides a flag to let the system know when to upload a document again.
- In the Original Experience, when students tried to submit files in a group assessment, they got a UI red ribbon error reading “Failed to submit", but they could see the successfully submitted file after refreshing. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Update to client Production environments
We're releasing an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.27+c56b21e) to client Production servers on Thursday, November 25, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Experience, the announcements page wasn't loading in specific cases where announcements contained tables. The logic replacing tables for the text ‘Table with contents’ in the announcement's preview was causing an error and affected the whole announcements panel. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, when students tried to submit files in a group assessment, they got a UI red ribbon error reading 'Failed to submit', but they could see the submitted file after refreshing. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.28.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We're releasing an updated version of 3900.28.0 (full release number 3900.28.0-rel.8+671a810) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, November 23, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Experience, administrators who had access to all courses but weren't enrolled in a course weren't allowed to open or edit that course's banner. We fixed the issue and now, administrators can edit the course banner in any course, even if they aren't enrolled in it.
- In the Ultra Experience, the Course Faculty list feature has changed based on client feedback:
- When a system admin has set course messages to read-only, message links will no longer be displayed by instructor names for students.
- Also, the Faculty list will only show the teaching roles of instructor, facilitator, and any custom role with “Treat Users with this Role like Instructor” set true. It'll now exclude other non-teaching roles such as course builder or grader.
- In the Ultra Experience, the accommodations functionality was merged in release 3900.28.0, but the translation of its corresponding strings wasn't. We've fixed the issue and completed the string translation in the latest version.
- In the Ultra Experience, the announcements page wasn't loading in specific cases where announcements contained tables. The logic replacing tables for the text ‘Table with contents’ in the announcement's preview was causing an error and affected the whole announcements panel. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Update to client Production environments
We're releasing an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.24+b3048ed) to client Production servers on Thursday, November 18, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Experience, the Course Faculty list feature has changed based on client feedback:
- When a system admin has set course messages to read-only, message links will no longer be displayed by instructor names for students.
- Also, the Faculty list will only show the teaching roles of instructor, facilitator, and any custom role with “Treat Users with this Role like Instructor” set true. It'll now exclude other non-teaching roles such as course builder or grader.
- In the Ultra Experience, administrators who had access to all courses but weren't enrolled in a course, couldn't open or edit that course's banner. We fixed the issue and now, administrators can edit the course banner in any course, even if they aren't enrolled in it.
Learn SaaS release 3900.28.0: Release to client Test/Stage environments
We're releasing a new Learn version 3900.28.0 (full release number 3900.28.0-rel.5+d4503d3) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, November 16, 2021. The details on new features and updates will be published in the corresponding individual feature release notes.
Point-based and point-range rubrics - 3900.28.0
We are excited to add point-based and point-range rubrics to Learn Ultra courses. Point-based and point-range rubrics provide instructors the flexibility that is expected for a variety of grading procedures and use cases. Instructors may customize rubrics with different point scales to support various pedagogical approaches and instructional practices. Likewise, faculty may opt to use decimals, organize columns with points or points ranges ascending or descending, and utilize total points that sum up to 99,999.00.
With this addition, we continue to expand the capabilities of Learn Ultra and make the transition from Original Course View to Ultra Course View seamless. We've been careful to design point-based rubrics so that those created in Original courses migrate to Ultra as part of a course conversion. The December 2021 release of these improvements is perfect timing for instructors to take advantage of these new rubric features in their winter and spring 2022 classes!
Accommodations: Support more granular control - 3900.28.0
We have frequently heard from our clients that instructors need greater granularity of control for specifying any extra time a student may need on timed assessments. The next phase for Accommodations includes the option for faculty to set the percentage of extra time for those students who need more time to complete a timed assessment.
When adding a time limit accommodation, faculty may specify any percentage of extra time that is needed to honor a time limit accommodation. This change provides greater flexibility to the instructor supporting both the students’ needs and the instructor’s assessment strategy.
Ultra course banner: Image description - 3900.28.0
Visual components of courses are helpful for aesthetic and identification purposes. To ensure that all visual elements are accessible, we are building on recent improvements to the Ultra Course banner. In this release, we have added the option for instructors to include an image description when uploading a banner image in the course. Faculty may also add an image description to existing course banner images. We are also providing greater control for instructors to mark images as decorative whenever images are not primary content. Providing visually appealing courses that adhere to accessibility best practices and standards is truly key to engaging all students and ensuring an equitable learning experience.
Both Original and Ultra courses include the option to add an image description to the course cards from the Courses page on the Ultra Base navigation.
Set visibility for group sets - 3900.28.0
Adding to the current functionality of Group Sets, the next phase of our work on course groups provides faculty an option to change the visibility for custom or randomly created group sets. A new choice to hide course groups from the students’ view gives instructors the option to use groups to discretely organize students based on their performance, interests, adopted knowledge, and other criteria.
Instructors may also change the visibility option preferred for each group set from the course groups page when creating a group set.
Instructors can see the visibility status of group sets when applying filters in the Gradebook grid view, setting up conditional release, and associating a group set to content such as an assessment or discussion.
To ensure that faculty maintain the appropriate interaction among students, the self-enrollment option will be automatically set as disabled when any course group’s visibility is set to “hidden from students”. And content association will always be possible when course group’s visibility is available to students.
For a few users, visibility settings of current hidden group sets in Ultra may not match the specifications explained above. If you note any inconsistencies in your Learn visibility configuration, please contact Client Support. We've got your back.
File upload size limit (Original Course View) - 3900.28.0
Setting limits on users’ uploads helps institutions contain storage utilization, maintain institutional policies, and encourage use of resources better suited to online use or limited bandwidth. This release includes the following capabilities:
- Administrators can set a file size limit in megabytes for all files uploaded into courses. This restriction is applied to uploads in the Original Course View. This is configured in Administrator Panel > System Configuration.
- Administrators can optionally configure recommended alternative storage locations that will appear in warning messages when the file limit is surpassed, directing users to more appropriate services the institution licenses, supports, or recommends.
- In Original courses, users who attempt to upload files that are larger than the specified restriction will receive a warning, indicating the filenames of files that were rejected. When adding multiple files at once, each file is considered individually and accepted or rejected based on their individual sizes.
- The file size limit isn’t applied when uploading course import or SCORM packages.
- Blackboard mobile apps have an existing file size limit for both Original and Ultra courses that is set to 250MB. That is unchanged with this release.
In a future release, the configured file size limit will also be applied to Ultra Course View.
Force completion and timer - 3900.28.0
To ensure a secure testing environment and to support academic honesty and integrity, we have made an important update to the behavior of Force Completion to solve a specific issue found with core student assessments. Prior to 3900.28, the timer and force complete options were not strictly linked such that the Force Completion flow was triggered when a student accessed an in-progress test attempt. To both improve the workflow and resolve an outstanding issue, beginning with the 3900.28 release, we have linked the Timer option and Force Completion capabilities. This change now incorporates 2 updates:
- If the student attempts to open an in-progress test in a second window a message opens and informs the student that the assessment is already in progress and there is no option to continue or reopen the same test.
- The status of the test in the primary window remains unchanged and continues to progress until the time limit expires and the test auto-submits.
This change impacts only Original course assessments. Third-party remote proctoring solutions are not impacted. The Timer can still be used without Force Completion.
Microsoft Teams integration
We are excited to announce continued improvements to the Microsoft Teams classes integration, which demonstrates our commitment to providing best-in-class tools and technologies for the Ultra Course View. This release includes the following capabilities:
- When an Administrator disables the integration, only an Administrator can re-enablement the integration on a course-by-course basis. This option is only possible when the integration has been re-enabled by the Administrator on the Learn instance.
- When the course is marked as completed or the integrations are disabled, any Teams synched with the course will be put into archive status and the synch will be stopped. If the course is re-opened or re-enabled, the course changes will resynch with the archived Team and that Team will be reactivated.
API updates - 3900.28.0
We’ve made some noteworthy API updates:
- Ultra Discussion APIs: Management of discussion topics/posts (Ultra only). We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including the management (creating, updating, deleting and grading) of discussion posts in Ultra course.
- Adaptive Release API Support: PATCHs, PUTs and DELETEs for Rule APIs and Rule Criteria APIs (Ultra and Original). We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including: the ability to manage the release or visibility of a course content based on timing or student success criteria.
For more information about our REST Public APIs, please explore the Learn API at: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi
Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.28.0
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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Issues with Discussion board and Discussion analysis: Discussion analysis showed no information and the Discussion board visible/hidden menu was too small to use. These issues have been fixed and the UI now behaves as expected, and allows for better working space.
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Student assessment answers show "None given" and "saved question 0 multiple times": The access log for assessments displayed confusing and inaccurate messages. The log now displays messages as expected.
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Issues with special characters causing erratic behavior: The platform was having issues interpreting some characters, causing special characters to appear in the subject of Original course messages in the global navigation updates, and the “What's New” Module. It also caused inadvertent posting of an announcement and emails sent to users to fail when an ampersand was in the course name. This behavior has been fixed and now works as expected.
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Student preview does not work properly on Ultra courses: The 'Reset preview' text box was shown in white over white, which made the message invisible unless the user highlighted it. Also, selecting the 'Reset' button didn't reset the actual coursework for the student preview user. These issues have been fixed by changing the color of the text and correcting the behavior of the 'Reset' button.
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Adding LTI option to the questions feedback: To give instructors more tools for providing feedback on student evaluations, the present development makes the LTIs available in the question feedback RTE. The following plugins were enabled in the automatic feedback editor: LTI content, YouTube inserts and Cloud files access.
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Spacing issues on Ultra documents - Course restore: The line spacing between a heading and paragraphs was affecting legibility. After resolving the spacing issues for courses that are currently in the database, the issue remained for course documents that were restored in Ultra. The space issue was adjusted and corrected for courses that weren't in the database when the upgrader was executed.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.28.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Release to client Production environments
We released an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.22+4fb8410) to client Production servers on Saturday, November 13, 2021. Please note that the build number remains the same as last week.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Experience, some content in the tables wasn't appearing correctly. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Experience, instructors couldn't edit the fill in the blank questions after submitted by students. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, the entire discussion UI was freezing if a user had a lot of enrollments. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Release to client Production environments
We’re releasing an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.22+4fb8410) to client Production servers on Thursday, November 11, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, when grading discussion boards, the entire discussion thread wasn't appearing. We've fixed the issue (2).
- In the Ultra Experience, assessments weren't submitted after students selected 'Submit', cancelling altogether the submission prompt. We've fixed the issue (2).
- In the Ultra Experience, multiple options for matching questions weren't supported with voiceOver for IOS phones, and gestures didn't allow a correct interaction with controls or inputs, affecting the experience for IOS users who had voiceOver enabled and tried to select an answer in an exam or quiz. We've fixed the issue (1).
- In the Original and Ultra experiences, In a multi node environment, when the administrator changed the Safe HTML policy, it wasn't reflected in the other nodes of the application. We've fixed the issue and now, the Safe HTML policy updated will reflect in all nodes across the application immediately(1).
- In the Original Experience, after the latest upgrade on November 4, multiple sites in the APAC, US Central, US Mountain, and US Pacific regions experienced periods of unresponsiveness or degradation, due to a database index that wasn't recreated as part of the 3900.26 upgrade. We've fixed the issue.
For client sites already on 3900.26.0 before November 11 release:
(1) These fixes were deployed on November 4.
(2) These fixes were deployed on November 8.
Learn SaaS releases 3900.26.0 and 3900.28.0: Update on release to client Production and Test/Stage environments
Due to a critical issue reported in discussion forums during the latest release, we’re performing an unscheduled update today, Monday 8 November, 2021, to the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.26.0 release (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.18+de6a634) to client Production environments in APAC and US Pacific, Mountain, and Central time zones. This update will only apply to production sites which have already been upgraded to 3900.26.0, and won't impact Europe or US Eastern time zones.
The issue addressed in this release is:
- In the Ultra Course View, when grading discussion boards, the entire discussion thread wasn't appearing. We've fixed the issue.
As a result of the delay completing the full roll-out of 3900.26.0 to production environments, we will postpone the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.28.0 release to client Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for Tuesday, November 9, 2021, to Tuesday, November 16, 2021. This new release date aligns with our usual pattern.
The release schedule has been updated to reflect this latter change.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Release to client Production environments
We’re releasing an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.15+621c3b2) to client Production servers on Thursday, November 4, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Experience, multiple options for matching questions weren't supported with voiceOver for IOS phones, and gestures didn't allow a correct interaction with controls or inputs, affecting the experience for IOS users who had voiceOver enabled and tried to select an answer in an exam or quiz. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra experiences, In a multi node environment, when the administrator changed the Safe HTML policy, it wasn't reflected in the other nodes of the application. We've fixed the issue and now, the Safe HTML policy updated will be reflected in all nodes across the application immediately.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.13+180c3aa) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the Ultra Extension Framework hover events weren't triggered for the new course menu. We've added the analytics hover event for Eesysoft on the new course menu links, and we've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, the Enable/Disable feature, and the Save and Submit buttons weren't behaving properly for assessments that have text questions only. The assessments were enabled in the presence of an answer, but couldn't be disabled when the answer was removed. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Experience, the feature flag progress tracking was removed without making available the toggle for administrators. When announced in the Community site some users requested to recover the feature flag toggle while the administrator flow is completed, and we listened. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, whenever a tab was loaded, individual records for all modules on the accessed page were logged. While on Ultra the impact was negligible, on the Original Experience this could account for between 25% to 75% of data, slowing down the execution of reports for more relevant details. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, some clients were still experiencing overlapping issues on Wiris math formulas after the latest fix we provided. The Stix font family wasn't used when the overlapping happened. We've fixed the issue for formulas created from this point onwards. Formulas created before this fix need to be modified again manually, using the Wiris editor.
- In the Original Experience, in the Administrator Panel's Tools and Utilities section, there was a generic label with a broken link. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, when the Learn version was being upgraded on Windows servers, the script that completed the process generated an execution error. We've fixed the issue, and made sure the upgrading process now finishes successfully.
- In the Original Experience, when admins copied a course with embedded LTI links within the Rich Text Editor to a new or existing course, those links broke. They were still pointing back to the old course where users of the new course didn't have permissions. We've definitely fixed the issue for both links and embedded LTI calls, but the LTI links in the Original editor created before this release won't copy correctly. They'll have to be recreated.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.2+6bc051d) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, October 26, 2021. Please note that the build number remains the same as last week.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, students' usernames were not displayed after due date accommodation was enabled for groups, the roster or the discussions page. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.27+bf491df) to client Production servers on Thursday, October 21, 2021. Please note that the build number remains the same as last week.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the entire discussions UI was freezing if a user had a lot of enrollments. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.2+6bc051d) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, October 19, 2021. Please note that the build number remains the same as last week.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the entire discussions UI was freezing if a user had a lot of enrollments. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.26.0: Release to client Test/Stage environments
We're releasing a new Learn version 3900.26.0 (full release number 3900.26.0-rel.2+6bc051d) to client Test/Stage servers on Wednesday, October 13, 2021. The details on new features and updates will be published in the corresponding individual feature release notes.
Set and display pronouns in Ultra Course View - 3900.26.0
As part of planned diversity, equity, and inclusion improvements, this release gives institutions the option to allow users to express to others their personal pronouns. This fosters greater respect between students and with faculty engaging online by letting others know how best to refer to them in their group activities and discussions.
Included in this release:
- Administrators can opt-in to allow use of the new pronoun field.
- Administrators can set the pronoun values users will be able to select, allowing conformance with institutional standards, policy, and culture.
- Administrators can allow users to request additional pronouns to be added to the approved list.
- When allowed, users can select one or more pronoun values to display to others.
- Users in Ultra Course View courses can see the pronouns populated by others in the class.
- Data integration supports populating pronoun values for users through REST, flat file, XML, LIS, and IMS Enterprise methods.
A future release will allow for the display of pronouns in Original Course View courses. User self-selection of pronouns will require that Base Navigation is enabled. When using Original Experience (Base Navigation is not enabled), only data population through data integration will be supported.
Ultra: Course Overview M2 – Banner - 3900.26.0
We have frequently heard from clients about a desire to include additional visuals into Ultra Course View, for both aesthetic and identification purposes. As a next phase in our work to improve overall navigation and an intuitive course experience, the course card image from base navigation can now be used as a course banner in Ultra courses.
When adding a new course image, instructors can opt to make it visible within the course and are able to easily crop the image to the preferred size and zoom in or out on the uploaded image to select the part they want to focus on. This change also makes it easier for instructors to add a course schedule and for students to identify course faculty members and class meeting days, times, and location.
Providing a visually appealing course, images consistent with Base Navigation, and easy-to-locate course details, is key to engagement and the overall student experience.
Ultra Rich Text Editor Improvements: Tables. New options available when using tables - 3900.26.0
We recently released the tables function in the Ultra rich text editor. In this release, we are pleased to share that additional formatting options are now available when using tables.
- Text Style
- Alignment options
- List Attachment
- Insert content
These options provide greater flexibility for faculty and students, especially in disciplines where the presentation and formatting of data is particularly important.
Microsoft Teams integration - 3900.26.0
Blackboard is excited to announce continued improvements to the recently released Microsoft Teams classes integration, solidifying our commitment to providing best-in-class tools and technologies for the Ultra Course View.
To ensure consistency of data processing and to reduce potential synchronization issues between Learn Ultra course view and an institutions Microsoft Tenant, at initial launch in August, Blackboard introduced a new Institutional email field within the Student Information System framework. This was specifically for cloud providers such as Microsoft who use email as their primary user identifier. This was made available for all SIS integration types.
This release includes the following capabilities:
- The ability to allow courses to be Archived and Restored but keeping all institution emails intact. This is a continued change management improvement, and the first of several process improvements planned with this integration.
- Support for large course sizes up to 10,000 enrollments, keeping inline with the maximum number of users that can be supported in a single Microsoft Team.
- Greater system administration messaging within the integration setup flow, to detect Microsoft Tenants that don’t have the Teams Education profile added. This was an enhancement added as a result of our initial beta testing that took place earlier this year.
Progress Tracking M1.2: Permanent Tracking and Feature Flag Removal - 3900.26.0
As part of our August release, we included our Beta version of progress tracking. From this release on, progress tracking in Ultra Course View (UCV) could be activated in new courses, where no previous activity had taken place. This feature was also the first functionality behind a feature flag. In other words, administrators had the ability to decide whether they want to enable progress tracking at their institution or hold it for a while. We are happy to share that we are removing the current limitations around this feature.
With this release, instructors will be able to enable progress tracking at any time during the term. Enabling this functionality will give students an easy way to keep track of what they have done inside each one of their courses. When enabling progress tracking later than the beginning of the term, participatory items will be retroactively marked as complete. For example, assessments submitted previously by students will be marked as complete. Non-participatory items, like Ultra documents, will still need to be manually marked by students.
This is the next step in our work on progress tracking, and we’re excited to move forward alongside our clients. Future releases will provide additional instructor capabilities, such as the ability to monitor progress made by their students inside their courses.
API updates - 3900.26.0
We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including the ability to manage the release or visibility of a course content based on timing or student success criteria:
- Ultra Discussion APIs: Read - Discover (Filters). We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including filters for the READ Discussion topic(s) and post(s) - collection and individual, where the user can filter before/after creation, or modify dates.
For more information about our REST Public APIs, please explore the Learn API at: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi
Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.26.0
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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'Needs grading' didn't take effect in Ultra grade journal on 'Grades and Participation' screen: this issue is now fixed and the Needs Grading filter is working as expected.
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Unable to rename file in Ultra assignment: when an instructor tries to rename a file added into an Ultra assignment, a pop up titled "Close Without Saving?" appears when the user navigates away from the page. The edit option is there for instructors to be able to rename assignment's files, and it is now working without errors.
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When the search box was clear in the gradebook grid view, not all columns were restored: when interacting with the search box, the elements (students(rows) and gradable items (columns)) are filtered. Now when the input is clear (by using the X button or removing the text explicitly with the keyboard), and all elements are restored, meaning no filtering.
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Completed Course was not displayed in the vertical message tab for students: this has been fixed. Completed courses are displayed in the messages tab for students.
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The number of unread messages was displayed twice on the Japan Language pack: the number of unread messages was displayed twice in the Ultra Base navigation on the Japanese Language. This is now fixed.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.26.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage and Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 to client Test/Stage servers on Wednesday October 6, 2021. The full release number (3900.23.0-rel.27+bf491df) will remain the same. This version will also be released to client Production servers on Thursday, October 7, 2021, in our regular monthly upgrade.
Updates in these releases include:
- In the Ultra Experience, when creating system notifications, only 100 institutional roles were showing if more roles than that were present. We fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.27+bf491df) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, October 5, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Experience, when instructors sent messages to course users and then marked the course as complete, the unread message count for students wasn't reduced when message was read. We fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, when admins copied a course with embedded LTI links within the Rich Text Editor to a new or existing course, those links broke. They were still pointing back to the old course where users of the new course didn't have permissions. We've fixed the issue, but the links within course copies made before this fix still need to be manually fixed.
Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.30+4b0740b) to client Production servers on Thursday, September 30, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn't access the feedback when selecting the feedback icon in tests that used Respondus LDB, getting a console error instead. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, LTI Contents of Original course in Ultra base navigation calendar were displaying permission errors when selected, preventing users from opening them. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, during the September 16 Production SaaS update, an issue with the deployment configuration management tool prevented log folders and log files from being added and displayed in the Content Management /internal/logs folder. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.20+390fc02) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, September 28, 2021.
Updates in this release include internal enhancements and system optimization.
Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.19+2fb7fc2) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, September 21, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn't access the feedback when selecting the feedback icon in tests that used Respondus LDB, getting a console error instead. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, some client Test/Stage instances experienced outages due to an incorrect query during notification cleanup. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, LTI Contents of Original course in Ultra base navigation calendar were displaying permission errors when selected, preventing users from opening them. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Course Views, instructors were required to login again to Learn, after they accessed an LTI tool and selected the Return to Learn button. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0 and 3900.23.0: Update to client Production and Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 to client Production servers and an updated version of 3900.23.0 to client Test/Stage servers on Friday, September 17, 2021. Full Learn release numbers will not change.
Updates in this release include:
- Update to the Ultra UI for iOS 15.
Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.28+dd6c7ec) to client Production servers on Thursday, September 16, 2021.
Updates in this release include general internal enhancements and ongoing system optimization.
For Learn SaaS, we also deployed OS Fonts to address some remaining Wiris Math Editor issues on overlapping formulas. We've fixed those issues.
Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.11+a845e27) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, September 14, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Original Experience, some clients' SafeHTML policy was overwritten by default after rolling restart took place. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.25+75ad05d) to client Production servers on Thursday, September 9, 2021.
Updates in this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the gradebook wasn't finish loading when courses were using SCORMs with adaptive release. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, instructors couldn't delete uncompleted SCORM package's attempts from students, and the process was producing 405 status codes instead. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, some clients' SafeHTML policy was overwritten by default at irregular intervals, usually after upgrades took place. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, a distribution notification alert processing was causing stability issues and peaking the use of memory for a few clients. We've fixed the issue. Affected sites might still receive some backlog alerts.
Ultra: Submission Receipt - 3900.23.0
Students need a way to ensure their work has been correctly submitted into the system. There are times where a student believes they have submitted their work when, in fact, it wasn't sent at all, or it wasn't sent successfully.
This new functionality provides students with a unique tracking number that confirms their academic submission. Students can copy and save this number as proof of their work, and evidence for academic disputes.
A modal window with the tracking information will appear to students after they submit their work. They can also receive an email with that information if they have a registered email, and download a similar text file to keep for their records.
Rubric Criterion Increase - 3900.23.0
Rubrics are grading tools that help instructors to assess student performance and give feedback in detail. Before, Ultra allowed a maximum of 10 columns and rows. To provide more flexibility for the grading processes, Blackboard now decided to increase the limit up to 15 columns and rows.
We are conscious of the different pedagogical approaches and practices. We support institutions and instructors who prefer to grade students with a greater level of granularity.
Ultra: Rich Text Editor improvements: Add table - 3900.23.0
For deeper versatility in the Rich Text Editor, this 3rd milestone brings the Add Table functionality to our users. Tables are a common way for instructors and students to align and organize content in a customized manner, better suited to their own preferences.
For the time being, only a few options are not yet available when using tables:
- Text Style
- Alignment options
- List
- Undo
- Attachments
- Insert content
API updates - 3900.23.0
We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including the ability to manage the release or visibility of a course content based on timing or student success criteria:
- Adaptive Release API Support: GET and POST methods for Rule APIs and Rule Criteria APIs
For more information about our REST Public APIs, please explore the Learn API at: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi
Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.23.0
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Ultra Course View, when creating assignments with the auto zero set on, any past due standard assignments and basic LTI links are marked with automatic zeros after their due date. However, items deployed using partner cloud were never marked. We've fixed the issue and now the partner cloud and the manual column set the automatic zeros as required.
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In the Ultra Course View, in the instructor view, the help bubble icon on a discussion board disappeared once an instructor had created and closed the discussion. When accessing the discussion again, the icon disappeared as well. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Experience, an instructor added a SCORM package to a course content with a grade category TEST/ASSIGNMENT, and then created another test with a release condition based on the performance of the SCORM content. However, the SCORM test didn't appear for students. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Course View, when users tried to add content to a course by selecting the plus sign "+" for adding content, then selecting on "+ Create", a menu on the right was displayed. If the user then selected the 'X' for canceling the action on that menu, the content area didn't refresh properly. We've fixed the issue.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.23.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3900.23.0: Release to client Test/Stage environments
We’re releasing a new Learn version 3900.23.0 (full release number 3900.23.0-rel.7+ad745cb) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, September 7, 2021. The details on new features and updates will be published during the course of that day.
Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0
The regular release of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.21+e2c25ca) to client Production servers on Thursday, September 2, 2021 will include some additional updates.
- In the Ultra Course View, when a custom language pack was installed, the Ultra gradebook filter panel wouldn’t display. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, new menu icons were missing analytics-Id DOM tags, which caused some third-party integrations to break. We’ve fixed the issue.
- During a Learn SaaS upgrade, a few clients experienced outages when a drop constraint command inadvertently locked a table that a certain building block relied on. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.19+e6e7e83) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, August 31, 2021.
Updates on this release include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the automatic zero functionality wasn't working for some content items with release conditions that were partially visible within a course. It wasn't working for Ultra courses or Original to Ultra converted courses. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View, for course announcements and instructor feedback features, users couldn't use the A/V recording option for Collab in the Rich Text Editor. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Course Views, the Wiris math editor was sometimes displaying overlapped formula symbols, due to an improper font family type setting, making it difficult to read. We've fixed the issue and set a default font family, but please be aware that any formulas currently corrupted need to be manually edited.
Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.38+a5c3f13) to client Production servers on Thursday, August 26, 2021.
Updates on this release include:
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the Telemetry/LDP Export with Snowflake, Blackboard reports and the Consulting Central B2, were failing for some users, who were receiving error messages and a Snowflake exception. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.21.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.21.0 (full release number 3900.21.0-rel.15+3067e88) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, August 24, 2021.
Updates on this release include:
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the Telemetry/LDP Export with Snowflake, Blackboard reports and the Consulting Central B2, were failing for some users, who were receiving error messages and a Snowflake exception. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, attendance activity in the gradebook was triggering many session spikes affecting the system's capacity. We've made improvements for better performance and fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, instructors weren't able to create math equations for content within courses on alternate domains, unless it's the default domain at the Blackboard configuration properties. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Course Views, users created using a SIS integration were seeing an error page when trying to load the Content Market page. We updated the integration and fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.36+070b377) to client Production servers on Thursday, August 19, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, instructors weren't able to create math equations for content within courses on alternate domains, unless it's the default domain at the Blackboard configuration properties. We’ve fixed the issue.
Ultra: Assignment Attempts Screen Improvements - 3900.21.0
Evaluating student-submitted content is a continuous job critical to the learning process. We know it's important to instructors and graders to improve the content view and create a practical grading process. That's why we keep enhancing grading workflows.
To help instructors, teaching assistants, and graders have a better view of the content they're grading, we've widened the screen of the submission area. It also includes a collapsible and expandable panel where users can navigate through tabs such as rubrics, feedback, and originality report.
On top of that, instructors and students can navigate the submission view and the panel tabs with different scroll bars. Independent scroll bars allow instructors or graders to scroll up and down the submission content without affecting the side tab navigation or the header. Now, instructors can use rubrics in a more practical way and provide feedback focused on a specific part of the submission.
These improvements will enable users to better navigate through content in the submission view, grade it with rubrics if applicable, or give feedback based on content provided in order to enhance student knowledge.
Partial Credit for Fill In the Blank Questions - 3900.21.0
Fill in the blank questions are a great assessment tool to test knowledge at different levels and contexts. In our September release, we're expanding the grading capabilities of this question type.
This improvement will support those instructors who wish to grade student attempts at a more granular level. It will also benefit students based on their associated effort on these complex questions, and provide them with a more accurate representation of their proficiency
Allow Instructors to Show or Hide the "Additional Content" Section at the End of Assessments - 3900.21.0
At the end of Ultra Assignments and Tests there is section called “Additional Content” where students can add text, images and files to complete their submissions or support their answers. This section was always included by default and could confuse students into thinking they needed to complete this extra requirement. Instructors would like to choose when this should be an option or not.
In this release, Blackboard has added a toggle to allow instructors to show or hide the “Additional Content” section. This gives greater control to instructors over what’s displayed to their students during assessments. If an assessment only has text or support visuals but doesn’t have questions, this section will be the space for the submission and will be activated always. If an assessment has questions, this section will hold additional content, for students to add supporting evidence, and the instructor can enable or disable it.
- Instructor view:
- Student view:
Email Styling Enhancements - 3900.21.0
Email notifications are reminders to help instructors and students keep track of important updates in their courses. In this release, we've made an email styling enhancement to the following email areas:
- New announcement
- New message
- Assessment overdue soon
- Assessment overdue
- Daily digest
To provide better context, the course ID appears now above the course name. Message content will now follow the justification that the author selected. This makes messages easier to read and allows greater customization for the author. The footer now explains when notification settings can be managed. Finally, the new general style is cleaner and should align better to user expectations. We're excited because users will receive the valuable information contained in their emails in the best possible way.
Peer Review Assignments: Improved Handling for Disabled Students and Deleted Attempts - 3900.21.0
We’ve improved the user experience of a peer review assignment when a student is removed from a course (disabled or unavailable), and when a student’s submission is deleted during the peer review process.
When an instructor deletes a student submission containing peer reviews, they'll receive a warning message, as they'll lose those reviews. The list of affected students will be visible.
When grading or viewing peer reviews, the submission from a disabled or unavailable student will still be available.
If a student started or completed a review on a student submission that is no longer available (because it belongs to a disabled or unavailable student), they'll see they no longer have access to it. The student can start a different review if they’d like or if asked by the instructor. An instructor can see when a student completed a review that’s no longer available, giving the opportunity to let the student know they don’t need to complete another review if that’s preferred.
Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.21.0
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Ultra Course View, an instructor attempting to grade an assessment submission with rubrics and then cleaning the rubric with the grading's bar grading pill, was seeing the bar's grading pills empty and colorless, unlike the rubric's grading pill. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Course View, when changing the way students were sorted in the gradebook for a course's discussion, assignment, test or attendance, students were sorted alphabetically by first name instead of being sorted by last name. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Experience, within the Grade Center of a course set as Unavailable, the Last Access column was showing students as if they had accessed the course instead of showing no activity. We've fixed the issue.
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In the original Course View, the preview mode for the TinyMCE editor was displaying a grey background. We've updated the editor and made it transparent, for better readability of contents.
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In the Original Course View, there was an inconsistency in the TinyMCE editor between edit and display modes for list items regarding their line spacing. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, there were differences of color for certain HTML tags within the TinyMCE editor, between the display and edit modes. We've fixed the issue.
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The course cards in Base Navigation now better reflect the access state for students when viewed by instructors. There are several settings that determine whether students can access a course including the availability setting, course duration dates, and term dates. Previously, a course would appear as “private” or “open” depending only on the availability setting and didn’t consider duration or term date restrictions. Now the displayed state of a course card will consider these settings and better reflect students’ ability to access the course.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.21.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.35+4040100) to client Production servers on Saturday, August 7, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- Some integrations using the Course Content API got stuck in an infinite looping condition that caused degradation and small outage periods. We’ve fixed the issue.
Ally File Transformer in Blackboard Assist (North America availability)
The Ally File Transformer helps students to personalize their learning experience. It can convert files into alternative formats that better fit their needs, devices, and learning preferences.
- Available at no cost with Blackboard Assist enabled. An Ally license is not required.
- It converts files to alternative, more accessible formats including HTML, ePub, electronic braille, audio, or BeeLine reader. Also, to a PDF that’s undergone optical character recognition (OCR).
- For institutions licensing Ally, the Ally File Transformer allows students to convert their own files, or files they've found via research or project work.
- The Ally File Transformer comes automatically with Blackboard Assist. There is an option to turn it off, if preferred, in the Administrator Panel > Partner Cloud Settings.
The Ally File Transformer will be available with Blackboard Assist for Higher Education clients in North America on August 5. Availability for clients outside this region is expected later this year.
Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.31+ccd7094) to client Production servers on Thursday, August 5, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, when a basic assessment was created in a private course and then the course was opened, unintentionally peer notifications were generated for all basic assessments. We've fixed the issue. The fix will cleanup the stream notifications that were incorrectly created.
- In the Original Experience, when instructors who are enrolled in very large courses (e.g. more than 10,000 enrollments) accessed the system, or navigated the course's landing page, clients experienced slow or no access. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.27+6b0ef49) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, August 3, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, any image in the data picker component (icons, chevrons, etc.) used within courses, always appeared broken. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.20+7105532) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, July 27, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, users carrying out a proctored assessment on the latest Chrome versions were redirected to login. By updating the authentication method to use a one-time session token rather than cookies, we allowed proctoring partners to continue with their integration projects. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Content Editor, we’ve fixed issues with the height of the editor window and alignment of content in tables. Clients using custom theme packages may need to refresh their theme package from the default Learn 2016 Theme to get these fixes.
- In the Original Experience, a query associated with the disk usage task was consuming CPU time without completing executions. This was affecting performance, especially for Oracle data base clients. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, a text in a table cell remained left aligned even though a different text alignment was specified using the TinyMCE. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, Assist users could have been impacted by the integration not being visible in the base navigation UI. We've removed previous dependencies to allow displaying Assist through the base navigation, and fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.13+02039cd) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, July 20, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, when making a copy of a course, if quotes were used in custom alt-text descriptions for images, the Ultra assignments and assessments in the course appeared blank. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, when using the REST API for courses copied from a specific template course, due dates for assignments and other activities couldn't be updated. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, some SCORM attempts remained In Progress in the Grade Center, even after a successful completion of the corresponding SCORM quiz. We've worked with our partner to fix the issue and mitigate future problems.
- In the Original Experience, some Learn SafeAssign reports couldn't be rendered. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 (full release number 3900.17.0-rel.51+174af62) to client Production servers on Thursday, July 15, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, when making a copy of a course, if there were quotes used in custom alt-text descriptions for images, the Ultra assignments and assessments in the course appeared blank. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, some instructors and administrators couldn't save their HTML in the new Content Editor despite having the privilege to do so. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, some SCORM attempts remained "In Progress" in the Grade Centre, even after a successful completion of the corresponding SCORM quiz. Rustici identified the potential problem causing the issue. We've made their recommended fixes to mitigate future problems.
- In the Original Experience, some Learn SafeAssign reports could not be rendered. Submissions could remain in a "report in progress" status for days. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments announcement
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.19.0 (full release number 3900.19.0-rel.6+9e601a1) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
New functionality
- In the Ultra Experience, we've added feature toggles. You can read more about this addition in the 3900.19.0 feature release notes.
- In the Original Course View, we've added support for media and files in more places for Tests, Surveys, and Pools. You can read more about this addition in the 3900.19.0 feature release notes.
Improvements and bug fixes
- In the Ultra Experience, we've improved the performance of the new progress tracking feature when the feature toggle was turned on.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, some GovCloud clients experienced outage periods. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, some instructors and administrators couldn't save their HTML in the new Content Editor despite having the privilege to do so. We've fixed the issue.
Microsoft Teams classes in Ultra - 3900.19.0
Blackboard is excited to bring Microsoft Teams classes to the Ultra Course View to expand and support learner interaction and collaboration.
Research feedback, obtained from our global client base, set the base for Blackboard and Microsoft to foster collaboration and engagement, and to provide an integration breakthrough with Microsoft Teams classes. Users can now experience the power of Teams directly from within their Blackboard Learn Ultra course. This integration is the first in a series of upcoming integration capabilities with the Microsoft collaboration suite.
The integration will be available for Ultra courses only as part of the 3900.19.0 Learn SaaS release. The Microsoft Teams classes integration provides the following set of capabilities:
- Learn administrator setup and Microsoft 365 global admin approval.
- Enrollment synchronization between Ultra course enrollments and Microsoft Teams class participants.
- Automatic Microsoft Team class creation and Team activation control (Instructor/Team Owner availability management).
- Student and instructor course level launch of Microsoft Teams classes.
- Support for institution email data mapping to minimize user account enrollment issues.
- Support for Learn Preview User.
- Ultra course enrollment size of up to 1800 students. As we continue to enhance the integration, we'll aim to reach higher enrollment numbers.
The integration allows a course instructor to synchronize course membership data from Learn Ultra to the Microsoft Active Directory and create a Team class for their course. Students enrolled in the course will automatically enroll in the Team class. The instructor will have to activate the Team to give students access to it. Students will be able to launch their Team class directly from their Ultra course.
As part of this integration, there is a new entitlement to achieve both configuration and synchronization. The new entitlement is Course/Organization Outline > Microsoft Teams > Configure. To provide this new entitlement to a custom role, all Ultra courses must have a full system-provided instructor role enrolled before this action takes place.
Important Information for Testing
Clients who want to test the Microsoft Teams classes integration in their Blackboard Test and/or Staging instance are highly recommended to follow these steps:
- Engage with their Microsoft Account team to request a Microsoft Test Tenant under their Institutional Licensing Agreement.
- Alternatively, clients can request a trial at https://aka.ms/edutrial. This trial lasts 6 months. If you need to extend the trial for a longer period of time, please contact your Microsoft account representative.
- Using a Microsoft Test Tenant with your Blackboard Test or Staging environments prevents introducing potential data duplication issues when you come to deploy the integration in your Blackboard Learn Production system.
Important Information for Data Synchronization
The Microsoft Teams classes integration relies on the institution email SIS field to map to the correct Microsoft Azure Active Directory’s User Principal Name (UPN). If there is no institution email provisioned, it will default to the user's existing email. It’s recommended that the institution email is properly set for every user to ensure correct data synchronization and avoid data conflict.
Ultra progress tracking (Alpha release) - 3900.19.0
Please note that this feature will be released on Test/Stage and Production as a limited release in August, with a broader "Beta release" in September. It will be generally available starting with the October release.
Starting in August, Ultra Course View will allow students to mark and track their progress inside their courses. This new feature comes from direct client feedback and it aligns with how students and instructors think about pace and progress. Progress tracking will be initially released as an “Alpha stage” feature. This means that the feature will be limited to only new courses where no activity has taken place. Instructors will need to make a decision before their course has started whether they want to try progress tracking or not. Those who choose to turn the feature on will provide Blackboard with valuable input about how the feature functions so that we can improve it in future releases.
In addition to the feature itself, we're introducing feature flagging as part of the release of progress tracking. Progress tracking will be behind a feature toggle. This means that administrators can decide whether they want to give instructors the ability to turn this feature on at the institution level. The ability to decide when to allow access to the feature will be for a limited time only.
As noted earlier, progress tracking will be released as an “Alpha stage” feature. The feature will only be available to NEW COURSES once an administrator has turned the feature on. In other words, instructors will be able to turn progress tracking on for their students if there hasn’t been any activity inside the course. Student preview activity also counts as activity, so if anything has been done from student preview mode, instructors won’t be able to turn this feature on.
Once turned on, students can visually identify what tasks they have started, completed, or haven't interacted with. Students can also manually update their progress on specific items. This is a new level of personalization in Ultra, and it should help students see progression through their course.
Finally, while this is a starting point, it’s the beginning of the journey. This “Alpha stage” feature will be released to a set of institutions. In its initial phase, this Alpha release will only be available for English-speaking countries. We have a number of exciting enhancements that will expand the benefits of marking progress to not just students but also instructors. In later milestones we'll expand this capability to all institutions, and provide valuable insights and information on the student’s progress to higher roles.
Modern release strategy: feature toggles - 3900.19.0
One of the benefits of moving to SaaS has been the ability to introduce changes to our solutions much faster than we historically could. However, with constant change, users can feel anxious or experience change fatigue. We understand that feeling, so as part of the August release, Blackboard is introducing the option to have newly developed features behind a feature flag.
Not every feature will have this option. It will be added for features that are determined to be potentially disruptive to actively running courses. Features that have the flag option will have them for a limited amount of time. Having this feature will allow administrators greater flexibility as to when they release complex, large features to their users.
This feature will be available only in English for this release, but will be available in all languages in the next release.
Original Course View Tests, Surveys, and Pools: Support for media and files in more places - 3900.19.0
In Original Course View Tests, Surveys, and Pools, there are limits for which test question options support file attachments and embedded media. In this release, we’ve expanded the places where files and media can be embedded, allowing instructors and content authors to create more interactive and visual questions. These question types and fields now support attached files and media using the Add Content button in the editor:
- Calculated formula: Question text
- Essay: Answer text
- Matching: Question/Answer pairs
- Multiple Answer: Answer options
- Multiple Choice: Answer options
- Ordering: Answer options
- Short Answer: Answer text
Note: In release 3900.0.0, we introduced the ability to copy and paste images into these fields. Due to performance concerns, this was removed in 3900.6.0. This enhancement replaces that workflow to once again be able to support not only images, but now also links to files.
Ultra: Navigation menu - 3900.19.0
Ultra Course View is getting a new navigation menu! As part of our August release, the top menu will be changed to text based vs. the iconography we currently have. On top of that, we’ve made the top menu sticky. This means that it will remain visible to users even after they have scrolled down the page.
In addition to these changes, we’ve also removed Student Preview from the Details and Actions menu and placed it in the new header. This will allow instructors access to student preview whenever they are on any top navigation page (e.g. Calendar, Gradebook, etc.)
We're excited about this feature because it's an example of how we are evolving Ultra Course View to be more intuitive for the user. This is also the first step we're taking to improve Ultra Course View. Up next will be allowing instructors to add a banner image to their course homepage.
Ultra gradebook: Advanced filtering options - 3900.19.0
Gradebook in Ultra Course View is getting advanced filtering options! As part of our August release, higher course roles will be able to filter their gradebook view by multiple variables like users, groups, items, and categories. Our new approach provides a more dynamic experience where multiple filters can be used on demand. The filters applied can also be bookmarked and accessed later.
Besides seeing the filters in the gradebook, the user will be able to move back and forth among the students’ submissions that are included in the selected filters.
We are truly excited about this feature as it promotes an easier grading process for higher roles in the institutions. Gradebook filters will make segmenting the grading process of large courses easier.
Ultra calendar: Links - 3900.19.0
Given the rapid shift to online learning, virtual office hours or synchronous collaboration sessions have become quite common. Instructors want the ability to easily link sessions to calendar invitations so students can have the best opportunity to successfully find where they need to be.
With this release, Ultra now supports hyperlinks in the calendar location field. Instructors can link any virtual tool of their choice in the calendar event, and students can launch the virtual session from the calendar itself.
Ultra peer review: Submission linking and calendar links - 3900.19.0
This release adds new functionalities to peer reviewed assignments in Ultra Course View.
Now, instructors can access the submissions reviewed by a student right from that student's grading panel. They can easily select a specific submission and grade a student’s review in context.
Students also have direct access to the submissions available for their review from either the Due Date or the Calendar views. This makes it easier for them to act when reviewing their pending tasks.
Original Content Editor: Format consistency between edit and display - 3900.19.0
The Content Editor for Original Experience and Original Course View was last updated in November 2020 (3900.0.0). Since then, there have been inconsistencies in the way content is formatted when editing content and when viewing it.
With this release, settings like font, size, color, and spacing are more consistent. When existing content is selected, the editor tool bar updates to display its current font, size, and header settings. This creates a better WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) experience.
The CSS changes associated with these improvements could impact clients using custom theme packages. We recommend testing.
- CSS in a custom theme package could disrupt the consistency between content edit and display in the Content Editor.
- Overly-broad CSS changes in a custom theme package could be applied to the Original Content Editor in unexpected ways. These may need to be corrected in a custom theme package and uploaded to Learn. Alternately, fall back to the default Learn 2016 Theme.
- There may be circumstances in which the Content Editor’s styles are preventing custom CSS from presenting. We are planning an enhancement in an upcoming release to include the opportunity to customize the CSS of the Content Editor within the custom theme package.
API updates - 3900.19.0
We've made some noteworthy API additions, including providing Ultra Discussion APIs for reading both single and collections of discussion topics and posts.
For more information about our Rest Public APIs, please refer to: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi
Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.19.0
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Ultra Course View, the Give full credit to everyone option wasn't working for tests using Random Question Pool. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Course View, in a course discussion, certain student replies didn't appear when they were part of a thread started by an inactive student. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Experience, some instructor announcements randomly lost their formatting. We've fixed the issue.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.19.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 (full release number 3900.17.0-rel.43+eee598e) to some client Production servers on Friday, July 2, 2021. Only GovCloud clients in the US Eastern timezone and other GovCloud clients who could not be updated yesterday will receive the update during evening hours.
Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Delay for release to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.17.0 release to GovCloud client Production servers in the US East timezone, previously scheduled for Thursday, July 1, 2021.
Also, an issue identified during today's rollout and already corrected, will cause some clients to receive a new, updated release today.
We’ll provide more updates as soon as we’ve identified a new target date.
Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Production environments
We're applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 to client Production servers on Thursday, July 1, 2021. Due to an issue identified during today’s rollout, clients will receive different build numbers depending on the time their update was performed.
Updates with full release number 3900.17.0-rel.37+505c78f include only:
- In the Original Experience, the installer was leaving the SCORM B2 in a corrupted state after an upgrade failure. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, the Rustici Engine required a provider update to fix a library defect and installation snags. We've fixed the issue.
Updates with full release number 3900.17.0-rel.42+b2e6934 include the above fixes as well as:
- In the Original Experience, we've implemented an enhancement to reduce the need for heavy load and to avoid system slow down for the loadAllAchievements process.
- In the Original Experience, a table lock issue prevented upgrades, leading to some outages. We've fixed the issue.
The next full rollout will include all fixes for everyone.
Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 (full release number 3900.17.0-rel.31+ea0ceef) to client Test/Stage servers on Tuesday, June 29, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, when updating time on conditional availability on assessments, if an instructor selected 'Show On' date too close to the current due time, the date picker reverted the selected date back to the current date, ignoring the instructor's selection. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, for a course running the report All User Activity inside Content Areas, no data was presented on a period where it should be data. Running a different report (e.g. Course activity Overview) for the same course during the same period of time, this last report did present the missing data. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, the Self and Peer Assessment process was presenting a performance issue, due to a data file processing that required improvement. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Course Views, alerts for New Discussion Posts didn't appear in the What's New module for courses, based on term availability. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.15.0 (full release number 3900.15.0-rel.33+c15f06f) to client Production servers on Thursday, June 24, 2021. Please remember that the efforts to resolve the SCORM upgrade issues are still ongoing. Clients still running on 3900.13.0 will not be updated this time.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, users with Course Builder roles couldn't create journals or any type of content on Ultra courses. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, course announcements became single paragraphs of unformatted text, after making a copy of a course. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the function CONTENT_IS_AVAILABLE(), was a potential driver of performance problems for some clients. We made significant improvements, for the benefit of both courses and organizations's users.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, a critical DB performance issue was present whenever a grade refresh occurred. Also, due to a SameSite restriction of the Chrome browser impacting the major workflow of Cengage B2, users weren't able to import contents. We’ve fixed both issues.
- In the Original Experience, the Downtime Maintenance Schedule date picker worked as expected only when the en_US language pack was set as the user's language. When using other language packs (e.g. en_UK), and error appeared when selecting a desired date. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS releases 3900.15.0 and 3900.17.0: Update on releases to client Production environments
We’re updating the information available regarding the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.15.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 2021:
- A maintenance update to client Production environments will take place on Thursday, June 24, to apply high priority fixes.
- The efforts to resolve the SCORM upgrade issues are still ongoing. Clients still running on 3900.13.0 will not be updated on June 24.
We aim to update all Production sites to 3900.17.0 on Thursday, July 1. This will include those clients who are currently on 3900.15.0 as well as those who are still on 3900.13.0.
We’ll provide new updates as soon as we have more information.
Learn SaaS releases 3900.15.0 and 3900.17.0: Update on release to client Production and Test/Stage environments
We’re updating the information available regarding the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.15.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 2021:
- A maintenance update for 3900.15.0 to client Production environments is planned to take place on Thursday, June 24, after an update from Rustici was received. We are in the process of integrating and testing the updates.
- Inclusion of clients still on 3900.13.0 in the release on Thursday is tentative at this point, as it depends on the resolution of all SCORM related issues.
The 3900.17.0 upgrade to all stage/test sites that began on Friday is still in progress. We are expecting to complete it later today, Monday June 21.
We’ll provide new updates as soon as we have more information.
Chatbot enhancements
On June 17, Blackboard Student Success updated Blackboard Chatbot. Chatbot is included in Blackboard Learn at no additional cost, so the Learn experience is also improved:
- Search Blackboard Learn Help documentation for Instructors as well as Students.
- In addition to asking the chatbot questions, users can now also navigate a category hierarchy to discover common topics.
- Resulting help information is now previewed directly in the chat interaction. Users can click to open the full documentation from the Help site.
- The default Help articles reference the Ultra Course View to better support users transitioning to our latest interface and may need more assistance. However, users can easily switch to the Original Course View versions of Help articles as needed.
- Institutions can upgrade to the premium version of Blackboard Chatbot that now supports adding institutional-specific help resources and defining a unique, branded chatbot persona.
Blackboard Chatbot currently supports English language North American SaaS environments using Base Navigation. The June 17 update applies to all production and test/stage environments.
Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.17.0 (full release number 3900.17.0-rel.24+35b8869) to client Test/Stage servers on Friday, June 18, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, some building blocks didn’t launch correctly after a libraries' update. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, student preview users couldn’t access journals. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t access assessments with system-generated access codes, as they contained leading zeros or unnecessary commas within. Now the codes are properly generated. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS releases 3900.15.0 and 3900.17.0: Update on release to client Production and Test/Stage environments
We’re updating the information available regarding the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.15.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 2021:
- The release remains on hold for clients in the US-East-1 region while continuing to work with Rustici on the SCORM issue. We do not have a target release date yet.
- For institutions that have already received Learn SaaS 3900.15: there will be no further production upgrades until the SCORM issue has been resolved.
- For institutions that are still using Learn SaaS 3900.13: production upgrade to 3900.15 will not be performed until the SCORM issue has been resolved.
Two issues were identified during the 3900.17.0 release to test/stage on Tuesday. For the benefit of our clients, we're working on a test/stage update, scheduled for Friday, June 18.
We’ll provide new updates as soon as we have more information.
API updates - 3900.17.0
Ability to manage Tool-to-node associations: We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- Institutional Hierarchy is used by large Blackboard Learn Clients to enable increased administrator management distribution for campus courses and tool availability. Now APIs users have the ability to manage Tool- to-node associations.
For more information about our Rest Public APIs, please refer to: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi
Highlight on bug fixes
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Ultra Course View, manual grade columns were lacking a Post All grades button on the Submissions page. A Post All button is now present there for instructors to use. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Experience, Ultra Courses, Organizations, and Grades pages went blank on Safari, when the zoom was below 100%. Now, the pages display the courses the user is enrolled in. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Original Experience, the Content Editor wasn't loading randomly. Now, the Content Editor loads in all use cases. We've fixed the issue.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.17.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Course Role Mapping to LTI Context Roles
Some third-party integrated tools function better when users’ course roles are more specific to the responsibilities they have in their courses. Before, all privileged course users were sent to LTI tools with the context role instructor. Administrators can now edit course roles and choose from a list of LTI Context Roles that may be more appropriate for each.
Default and custom course roles, Original and Ultra courses, and older LTI 1.1 and newer LTI Advantage/1.3 tools are all supported.
To prevent possible disruption for current users, the old default role behavior wasn't changed. Administrators may wish to review all course role configurations after this release, and choose LTI context roles. Any given LTI context role mapping is specific to a course role and will apply to all LTI tools.
Overall grade prompt custom removal
In Grading, there is a prompt composed of an image and text that ask users if they want to add an overall grade. This prompt appears always, whether instructors intend to use it or not. This new feature allows users to dismiss the prompt permanently for a course, if they never intend to use an overall grade for it.
Additionally, if instructors dismiss the prompt, they'll still be able to setup the overall grade from the gradebook settings. If the overall grade is already set up, they'll be able to access the overall settings from the gradebook settings.
Percentage option for overall grade
This enhancement allows instructors to show the overall grade in a way that best aligns to the method in which they currently teach the class. Instructors can select now between Letter (grade schema) and Percentage. The selection will apply to instructors and students in the overall grade.
Gradebook column grading on/off for attendance
With this new feature, instructors can control the visibility of the Attendance columns for students and instructors in the gradebook view, grid and list. They can choose wether they want to use attendance as a grade or not.
While some instructors want or need to track attendance, they don't always need it represented in the gradebook. They can remove attendance columns from the gradebook without affecting the attendance itself.
If instructors want to remove attendance, now they can do so from the attendance settings. Before this enhancement, the option was only available in the gradebook grid.
Group assignment page improvement
In the Ultra experience, we've redesigned the group set configuration page to improve UI performance and allow large courses to be more stable.
- A new functionality allows instructors to paginate through students who aren't currently assigned to a group.
- The avatar is hidden, to help people with vision impairment to navigate through cards more efficiently.
- A search bar now makes easy a specific student lookup or helps filter the display of unassigned students by search criteria. The bar shows predicted results and only unassigned students will be displayed.
- Another new functionality allows users to move to the top of the page when there are enough students shown on the screen.
Performance tuning: 1M stack size increment for all SaaS sites
SH/MH customers may improve Learn thread’s capabilities, memory wise, by updating the bbconfig.max.stacksize.tomcat property value, within the bb-config.properties file to “1M”. This change will take effect when the instance is restarted and in case threads need the extra piece of memory that is being provided, they will have access to it.
Learn SaaS releases 3900.15.0 and 3900.17.0: Update on release to client Production and Test/Stage environments
We’re updating the information available regarding the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.15.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 2021:
- The outstanding SCORM upgrade issue is still unresolved. We are working hard alongside Rustici in order to fix it as quickly as possible, and we don't have a target date for resolution yet.
- For institutions that have already received Learn SaaS 3900.15: there will be no further production upgrades until the SCORM issue has been resolved.
- For institutions that are still using Learn SaaS 3900.13: production upgrade to 3900.15 will not be performed until the SCORM issue has been resolved.
We will also move forward with the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.17.0 release to client Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for Tuesday, June 8, 2021, to Tuesday, June 15, 2021. This new release date aligns with our usual pattern, minimizing its delay as much as possible. Based on institutional feedback we also aim to provide institutions with sufficient time for testing.
The release schedule has been updated to reflect this latter change.
Learn SaaS release 3900.17.0: Delay for release to client Testing environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.17.0 release to client Testing servers, previously scheduled for Tuesday, June 8, 2021.
We’ll provide more updates as soon as we’ve identified a new target date.
Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Delay for release to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.15.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, June 3, 2021.
- Issues have been identified with the SaaS Downtime Maintenance Schedule (impacting INTL admins when the system locale is not en_US), and, for a few clients, a SCORM issue.
- The release has been rolled out for most clients.
- The release is being held for some clients on the US East Coast.
We’ll provide more updates as soon as we’ve identified a new target date.
Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0 update: Customer Self Service Maintenance Scheduler for Postgres Upgrade
We try our best to have the highest uptime available for Learn SaaS, but there are often some actions that require we take a customer’s site down to perform maintenance. The database upgrade to Postgres 12.5 is one such upgrade that will require some downtime.
We're releasing a new process to reduce the amount of coordination and communication efforts between clients and Blackboard Support. With this release, we give administrators the control in their production environments to schedule their maintenance window in the administrator panel, and select themselves a date and a time that allows for minimal disruption to their users.
You can learn more detailed information on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.15.0 (full release number 3900.15.0-rel.17+fc81d0d) to client Production servers on Thursday, June 3, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, users couldn’t download files attached to Organization discussion boards. Instead, they were redirected to Learn’s front page. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Update to client Test environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.15.0 (full release number 3900.15.0-rel.14+031309f) to client Test servers on Tuesday, June 1, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, an admin couldn't set a custom language pack as the default until the system had assigned it an Ultra locale first. This process could take hours, or even days, instead of some minutes. We've fixed the issue and now admins can enable system default.
- In the Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View, when an automatic zero was set for assignments delivered late, an assignment that was never submitted was just marked as late, without the zero grade. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Update to client Test environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.15.0 (full release number 3900.15.0-rel.11+9c51902) to client Test servers on Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View, when an instructor was grading an assignment, the page refreshed each time when moving between different sections using tab navigation. We've fixed the issue.
Bb Annotate enhancements
As part of the Q1 work on Bb Annotate we released the following fixes to known issues that were affecting our clients:
- Some users couldn’t delete an annotation note after they reselected it unless they edited the note again. We’ve fixed the issue.
- The selection of text in the document was not working properly, causing difficulty when highlighting or placing notes into documents. We've fixed the issue.
- When placing a note or comment into the file there was an additional comment count added to it, which caused confusion and the feeling of an unseen reply. We've fixed the issue.
The fixes were deployed for Singapore, Polymall, Korea, and Govcloud regions on March 3, 2021. Customers in Sydney, Europe, Canada, and US regions were updated on May 12, 2021.
Learn SaaS release 3900.13.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.13.0 (full release number 3900.13.0-rel.36+ee2113e) to client Production servers on Thursday, May 20, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, the Last updated time/date stamp in the full grade center view has been removed to improve performance. The upper-right corner of the full Grade Center in an Original Course displayed a time/date stamp indicating the last change by any user. This display caused significant performance issues in courses with large enrollments or when many users graded concurrently, thus it has been removed. If reviewing when changes were made in the Grade Center, you still see this information, including the last update, under Reports > View Grade History.
- In the Original Course View when base navigation is enabled, when embedding a new Kaltura content item within text, then moving on to the base navigation activity stream and refreshing it, the link would show HTML content and an inactive link instead of providing a proper, readable link to the Kaltura video. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.15.0: Update to client Test environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.15.0 (full release number 3900.15.0-rel.9+82a89d6) to client Test servers on Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experiences, an accessibility issue was present in threads within forums as the Thread Reply, Quote, Edit or Delete buttons were inoperative using the keyboard via the tab, space or enter keys. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, the Last updated time/date stamp in the full grade center view has been removed to improve performance. The upper-right corner of the full Grade Center in an Original Course displayed a time/date stamp indicating the last change by any user. This display caused significant performance issues in courses with large enrollments or when many users graded concurrently, thus it has been removed. If reviewing when changes were made in the Grade Center, you still see this information, including the last update, under Reports > View Grade History.
- In the Original Course View when base navigation is enabled, when embedding a new Kaltura content item within text, then moving on to the base navigation activity stream and refreshing it, the link would show HTML content and an inactive link instead of providing a proper, readable link to the Kaltura video. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.13.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.13.0 (full release number 3900.13.0-rel.31+9040981) to client Production servers on Thursday, May 13, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, some courses with many milestone achievements with a display in the past, were causing performance issues when loading their contentStatus. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.13.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.13.0 (full release number 3900.13.0-rel.24+cf04977) to client Production servers on Tuesday, May 11, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, we've enabled colorless grading pills. Rubric grade pills are now monochromatic for both kinds of rubric in the following content types: Single attempt, multiple attempt, group, offline submission, multiple graders and anonymous grading assessments; individual and group discussions, and journals.
- In Ultra Experience, when creating a new group assessment with a grading rubric enabled, the Grading Sidebar was not updating. When going from the first group attempt to the next one with the rubric open, it showed the rubric and feedback of the previous attempt. We've fixed the issue.
Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.15.0
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Ultra Experience, when Ultra Stream Notifications were sent to a specific, targeted role, the system announcement was sent correctly to the specific users with that institution role, but the Admin Announcement UI indicated the notification was sent to everyone. causing confusion for admins. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Experience, in tests, the student's browser needed to be refreshed manually in order to show them tests hidden by conditional availability, even after these conditions were met. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra and Original Experiences, there were software updates related to server performance causing customer email alerts: Administrators were receiving Failed to Phone Home emails for software updates on SaaS environments. They will no longer see those emails. Also, as part of this change, the Update Status column has been removed from the Installed Tools page for Building Blocks. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Original Experience, after a Learn user had disabled their profile image from view, other users were still able to see it as it remained publicly available. We've fixed the issue.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.13.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Support for Right to Left
Blackboard is pleased to introduce full Right to Left language support in Learn Ultra and to bring this capability to our Arabic and Hebrew speaking markets.
We've included in this release:
- Full Right to Left flipped user interface across Ultra including base navigation, Ultra Course View and System Admin.
- Enhancements for the Ultra Rich Text Editor that allow our users who write in Right to Left languages to adjust the text direction display.
- System level Arabic and Hebrew language support and Ultra Course View language enforcement.
Feedback by criterion
Rubrics are an essential tool when thinking about grading workflows. With this addition, rubrics inside Ultra courses are more useful to instructors. Segmented feedback provides more flexibility and detail to messages sent from instructors to students when grading an assignment. Students can have a better understanding of the why behind their grade, as per their instructor or grader prerogative.
Feedback by criterion is available wherever rubrics appear, like discussions, anonymous assignments, single and multiple attempts assignments, among others.
When using the parallel grading workflow, the option will be available to all graders, but the only feedback by criterion students will see, is the one given by the reconciler. The workflow remains around rubrics, and thus, feedback inside rubrics for the delegated workflow will remain the same.
This new feature is a step forward in our commitment to keep improving the rubrics roadmap.
A/V Recordings option in announcements
With this new option, instructors can now insert audio and video recordings in their course announcements.
Peer Assessment: Peer Notifications
This feature aims to expand previous releases of the Peer Assessment functionality. Students and instructors can learn about relevant changes in submissions via the Activity Stream. Instructors get notifications when new reviews arrive, and students get them when their reviews are graded.
Peer Assessment: Batch edit
This feature aims to expand previous releases of the Peer Assessment functionality. Instructors can edit peer review items in batches. They can adjust the due date of separate items at the same time by delaying or advancing the date in a given batch.
Reset Signed URL configuration
This feature improves content delivery, accessibility and performance for China users, serving all files via our CDN Servers. The server will auto-configure and set up the user’s session to use or not to use signed URLs during login. Administrators can manually adjust exceptions by contacting Blackboard Support.
Course Auto-Archive performance and efficiency improvements
This improvement fixes known issues causing archive-related instability and implements a safety-net to stop archiving courses that repeatedly fail. It also improves efficiency of auto-archives by adding more sources that the system can store as a reference instead of copying them as file data. Last but not least, it ensures that auto-archives are enabled for all sites as part of each release.
Learn SaaS release 3900.13.0: Update to client Test environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.13.0 (full release number 3900.13.0-rel.19+fa9ae0b) to client Test servers on Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, for LTI links with the proctoring changes added, the Deep Linking response wasn't handling properly array aud fields. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, Organizations, content items or files created with attachments could not be edited, and the user received an error message when attempting to modify them. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Experience, briefly after the Ultra Experience was enabled on their Production environment, admin users were receiving to many emails from [email protected], even from courses they were not enrolled in. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Experience, users were unable to post results for certain groups, getting instead an error message. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.36+d29e3aa) to client Production servers on Monday, May 3, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, Organizations, content items or files created with attachments could not be edited, and the user received an error message when attempting to modify them. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.33+0562ff2) to client Production servers on Thursday, April 29, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, briefly after the Ultra Experience was enabled on their Production environment, admin users were receiving to many emails from [email protected], even from courses they were not enrolled in. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.13.0: Update to client Test environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.13.0 (full release number 3900.13.0-rel.11+371689d) to client Test servers on Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, users enrolled with Facilitator role were getting an error message when changing assignment availability in Ultra courses as opposed to be able to change the visibility of the items. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.29+3b9a0fc) to client Production servers on Thursday, April 22, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, for mobile users (Instructor App), instructors can normally access Assessments RWD Ultra Screen in preview mode, but in the latest version this screen was rendered in editable mode. We fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Experience, users enrolled with Facilitator role were getting an error message when changing assignment availability in Ultra courses as opposed to be able to change the visibility of the items. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Experience, in large courses with more than 1000 students using discussions, the JVM was running out of memory or presenting performance delays. We've fixed the issue.
Highlight on bug fixes - 3900.13.0
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Ultra Course View, when an assignment was created with Anonymous Grading, some daily notifications and digest email received after submissions were made, contained the names of the students who have submitted them. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, in tests, some calculated numeric questions were wrongly marked as correct when the student introduced a combination of numeric values and letters in an answer that should be numerical only. We've fixed the issue and added a further explanation on the Help pages regarding supported types of input for scientific notation, units and constants.
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In the Original Course View, when recipients were selected for an enterprise survey response period, there was no way to identify or exclude child sections of merged courses, which caused some students to receive two copies of each survey. We've fixed the issue.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.10.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Proctoring Services Framework
In the Ultra Course View, we are pleased to announce the delivery of a proctoring framework to allow proctoring providers to integrate their solutions with Learn Ultra. To support high stakes secured proctored examinations has become an important component of online learning provision. With the rapid shift to blended and fully online learning due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many institutions have pivoted towards proctoring solutions to improve their capabilities to support online digital secured examinations. Thus, Blackboard has put together the necessary efforts and provide a mechanism to allow Proctoring solutions to be supported in the native Learn Ultra assessment flow.
With this release, Blackboard has developed a framework to allow proctoring providers to integrate their solutions into the native test settings of the Ultra Course View. By working closely with a number of key proctoring providers and the IMS Global Organization, Blackboard's Proctoring Framework has been built with a core focus on standards and interoperability in mind.
By leveraging and certifying against the very latest IMS LTI Proctoring standard and combining this open standards based approach with Blackboard’s own Premium APIs, we have been able to provide an extensible framework allowing partners and clients to build and deploy their integrations in Ultra. Alongside all Proctoring partners we are already working closely with, we expect to see many additional solutions and services within the assessment security realm aligning to this specification in the coming months.
Blackboard is the first and currently only LMS provider to be certified against this latest Proctoring specification.
The Proctoring Services Framework includes the following features to support instructor creation and student completion:
- Configuration of proctoring provider: instructors can choose to configure a proctoring solution for a native Ultra test. Selecting the desired integration from the corresponding drop-down list will allow the proctoring integration to display their native settings inline.
- New proctor secured detail and iconography: both instructors and students will see clear contextual detail and iconography in the assessment peak panel and also on the course outline indicating a test has been proctor secured.
- Student launch: students who need to complete a proctor secured test in Ultra, will follow the same procedure for access as with a non-proctor secured test, but will include additional security settings as per the proctoring solution prior to assessment access.
- Native Ultra assessment security: instructors can combine the flexibility of a proctor-secured test alongside the existing native Ultra access code functionality, supporting a more enhanced security flow for students taking an online test.
- Native Ultra assessment setting support: instructors can continue to utilize the existing settings functionality with a proctor-secured assessment, including but not limited to class conversations, multiple attempts, grading categories, grading schema, automated feedback settings and additional tools depending on the selected question types used.
Proctor-secured assessments do not support group assignments
Dropping grades inside categories for overall grade calculation
In the Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View, we are pleased to announce the delivery of dropping grades inside categories for overall grade calculations, as we understand flexibility is key in a LMS when we talk about managing final grades calculations for students, and there are different ways in which instructors and institutions would like to set what is considered in the overall grade calculations.
From this release on, instructors and other privileged roles will be able to decide if they want to add additional rules to how their overall grade is calculated when using calculation by categories. They'll be able to drop as many grades as they want (lowest/highest), as long as there are more items inside the category than dropped items, or to choose just the lowest or highest grade to be considered for that category. This feature serves a great variety of use cases, for instance, to help students at the end of the term or to remove outliers (highest/lowest) grades in order to get a better sense of students’ performance.
When rules are in place, students can gain access to their overall grade calculation details and see if some additional rules have been set by their instructors, which gives them clarity on how their grades are calculated and why their calculations might defer from the ones displayed in their gradebook.
Ultra messages: Unread message indication
We are pleased to announce the inclusion of Unread message indication for messages on the Base Navigation. This was a highly requested feature from our community, and we are excited to bring this capability to our clients. This solution will provide a clearly identifiable number count highlighting any new messages received for both Original and Ultra courses. When a user selects the Messages tool on the base navigation, the red number count will change to a red pill icon as to reduce distraction, but navigating away from this page will again show the unread message count. This capability will provide a greater level of transparency and engagement when new messages are sent and received for all users, and continues our commitment to enhancements for the Messages tool in Ultra.
Upgrade notifications for administrators
In the Ultra and Original Experiences, System administrators for Learn deployed in SaaS can opt-in to receive email notifications when an upgrade process starts and completes. This is particularly helpful for SaaS clients who want to be able to communicate with their support teams and user communities, with greater specificity when feature changes are available or bug fixes have been implemented. Users with the full System Administrator role can opt-in at Admin Panel > Notifications > System Alert Settings. Each administrator must opt-in individually to receive emails.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Delay for release to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.10.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, April 15, 2021, to Thursday, April 22, 2021. No other urgent fixes or security items are scheduled with this release, so we've decided to stay aligned with the regular weekday for Production releases (Thursday).
The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.23+d32af8a) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, April 13, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, for some instances, when an authorized user attempted to enroll another user in a given course, even from within the course, they received an error message related to the necessary privileges required to perform the enrollment. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0 and 3900.13.0: Delay for release to client Production and Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.10.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, April 8, 2021, to Thursday, April 15, 2021. No other urgent fixes or security items are scheduled with this release, so we've decided to stay aligned with the regular weekday for Production releases (Thursday).
We will also replace the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.12.0 release previously scheduled for Tuesday, April 13, for the 3900.13.0 release to client Test/Stage servers to take place on Tuesday, April 20, 2021. This delay also aligns with our usual pattern, to release a new Test/Stage version the Tuesday after a Production release, allowing us to include additional work in the upcoming May release.
The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.18+b85c058) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, April 6, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, we added a new guidance message to inform instructors about the new conditional release users & groups feature. The message was seen on documents by students as well, but it was only intended for users entitled to modify content availability. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, when a student provided peer feedback that included an image, this attachment failed to download or wasn't even visible when the feedback was reviewed. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0 and 3900.12.0: Delay for release to client Production and Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.10.0 release to client Production servers, previously scheduled for Thursday, April 1, 2021, to Thursday, April 8, 2021. No other urgent fixes or security items are scheduled with this release, so we've decided to stay aligned with the regular weekday for Production releases (Thursday).
We will also delay the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.12.0 release to client Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for Tuesday, April 6, 2021, to Tuesday, April 13, 2021. This delay also aligns with our usual pattern, to release a new Test/Stage version the Tuesday after a Production release.
The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Delay for Continuous Delivery update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.18+b85c058) update to client Test/Staging servers, previously scheduled for Tuesday, March 30, 2021. We’ll update this note as soon as we’ve identified a new target date.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.17+81ba8fd) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, March 23, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra and Original Course Views, all course content pages displayed an error if the Blackboard Store B2 was installed and set to be available or unavailable. We've fixed the issue and removed the Blackboard Store B2 (which reached its end of life in 2016) with this upgrade.
Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.37+0b5fb53) to client Production servers on Thursday, March 18, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, when questions were imported from an Original unit, some of them got randomly and unnecessarily duplicated in the Ultra Question Banks. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the Change Hostname option within the Admin authentication SAML settings returned the user to the Admin Panel page instead of changing the host name. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.10.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.10.0 (full release number 3900.10.0-rel.11+c24ca4f) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, March 16, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, when questions were imported from an Original unit, some of them got randomly and unnecessarily duplicated in the Ultra Question Banks. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original and Ultra Experiences, the Change Hostname option within the Admin authentication SAML settings returned the user to the Admin Panel page instead of changing the host name. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, when a Calculated Formula question was used in a test, if the answers used the exponential form (E-2, E-4, etc), with significant figures expressing the result, some right answers were marked as wrong, depending of the position of the decimal point. Also, the correct answer format field wasn't verified, students were able to answer a question with an incorrect format and the system would mark it as correct. We've fixed both issues.
API updates - 3900.10.0
Add lastLogin filter to User Collection Get endpoint: We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- Users of APIs now have the ability to filter user requests based on the lastLogin parameter.
For more information about our Rest Public APIs, please refer to: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi
Highlight on bug fixes
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Original Course View, automatically disable notifications for users with > n enrollments (with a default value for n = 500) has been enabled. Now admins are able to automatically disable the generation of new notifications for users when the user has more than a certain configurable number of enrollments. Note that Institutions that create large enrollment volumes for support staff should use Institutional Hierarchy instead.
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In the Original Course View, in the responsive Mobile View for the 2016 theme, Instructors, teaching assistants, course builders, graders and facilitators couldn't see the Instructor Gear icon which, in turn, contains the Student Preview and Edit Mode buttons. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, a student could receive a past due notification for an on-time submission sporadically. We've put in place proactive measures to monitor this behavior in order to fix it in a future release.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.10.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Assignment with Peer Review for Qualitative Peer Assessment
In the Ultra Course View, we started to implement the developments we've projected to improve the Peer Review Assessments experience. This is a synthetized description of what we've prepared for this release.
Peer assessment is a practice becoming more common because it encourages development of students’ critical thinking abilities, gives them practice in critique of others in a professional manner, and allows for measurement of students’ analysis and communication skills. With this release, qualitative peer review can be enabled for an Assignment in the Ultra Course View. It’s simple for instructors and students to use, and has the following features:
- Set different due dates for the initial assignment submission and the completion of peer review: Instructors can set how many reviews are expected from each student. Peers are assigned randomly and automatically.
- Late submitters and reviewers remain part of the task and can continue to participate: Instructors can clearly see who was late. This is a huge improvement over the implementation in Original Course View and superior to implementations found it other learning management systems where students who are late on anything can no longer participate.
- Tracking: Instructors can track students’ progress toward completion.
- Rubrics: Students can see the rubric that will optionally be used for the grade. Instructors can grade using a rubric.
- Complete, single view: When grading, the instructor can see all this information in a single view: the student’s submission, feedback provided by the students’ peers, and the feedback the current student gave to their peers.
- Anonymous mode for students: The identities of peers are hidden from students but viewable by instructors.
- Censoring: Instructors can hide reviews deemed inappropriate or harmful.
As this is a first release of the Peer Review option for Assignments, there are some relevant use cases that aren’t part of this development, but are planned as future improvements. Some of them include:
- Quantitative peer reviews: While a peer can view a rubric for guidance on providing feedback, the rubric can’t be used by students to provide a score.
- Non-anonymous mode for students: Names of peers are always hidden from students. If an instructor wants students to know who they evaluate, it is necessary to request students to add their names to their submissions. Hidden names from instructors are not supported in this release.
- Groups: There is no direct group support yet. However, because the review period excludes non-submitters automatically, it’s possible to set up multiple assignments with Peer Review enabled and set Conditional Availability by group membership. This way, assigned peers will always be members within a student’s group. Group submissions aren’t supported in this release.
- Multiple prompts with essay questions: In this release, only a single text prompt is supported for an Assignment with Peer Review. If there are multiple topics to which s student is to respond and receive feedback, those should all be outlined in a single prompt or broken up into several assignments.
- Separate grades for students’ submissions and their reviews: In this release, there is a single grade and rubric for an assignment. If the instructor wishes to communicate different scores for those two parts of the process, those can be outlined in the feedback.
Conditional availability by users or groups
In the Ultra Course View, we are pleased to announce the inclusion of a highly requested feature: conditional release by users and groups.
From this version on, Instructors and other roles with elevated rights, will be able to grant differentiated access to content based on their ultimate goals. As a new option to the conditional availability rules, already present in Ultra courses (date/time and performance-based rules), faculty can now allow certain students to have access to specific content while selecting one or both existing rules mentioned above.
This new feature will be an incredible addition to those who want to create remedial paths to certain students, give different content to undergraduate and postgraduate students in a course, among other use cases.
Disable notifications for users with high enrollments
In both Original and Ultra Course Views, we've improved the timeliness and performance of notifications for all users (including emails, push notifications, Stream, and MyBlackboard) by no longer generating these notifications for users with more than 500 enrollments.
A user with this large volume of course enrollments will still have access to all course resources but won’t receive notifications regardless of their settings.
Typically, users enrolled in so many courses are support staff or instructional designers. We recommend administrators to configure these users to be node administrators instead, with privileges to enroll and unenroll themselves from any course in the appropriate Institutional Hierarchy nodes, and with access to all the courses they may need without enroll them. Enrollment availability or enablement states are not considered for a user to count as to have over 500 enrollment records.
Embed LTI Content in Original Content Editor
In the Original Experience and Original Course View, the ability to support access to third-party content within the Content Editor by the use of LTI is an important milestone for institutions, partners, and tool creators who look to transition from Building Block mashups to the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard from IMS Global. Appropriate LTI course tools will appear for instructors, course builders, teaching assistants, and students in the Add Content menu as additional tools alongside Building Block mashup tools. Two methods are supported: either the tool can add a link in the editor, or if the tool designates that the resource should be embedded, it will be inserted into an iframe in the Content Editor and rendered automatically.
Rich Text Editor improvements
In the Ultra Experience, the Rich Text Editor improvements contemplated for this release are related to paragraph format change and allow the creation of more rich and customizable pages. They include:
- Clear formatting
- Text alignment
- Line height
- Undo
Scripts for Learn SaaS to bulk download course archives
In order to comply with data retention policies and reduce utilized space, administrators often want to move course archives to another location for longer-term storage. In SaaS, course archives are created automatically, and daily back-ups of course archives are stored in the cloud. We’ve included these scripts written in Python in the Course Settings and Auto Archive Settings pages to allow admins to copy archives locally or to an AWS S3 bucket prior to deleting them from Learn.
Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.32+30fa709) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, March 2, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, when an instructor is grading with a rubric a student's submission with a very long description in its content, the instructor needed to scroll down in order to see the submission and scroll up to see the rubric. We made this flow more comfortable, so the instructor can now see the submission and the rubric at the same time.
- In the Original Course View and the Original Experience, within the Content Editor, a user won't be able to use copy and paste functionalities to transfer images from other sources. The user can include images with the Add Content workflow, as it used to be before version 3900.0. We've made this change to address performance problems that arose with certain large or numerous images. We’ll review whether it's possible to reintroduce this capability in the future.
- In the Original Course View, when an XSS filter is applied to sanitize the content for different fields present in the plugin modules section, the fields are sanitized for both trusted and untrusted users as well. This behavior only occurred when a course tool was created via importing a package with the Import Package & Utilities functionality. We fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.6.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.6.0 (full release number 3900.6.0-rel.32+4fc1198) to client Production servers on Thursday, February 25, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View and the Original Experience, within the Content Editor, a user won't be able to use copy and paste functionalities to transfer images from other sources. The user can include images with the Add Content workflow, as it used to be before version 3900.0. We've made this change to address performance problems that arose with certain large or numerous images. We’ll review whether it's possible to reintroduce this capability in the future.
Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.28+7eb0c69) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, February 23, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, in Assignments, Assessments and Journals, when a student inserted a math formula image it was replaced with a broken image and ALT text and the instructor couldn't see it properly in order to grade the submission. We fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, when copied from an Original course, incompatible discussion board availability settings were retained, blocking access to current students. We fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, when feedback was about to be recorded for an Assignment using Chrome, a misleading error message appeared instead of the expected recording controls and prevented the user to continue. We fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, students were unable to view iframe content in the Notes area for Contacts, Tasks and Glossary posted by their instructor including YouTube and Kaltura uploaded content. We fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.6.0: Update to client Production environments
The scheduled Production release of 3900.6.0 (full release number 3900.6.0-rel.27+4fc382c) during off-hours on Thursday, February 18, 2021 includes this additional update.
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In the Original Course View, students were unable to view iframe content in the Notes area for Contacts, Tasks and Glossary posted by their instructor including YouTube and Kaltura uploaded content. We fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.22+d9cd600) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, February 16, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, when an instructor entered grades in each category of rubric for an assignment with rubrics, the page reloaded and the focus was taken away from the comments and/or grade fields. We fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.8.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3900.8.0 (full release number 3900.8.0-rel.19+5f99a51) to client Test/Stage servers on Friday, February 12, 2021
Updates in this version include:
- Some Test/Stage environments encountered a deadlock during startup and couldn’t be upgraded. We’ve reverted the changes made while we gather the required diagnostic information to implement a permanent solution.
- In the Ultra and Original Course Views, in Mobile, course messages had duplicated content in their push notifications and appeared encoded and unreadable to users. We’ve reverted the changes made while we verify a permanent solution.
- In the Ultra Course View, in Mobile, course messages' push notifications were sent to sender users. We’ve fixed the issue (updated).
- In the Original Course View, the Goal Performance Dashboard was failing on SaaS Servers for certain reports. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.6.0: Update to client Production environments
The scheduled Production release of 3900.6.0 (full release number 3900.6.0-rel.24+5fa90d1) during off-hours on Thursday, February 11, 2021 includes one additional update.
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In the Ultra Course View, when an instructor entered grades in each category of rubric for an assignment with rubrics, the page reloaded and the focus was taken away from the comments and/or grade fields. We fixed the issue.
API updates - 3900.8.0
Ability to manage user-to-node associations: We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- Users of APIs now have the ability to create, update, or delete institutional hierarchy node associations between users and Institutional Hierarchy associations nodes.
For more information about our Rest Public APIs, please refer to: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi
Highlight on bug fixes
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Ultra Course View, when a user created a TurnItIn assignment using the LTI 1.3 integration and clicked to access the LTI content on the Activity Stream, the peak panel was displayed empty. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, after a refractor process from SOAP to REST when grades were called from the Grade Centre, the REST public API was considerably slower. We managed to improve the response time and fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, where a calculated formula rounding was required, the number 5 was rounded down rather than rounded up for some values. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, after a performance improvement for the Blog View response times was made in the 3900.0 release, the workflow for grading non-participants was affected. When an instructor wanted to find non-participant users to grade them with zero, students were not visible in the blog or journal. We've reversed the related improvement changes until we find a permanent solution.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.8.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Localize EMAIL and SMS notification messages to user's preferred language
In both Ultra and Original Experiences, system notification emails were always sent in the SYSTEM DEFAULT language. Now, system notifications sent by email and SMS will be sent in the USER’s chosen language instead. This aligns Learn with our goal to provide individual choice wherever possible. Users continue to have control over their notification types and modalities in their notification settings.
System and Institutional Role Ids
Starting with the 3900.6.0 SaaS release, System and Institutional Role Ids will no longer be changeable after creation. This impacts Role management Java and REST APIs and the Learn Administrator user experience for Role creation. Please take extra care when creating your System and Institutional Role Ids.
Client-facing impact:
- For Learn administrators, custom roles created via System Admin > Institution Roles will no longer allow the Role ID attribute to be edited after creation.
- For partner developers, the method blackboard.data.role.PortalRole#setRoleID may no longer be used to change the Role ID of existing roles.
Annotate information message
In the Original and Ultra Course Views, formatting space differences may be visible between the original uploaded document and the one rendered online for .docx, .doc, .ppt, and .pptx files. We've added an on-screen information message to let users know about this. The message appears anywhere where Bb Annotate is enabled, including the Mobile View. Instructors and students are able to download the original file as usual.
Learn SaaS release 3900.6.0: Update to client Production environments
The scheduled Production release of 3900.6.0 (full release number 3900.6.0-rel.16+e5c4a95) during off-hours on Thursday, February 4, 2021 includes one additional update.
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In the Original Course View, when an instructor added content to a discussion (forum) thread that contained an iframe, the student couldn't see the content within the iframe. We fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.6.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.6.0 (full release number 3900.6.0-rel.15+bd9f50f) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, February 2, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the originality report option was displayed while grading the assessment, when safe-assign was not enabled. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.6.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.6.0 (full release number 3900.6.0-rel.12+0cc66df) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, January 26, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, when an instructor edited a group set's settings and deleted the end date for self enrollment, an error caused the system to close the self enrollment option for students. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, embedded LTI links returned from deep linking didn't send the custom parameters back. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.4.0: Addition to client Production release
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.4.0 (full release number 3900.4.0-rel.23+718491f) to client Production environments on Thursday, January 21, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, instructors were unable to access the rubrics for anonymous assessments. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.6.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.6.0 (full release number 3900.6.0-rel.12+0cc66df) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, January 19, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, instructors were unable to access the rubrics for anonymous assessments. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, when LTI 1.3 profiles were automatically enabled, a default course tool was created for use in LTI Advantage services that could appear without the administrator's approval. We've made a quick fix to avoid this appearance in the course tools area. In a future release, a profile change will drive this fix.
- In the Original Course View, enterprise surveys with open questions followed by a page break displayed an error when a user tried to move to the next page, and the survey couldn’t be completed. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.4.0: Addition to client Production release
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.4.0 | Release to Production 7 January 2021
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.4.0 (full release number 3900.4.0-rel.23+718491f) to client Production on Thursday, January 14, 2021.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, a recent fix to the Grade Center scrolling behavior caused problems loading custom color palettes. We’ve reverted the Grade Center scrolling behavior until both issues are resolved.
- For sites on Ultra base navigation, when a user opened the Student Activity page in an Original Course View course, the course disappeared and the user returned to the Ultra base navigation page. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, when LTI 1.3 profiles were automatically enabled, a default course tool was created for use in LTI Advantage services that could appear without the administrator's approval. We've made a quick fix to avoid this appearance in the course tools area. In a future release, a profile change will drive this fix.
API updates - Blackboard Premium APIs
Premium APIs: In this release, Blackboard’s Premium APIs transition from technical preview to general availability. Blackboard Premium APIs are REST-based application interfaces that add capabilities and value for institutions, partners, and other third-party tool creators beyond simple data exchange and available open standards. The first set of available Premium APIs is a collection called the Ultra Extension Framework (UEF) APIs.
The UEF APIs allow an integrated tool to communicate securely with Learn. With the UEF, integrated tools are aware of where users are in Learn and what they’re interacting with. The UEF is typically used with standards such as LTI Advantage to integrate a tool’s user interface and REST APIs to exchange data. The UEF allows a tool to engage with users when and where they need to rather than hoping that users visit fixed tool locations. Institutions and third parties who use the UEF will have the opportunity to create more personalized experiences in Blackboard Learn than can be achieved in other learning platforms.
The UEF enhances Learn’s Ultra Base Navigation and Ultra Course View with a robust set of capabilities:
- Real-time telemetry provides detailed user navigation behavior information so integrated apps can respond in very personalized ways.
- Help provider registration allows the default behavior of the Learn Ultra help tool (the question mark bubble icon) to be overridden with another support solution.
- User interface element rendering gives integrated applications the ability to populate UI elements and content, including banners, modals, interface panels, and notifications to users only when and where they’re needed, creating unique and tailored experiences for each user.
For more information on the UEF, please refer to https://docs.blackboard.com/learn/uef/getting-started
Using Premium APIs: During technical preview, we handled access to Premium APIs manually for early access participants. Now that they are generally available, access is formally managed in the Developer Portal. Appropriate Developer Groups can give designated applications access to Blackboard’s Premium APIs. Premium APIs are not directly visible to, or usable by, end users.
Blackboard’s Premium APIs, including the Ultra Extension Framework, are available to all clients and Blackboard Partnership Program members at the Bronze level and higher. Developers who want to use Premium APIs must have configured their Developer Portal Groups accordingly. Please, contact Support with your request or send an email to [email protected] if you have additional questions. Visit the Blackboard Partners page for more information about partnership levels.
Examples of the use UEF:
- Qwickly is leveraging the UEF (a Premium API) to provide instructors the option to display the attendance Check-in entry tool from directly within the Ultra course experience. This enhanced integration results in fewer clicks and eliminates the reliance on an external tool launch.
- EesySoft uses Premium APIs to deliver a highly personalized user experience based on where the user is and what they’re currently doing within the Learn Ultra application.
Course archive quarantine
We’ve improved the performance of the course archives process when an archive fails due to specific, particular circumstances.
After three unsuccessful archive attempts, the course will be quarantined for evaluation. Administrators will receive an email notification that a course has been quarantined. Once the email notification is received, the administrator can check the quarantined courses list and reach out to Blackboard Support for further assistance, similar to the process for an export course issue.
- A notification will be sent to the administrator every time a new course enters quarantine.
- The functionality is enabled by default. To disable it, the system administrator should contact Blackboard Support.
Highlight on bug fixes
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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Adaptive Release and Test Exceptions: The text under Test Availability Exceptions and Review Status sections related to organizations and courses is now showing as expected.
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The Group Assignment Submission page was confusing to students: Whenever the first student from a group clicked on the assignment, he/she arrived to a submission page with an option to submit the assignment. If this student navigated away from this page without selecting Cancel, then all group members that log in afterward would see a page with previous submission information (i.e. a "review submission history" page) that suggested there was an ungraded attempt already submitted. The student then had the option to continue.
Now, the system still shows the Upload Assignment page since no attempt was ever actually submitted.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.6.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
New navigation tab in the Assessment View
Instructors and students will find a new navigation tab at the right side of the screen when they navigate the Assessment View. This new navigation tab helps users to access all the options and features available for the current assessment from one single place. This tab will be visible to both students and instructors once a student sends the first submission.
The options available from the new side tab are:
- Originality Report: Users will be able to select their service provider, including SafeAssign.
- Rubrics: Instructors will be able to grade the assessment with rubrics. Both students and instructors can check the grades that have been assigned by the instructor for each criterion. Instructors will also be able to more easily override and undo override actions.
- Feedback: Instructors and peers will be able to provide general feedback about the assessment.
Learn SaaS release 3900.4.0: Addition to client Production release
The scheduled Production release of 3900.4.0 (full release number 3900.4.0-rel.20+93e130c) during off-hours on Thursday, January 7, 2021 includes one additional update.
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Client credentials bearer tokens didn't grant access to Learn when using Applications with Premium API Access enabled. We fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.4.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.4.0 (full release number 3900.4.0-rel.17+f210f75) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, December 29, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the course groups tool wasn't visible if an institution had a large number of tools installed. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, the rich text editor didn't display an HTML preview after a media link was pasted. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.4.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.4.0 (full release number 3900.4.0-rel.14+d8ea606) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, December 22, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the minimal rich text editor displayed some incorrect icons and tooltips and some unnecessary buttons. We've fixed the issues.
- In the Original Course View, the content editor removed link tags and URLs with Javascript in image and anchor tags whether or not the user had the Add/Modify Trusted Content permission. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, when an alternate domain is enabled, allowing guest access to course files could deny signed-in users the ability to access the files. We’ve fixed the issue.
- We've added a page to the Admin Panel to allow the ability to enable an alternate domain for serving content files, and specify the host name for the alternate domain. You’ll find the Alternate Domain for Serving Content page in the Security section of the Admin Panel.
Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.2.0 (full release number 3900.2.0-rel.34+4ad580a) to client Production environments on Thursday, December 17, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, the Question Analysis report for tests presented incorrect results at some institutions. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, some students didn’t have permission to access a group assignment. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, the Link to Wiki page option was missing from the new Content Editor experience. You can now find it under the Add content dialog. Learn more about linking to other wiki pages.
Learn SaaS release 3900.4.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.4.0 (full release number 3900.4.0-rel.10+9fc85c4) to client Test/Staging environments on Tuesday, December 15, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- If HTML content written by instructors or administrators referenced hosted content served from an alternate domain, the iframe didn’t load properly. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, the Question Analysis report for tests presented incorrect results at some institutions. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, some students didn’t have permission to access a group assignment. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, the Link to Wiki page option was missing from the new Content Editor experience. You can now find it under the Add content dialog. Learn more about linking to other wiki pages.
Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.2.0 (full release number 3900.2.0-rel.31+0a50fe3) to client Production environments on Thursday, December 10 and Friday, December 11, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- If HTML content written by instructors or administrators referenced hosted content served from an alternate domain, the iframe didn’t load properly. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, test questions linked from a question pool had a difficulty score of 0% regardless of how students answered. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Partial delay for update to Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re partially delaying the regular maintenance update to Blackboard Learn SaaS 3900.2.0 Production environments, previously scheduled for Thursday, December 10, 2020.
- Production environments aligned to Europe and US Eastern time zones will be updated as usual on Thursday, December 10, 2020.
- Production environments aligned to Asia-Pacific, US Central, US Mountain, and US Pacific time zones will be updated on Friday, December 11, 2020.
API updates
We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- Added an endpoint that separates child courses from their set parents so that API users can now undo parent/child course relationships via APIs.
Building block self-service
With this release, SaaS administrators can now install and uninstall building blocks on their SaaS instance without depending on Blackboard Support. This change gives our clients the flexibility of managing their own installations instead of waiting for the Support team. Administrators can install and uninstall building blocks in Admin Panel > Building Blocks > Installed Tools. Installation and removal of a building block will trigger an automated rolling restart. No additional action is needed from the administrator.
Blackboard understands this is an exciting update for our clients. It is worth pointing out that we continue to expand our REST APIs as well as deepening our LTI support. It's important to note that a combination of REST API/LTI is preferred to ensure integration support in the Ultra experience. REST APIs/LTI are the modern standard that SaaS companies use when interfacing with their systems. More and more of our partners are developing towards REST APIs/LTI, and we continue to look forward to the time where our REST API/LTI framework is robust enough to handle all use cases that building blocks currently support.
End of SOAP Web Services capabilities
Blackboard SOAP Web Services were officially deprecated on January 4, 2019 (see the original announcement).
As of December 31, 2020, Blackboard Learn SOAP Web Services are no longer supported, as they have reached the end of life per our deprecation policy.
In February 2021, we will update the Proxy Tools and Web Services System Administrator pages with the removal of links for Registering new Proxy Tools, Creating new Web Services, and accessing SOAP Web Services documentation and development tools.
The removal of these links does not disable the use of currently installed Proxy Tools or Web Services.
While SOAP may continue to work for your institution, any issues or concerns regarding SOAP will not be addressed by Blackboard other than the recommendation of moving to REST APIs.
Full removal of SOAP Web Services capabilities is planned for the May 2021 and future releases. Note that this plan is subject to change, and that SOAP Web Service capabilities may not be removed until a later release.
Fixed issues
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
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In the Ultra Course View, the Post Now button for Announcements didn't disable after its first selection while the work processed in courses with large numbers of students. This meant instructors could select the button, post the announcement, and email students multiple times. Now, the Post Now button will disable on first selection.
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In the Original Course View, when a Grade Center column had a long title and required multi-line wrapping, the window size changed depending on whether the column with the long title was visible. This made it difficult to scroll, because the horizontal scroll bar changed position with the size of the window. Now, the window size remains consistent.
If particularly long item names make the header larger than you’d like, shortened alternative names can be added just for displaying in the Grade Center. In the Grade Center, select a column and in the menu, choose Edit Column Information and set a shorter title for Grade Center Name.
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In the Original Course View, when a user added an image in the content editor, the text after the image was forced to the next line. We've fixed the issue.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.4.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Rich text editor improvements
In this release, users will have access to more formatting tools in the Ultra Course View's rich text editor. Users can format content in a variety of different ways, including font colors, font sizes, and font style. We've also redesigned the tool's base to provide a better experience with a secondary bar that will display additional options, especially on smaller screens. Students, instructors, and administrators will see these changes everywhere they encounter the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View.
Support panel session data
Logging tickets has long been a struggle for administrators. There isn’t an easy way for administrators to capture what the user was doing at the time the issue occurred. This often leads to a lot of back and forth between our clients and support as we attempt to gather the necessary information needed to investigate a bug further. We understand how frustrating that process can be. With this release, users will now be able to capture their most recent session data (last 30 actions the user has taken) and send it to their administrators to attach in support cases. This feature will be available in the Support Panel as well as anywhere the “Oops! Your name is not on the list.” message can occur. Administrators can retrieve the log files via Admin Panel > Tools and Utilities > Logs > Session Debug Logs.
Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Addition to client Production release
The scheduled Production release of 3900.2.0 (full release number 3900.2.0-rel.27+70f5845) during off-hours on Thursday, December 3, 2020 includes two additional updates.
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When an LTI gradable item with a deep link response was copied, the copy wasn't gradable. We fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Course View, some students didn't see the feedback their instructor added to their journal. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.2.0 (full release number 3900.2.0-rel.25+e0228f9) to client test/stage servers on Tuesday, December 1, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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In the Original Course View, when an instructor edited response feedback to a test question, the content editor loaded after a 2-second delay. We’ve fixed the issue.
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When an institution had the same entityID configured in their IDP and SP metadata, SAML authentication failed and users couldn’t log in. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.2.0 (full release number 3900.2.0-rel.20+e43df0f) to client test/stage servers on Tuesday, November 24, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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The download button for the Insight Report (Beta) for administrators wouldn't respond or create a CSV. We've fixed the issue.
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When restoring a merged course from an archive, Learn only restored the parent course and not its child course(s). We've fixed the issue.
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A few institutions that use the Consulting Central B2 for Blackboard Assist saw slow performance and some downtime in Learn. We've fixed the issue.
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Existing and newly created web links in Library modules were throwing an error when clicked. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.60+0c79e9e) to client Production servers during off-hours on Monday, November 23, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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A few institutions that use the Consulting Central B2 for Blackboard Assist saw slow performance and some downtime in Learn. We’ve fixed the issue.
Annotate comment enhancement
Now, instructors can create multiple comments in Bb Annotate without needing to select the comment tool for every comment they add.
The comment tool will get de-selected if an instructor scrolls through the document, but once they fit the document to the screen, the comment tool will stay selected.
Bb Annotate enhancements
Starting on Tuesday, November 24th, PDF files will be flattened for the BbAnnotate preview when uploaded for an assignment. On PDFs, text comment annotations made prior to submission will appear as yellow boxes in the document and will not be movable or collapsible. Drawings, pictures, shapes, and other annotations that are not comments will appear normally and also won't be movable after flattening.
When the file is flattened, students can also see their drawable annotations made with iPad or Microsoft Surface pens on PDF preview before the professor grades it. Currently students cannot see annotations until after professor grades it, which can cause confusion about whether the file appears correctly.
This enhancement is an additional security layer in BbAnnotate to prevent forgeable re-submissions of professor annotations. It also resolves an issue where iPad annotations (APStreams) weren’t appearing on annotated PDFs.
This change only affects PDFs submitted in the future. Previously uploaded files (including files with iPad annotations) will render as they have been.
Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.57+59c5f28) to client Production servers during off-hours on Wednesday, November 18, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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When an instructor copied a journal from one Ultra course to another, all journals from the first course were copied to the second. We’ve fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Course View, some Collaborate sessions didn’t appear in the Join Session overflow menu. We’ve fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, response feedback for the Grade Questions feature of the Grade Center was missing the new content editor, and text entered into the box there wouldn’t save. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Unannotated Box documents wouldn’t load in Bb Annotate. We’ve fixed the issue.
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The download button for the Insight Report (Beta) for administrators wouldn’t respond or create a CSV. We’ve fixed the issue.
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When restoring a merged course from an archive, Learn only restored the parent course and not its child course(s). We’ve fixed the issue.
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When a Redis connection failed, Learn didn't attempt to reconnect, so users had to manually retry their task. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.2.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.2.0 (full release number 3900.2.0-rel.11+071cf8e) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, November 17, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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When an instructor copied a journal from one Ultra course to another, all journals from the first course were copied to the second. We’ve fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Course View, some Collaborate sessions didn’t appear in the Join Session overflow menu. We’ve fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, response feedback for the Grade Questions feature of the Grade Center was missing the new content editor, and text entered into the box there wouldn’t save. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Unannotated Box documents wouldn’t load in Blackboard Annotate. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Ally wouldn’t work in Learn when alternative domains were enabled. We’ve fixed the issue.
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When a Redis connection failed, Learn didn't attempt to reconnect, so users had to manually retry their task. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Final automatic archive files created after a course was deleted didn’t include enrolled user data. We’ve fixed the issue.
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After an upgrade, some institutions had to manually uninstall and reinstall their Authentication Provider SAML building block because of a Postgres installation problem. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.46+e0d1a9b) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, November 12, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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When an instructor copied a journal from one Ultra course to another, all journals from the first course were copied to the second. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Unannotated Box documents wouldn’t load in Bb Annotate. We’ve fixed the issue.
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SAML logins intermittently failed on one app server at a time for a small number of institutions. We’ve fixed the issue.
Custom HTML/CSS code blocks in Ultra course documents
With this release, instructors can create, edit, and delete custom HTML/CSS code blocks in Ultra course documents. Instructors can select Add HTML when creating a document to add their own HTML and CSS and fully customize the appearance of their Ultra course documents.
We've added this capability without compromising the Ultra design aesthetics (i.e., content will be fully responsive and accessible). We’ve also added a new entitlement to support greater security and flexibility for institutions to allow granular permissions to specific roles.
Students will see what the instructors created or edited, but they will not be able to create, edit, or delete any of the HTML/CSS blocks.
In an effort to support more enhanced security and to maintain the responsiveness of the Ultra Experience, we're leveraging an existing solution in Learn to support this capability. If you already have an alternate domain configured, your instructors will see the Add HTML option in Ultra Course View documents. If you don't have an alternate domain configured, we have you covered! We're in the process of automating an alternate domain for all clients, and should have that work completed later in the year. You can submit a support ticket to request access to this feature now.
Fixed issues
The bug fixes in this Learn release include:
- When D2L course content was imported into an Ultra course, document heading formatting was lost. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In an Ultra course, when a user not enrolled creates a discussion, the system throws an error when a student tries to access it: “Oops! Something broke. Please reload the page.” Now, the discussion board opens without error.
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t navigate to the next course content item from a discussion board post if conditional availability was set. We’ve fixed the issue.
- The Course List / My Courses module was missing from the main Courses tab on the Institution Pages during the upgrade process. We’ve fixed the issue.
- When an instructor exported a single question pool with a special character from the Original Course View, the pool wouldn’t import as a question bank to an Ultra course. We’ve fixed the issue.
You can view all maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.2.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
LTI tool availability by institutional hierarchy
Administrators can now manage the availability of third-party LTI tools according to their institutional hierarchy, similar to how they can with Building Block tools. Administrators can control availability of tools by department or course in Admin Panel > Institutional Hierarchy. Original Course View courses continue to allow instructors to override the availability state of tools if allowed. Tool availability in Ultra Course View courses is always managed by the administrator. The options when managing LTI tool availability settings have been updated to reflect these differences.
Student list view improvements
This release includes additional improvements for student list view in the Ultra gradebook that we added based on feedback we’ve had from instructors. New functionalities include:
- Administrators can configure whether students’ usernames are visible to instructors if they need to differentiate students. This capability is available for institutions that choose to hide usernames for privacy considerations and when instructors still need to be able to see them, particularly in courses with very large enrollment numbers. Administrators need to enable this permission for a role in Admin Panel > System Roles > Show username even when hidden from other users.
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Instructors will receive additional search capabilities, column sorting options, and enhanced page controls for both large and small devices.
Ultra feedback timing controls
With this release, Learn Ultra now allows instructors to further promote test fairness and discourage academic dishonesty. Instructors can enable more granular controls on when and what type of feedback is given to students when taking an assessment. Instructors can set up timed release to automated question feedback, correct answers, and question scores. They can also select when to show feedback: after submission, after due date, at a specific date, or after the assessment is graded. Students will see if and when feedback will be available for a specific assessment after they submit an attempt.
Ultra journals enhancements
With this release, we’ve added the highly-anticipated participation and submission views to Ultra journals. Importantly, participation view can now support over 1,000 students at once. Instructors can clearly see when students post new journals and comments, and can view a single submission. Instructors can also use Ultra’s grading tools, including feedback and rubrics, to create and post grades. To allow instructors more varied access, both participation and submission views link to the gradebook. By default, students will be allowed to delete and edit their journal entries and comments, but instructors can also now choose to disable this permission.
Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.42+47a7c9a) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, November 3, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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When D2L course content was imported into an Ultra course, document heading formatting was lost. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Some Ultra tests that use Respondus LockDown Browser added extra time permitted to the test time limit automatically, instead of presenting as two different time totals. We’ve fixed the issue.
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If an Ultra test had a set time limit and then was set to require Respondus LockDown Browser, the time limit was removed. We’ve fixed the issue.
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When Ultra discussion boards were copied from a different course and Include only the forums, with no starter posts was selected, members of the destination course could only see the discussion name and couldn’t edit or reply to the discussion. We’ve fixed the issue.
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When an Original course was converted to Ultra Course View, unlinked journals were retained and slowed course content copying. We’ve fixed the issue.
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In the Original Course View, if the Content Collection Availability was set to “No,” administrators couldn’t browse the Content Collection to restore a course from automatic archives. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Institutions that use the Redis Cache Building Block couldn’t connect to the Redis service during high traffic periods. We’ve fixed the issue.
Blackboard Chatbot for Learn
We’re excited to announce the first availability of Blackboard Chatbot in Learn. Blackboard Chatbot is a free tool offered in Blackboard Learn that will be automatically available to SaaS higher education clients in North America who have enabled the Ultra Base Navigation. It launches beginning on November 5, with the 3900.0.0 Learn SaaS production release. Some institutions may not see Chatbot in Learn until November 6.
Seamlessly integrated into Ultra Base Navigation and Ultra courses, Blackboard Chatbot provides always-on support. It returns answers to students' commonly asked Learn questions and issues directly from Blackboard Help. For this initial release, Blackboard Chatbot is available only in English.
To access Blackboard Chatbot, select the help icon in the bottom right. Then select Chat Support to open the Chatbot panel. Students can ask Blackboard Chatbot their questions or select from a pre-populated list. Chatbot uses machine learning to better serve your learners over time.
Blackboard Chatbot will be on by default, but administrators can manage its availability.
For more details about Blackboard Chatbot for Learn, visit the Community site
Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.28+4af3c58) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 27, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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Based on user feedback, we’ve removed the blue background from course-related icons in the large icon update for Ultra Course View and base navigation.
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In the Original Course View, some students could access private journal entries written by other students. Also, additional students couldn't post after the first student responded to the journal prompt. We’ve fixed the issue.
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When Learn SaaS environments were updated, Original course and organization menus reverted to the default and customizations had to be reapplied. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.54+54663c8) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 22, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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Some Learn environments that use the Partner Cloud Building Block had problems with content sync. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3900.0.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3900.0.0 (full release number 3900.0.0-rel.18+41e3877) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 20, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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In the Ultra Course View with the Spanish language pack, a grade calculation in the Ultra gradebook was incorrectly labeled as NaN. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Some Learn environments that use the Partner Cloud Building Block had problems with content sync. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.51+4456ac1) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 15, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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We've integrated Xythos Service Packs 20 and 21, which introduce internal improvements to the content system.
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The verbosity level of new log nodes reverted to the default initial value instead of matching the level set in Log Settings. We've fixed the issue.
Assist
As students re-engage in their disrupted educational experience, they'll need student services more than ever. At some institutions, these services will be virtual for the first time. Blackboard Assist is a student success hub for campus and online resources, available on your desktop or from anywhere with the Blackboard mobile app. Assist elevates campus and online resources, building awareness so students always find what they need.
Assist supports your educational continuity plans with institutional, Blackboard-sourced, and partner-provided solutions. Institutions can create and feature profiles of their existing services to appear in Assist. Assist also provides access to partner services: curated, high-quality providers offering scalable, virtual solutions to meet student needs. Administrators can manage available partner services that best benefit their students.
Assist will be available in Learn SaaS for higher education institutions in the Original Experience, the Ultra Experience, and the Blackboard app. At this time, it won't be available for K12, corporate, and government clients.
We encourage you to start planning the services you would promote in Assist, connecting with the offices that manage your student services including academic and financial assistance, health and wellness, housing and food security, and student life.
In future releases, Assist will adapt to users and offer personalized recommendations in places of learning such as in courses, the gradebook, and the activity stream.
More on Assist for instructors
More on Assist for administrators
Visit the Community site for more details and guides you can use to share information on Assist
Content editor updates
This release introduces big updates to the content editor in the Original Course View and the Original experience. We’ve made numerous simplifications and improvements, including:
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A single menu to add content that automatically recognizes file types
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Optimized experience for all devices and screen sizes
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Better accessibility for both the editor and the content you create. Menus and icons have higher contrast, pop-ups are gone, and an accessibility checker lets you know about accessibility issues as you write
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The ability to paste content from Word, Excel, and websites with basic formatting and easily remove extra HTML
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The ability to paste a link in the editor and automatically embed videos and previews
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The ability to display formatted computer code snippets
Institutions using custom language packs created for older versions of Learn have found they may need to update their language packs for the editor to work properly.
API updates
We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- Institutions and partners can now provide students direct, deep links to specific Learn course content from their own portal or tool.
Blog performance
In very large classes, performance is one of our top concerns. We’ve received feedback that including all students in the blog and journal view filter created slow loading times. To improve this performance, we’ve changed the view filter to display only those course members who have completed participation in the blog or journal activity. Non-participants are not displayed. For graded blogs or journals, instructors can display non-participants in the Grade Center.
Details & Actions items load together
With this release, items in the Details & Actions section of the Ultra Course View will now load in a single wave. This change will prevent students and instructors from selecting the wrong item as the page loads.
Embed Office 365 documents
In this release, students and instructors can embed Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files as well as Microsoft Stream videos from SharePoint into the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View. This option is only available with enterprise versions of Office 365.
Gradebook student list view improvements
This release introduces several improvements and new functionality for student list view in the Ultra gradebook.
- Instructors can send messages and add accommodations for a student within both the student list view and the grade details view
- Instructors can set up activity stream alerts about student inactivity and grade thresholds for themselves and their students. If their course contains enough activity and grading data, they can also see a detailed visualization of class performance.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3900.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Large icon updates
In this release, you’ll see new large icons in the Ultra experience. We made these changes to our icons to improve accessibility and differentiation for all users.
- Like the small icon update earlier this year, the new icons have a thicker stroke to improve accessibility.
- The new icons are more distinctive to avoid confusion between similar icons and to better support quick scanning.
Show seconds in quiz timer
With this release, students will know how much time they have left down to the last second when they take a quiz in the Ultra Course View. The quiz timer will change from minutes to seconds when less than 1 minute remains.
Show/hide overall grade column
With this release, instructors can choose whether to show or hide overall grades to their students in the Ultra Course View.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.42+e227a86) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 8, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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Emailed course announcements in both the Original and Ultra Course Views now include both the course name and the title of the announcement in the email subject.
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The calculated grade snapshot information didn't update correctly in courses that use the Telemetry B2. We've fixed the issue.
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Learn environments ran out of memory when archiving courses with large volumes of activity accumulator records. We've fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t navigate to the next course content item from a discussion board post if conditional availability was set. We’ve fixed the issue.
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In the Ultra Course View, users who had system permission to create materials but were not enrolled in a course couldn’t add permanent files to a course. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.35+878ad8e) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 6, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
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In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn't join Collaborate sessions with their course links. We've fixed the issue.
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Emailed course announcements in both the Original and Ultra Course Views now include both the course name and the title of the announcement in the email subject.
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The calculated grade snapshot information didn't update correctly in courses that use the Telemetry B2. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Addition to client Production release
The scheduled Production release of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.33+a603588) during off-hours on Thursday, October 1, 2020 includes an additional update.
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In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn't join Collaborate sessions with their course links. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.32+99f4ccd) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 29, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- We’ve added unique login counts for the previous 30, 90, and 180 days to the Learn Insight Report.
- In the Ultra Course View, some replies weren’t visible in discussions. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, some users’ discussion response and reply counts didn’t appear correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, some users’ profiles and activity in discussions appeared as though the users were unavailable. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, discussion forum links that were broken during a course copy couldn’t be removed from the new course. We’ve fixed the issue.
- When an instructor reverted a course back to the Original Course View from Ultra Course Preview, a lost association with the course data source key caused problems with SIS integration. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some users at institutions that use SSO with the SAML Building Block had trouble logging in to their Learn environments. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.17.0 (full release number 3800.17.0-rel.27+f09831f) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, September 24, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, emailed announcements didn't include the announcement title in the subject line. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, students received an incorrect password error when a test used a password with certain character patterns. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.19.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.19.0 (full release number 3800.19.0-rel.24+879e1a1) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 22, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, emailed announcements didn't include the announcement title in the subject line. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, students received an incorrect password error when a test used a password with certain character patterns. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View with Ally enabled, administrators couldn’t remove replaced files included in a course copy from the new course’s content collection. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn't view a course document after visiting an LTI link in a learning module that uses sequential availability. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t view a test submission when SafeAssign was enabled and Respondus LockDown browser was required. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Instructors couldn’t add LTI deep linked content to their courses if SameSite cookie support was enabled in their browser. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Instructors couldn’t access the users enrolled in their course through third-party applications that use the course membership REST API. We’ve fixed the issue.
- At some institutions that use SIS integrations for notifications, a small number of user accounts were locked when notification traffic was heavy. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.17.0 (full release number 3800.17.0-rel.23+292bc5b) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, September 17, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn't view a course document after visiting an LTI link in a learning module that uses sequential availability. We've fixed the issue.
- Instructors couldn’t access the users enrolled in their course through third-party applications that use the course membership REST API. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, students couldn’t view a test submission when SafeAssign was enabled and Respondus LockDown browser was required. We’ve fixed the issue.
Changes to deleted file retention period
With this release, Blackboard will change the content collection system’s deleted file retention period from 45 days to 32 days on clients' Learn SaaS sites. This change will reduce the amount of storage used by client sites and bring our retention period in line with the Learn SaaS Service Level Agreements data retention period. The change will not impact course auto archives or active course data.
Expanded access to Ally in Ultra documents
Now, in the Ultra Course View, instructors and students can download Ally alternative formats for course documents in the expanded view. With Ally enabled at their institutions, instructors and students see the Ally icon in the top menu, next to the conversations icon. They can choose the alternative format that best suits their needs.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.19.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to client Production environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.17.0 (full release number 3800.17.0-rel.21+0b17a13) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, September 10, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, some instructors intermittently encountered an undefined error in the Grade Center. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
We’re applying an updated version of 3800.17.0 (full release number 3800.17.0-rel.17+ca99c4d) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 1, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- For some administrators, the Insight Report (Beta) displayed 0 for Auto-Archived Courses and Organizations and Days of logs available instead of the correct count. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, when an instructor quoted a post with embedded files, students couldn't access the files from the instructor's reply. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some environments encountered short periods of downtime after RDS maintenance. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.32+577dd66) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, August 27, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, when partner content was used in a course, some content provider options didn't display in the Content Market. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, Vimeo videos wouldn't embed in course content. We've fixed the issue.
- For some administrators, the Insight Report (Beta) displayed 0 for Auto-Archived Courses and Organizations and Days of logs available instead of the correct count. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.17.0 (full release number 3800.17.0-rel.14+16bd146) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, August 25, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, a variable name displayed instead of the Assessment security heading when users launched the LockDown Browser. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, instructors couldn't close the Add Content menu for an empty folder with the X (close) icon on the Course Content page. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, when partner content was used in a course, some content provider options didn't display in the Content Market. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, Vimeo videos wouldn't embed in course content. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.30+8445ff0) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, August 20, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- Some users couldn’t log in to their Learn environment when a SAML SSO provider was created as inactive and then was set to active. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, SAML logout pages displayed in the default language instead of a user's preferred language. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.17.0 (full release number 3800.17.0-rel.11+9b66d12) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, August 18, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, forgotten password emails for custom, secondary brand domains incorrectly sent users to the main brand domain. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, content added with LTI tools wouldn't open with learning module navigation. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some users couldn’t log in to their Learn environment when a SAML SSO provider was created as inactive and then was set to active. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.28+ba39496) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, August 13, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, forgotten password emails for custom, secondary brand domains incorrectly sent users to the main brand domain. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, content added with LTI tools wouldn't open with learning module navigation. We’ve fixed the issue.
Protect assessments with access codes
Features that support academic integrity and assessment security remain at the top of our priority list because of consistent feedback from Ultra early adopters and institutions evaluating a move to Ultra courses. Over the last several months, these concerns have been dramatically amplified due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, we're happy to share that instructors can now add a system-generated access code for their assessments in the Ultra Course View. For the initial release, access codes can only be generated randomly and can't be customized. Instructors can also regenerate the access code when needed. Test facilitators can see the access code, but can't change it.
Students need to enter the access code each time they start or continue an assessment. Instructors or test facilitators need to provide the access code, and students won't have a way to discover the access code on their own. Students don't need the access code to access their grades and feedback.
More on the instructor workflow
API updates
We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- We added the ability to create, update, or delete institutional hierarchy node associations between courses and Institutional Hierarchy nodes.
- We enhanced the public assignment APIs to support SafeAssign options, which aligns with the functionality offered in the user interface.
Automated test question feedback
Instructors rely on automated feedback in Original to provide focused feedback on individual test questions without needing to type feedback for each question on each submission. With this release, automated test question feedback is now available in Ultra courses. Instructors can enter feedback for correct and incorrect answers on auto-graded question types (such as True/False). Students will automatically receive the feedback when they submit the assessment.
For this initial release, feedback will be available at the question level only. While conversion of automated feedback from Original courses is supported, any images, files, or weblinks in the Original course’s feedback will not convert. Future work will add feedback for individual answer choices and manual feedback for test questions.
Enhancements to course archive and restore
This update makes the archive process more comprehensive. Now, archives gather data for users who may have dropped the course during the term, which provides a fuller picture of user activity in restored courses for records and reviews.
When an archive is restored, course and enrollment records are returned to the enablement state at the time of the archive creation. User records that match with existing accounts will be linked during the restore process, but the existing user’s enablement state will not change. As before, if records are disabled and locked, an administrator will need to enable records in Learn to review them.
H5P added to list of embedded media
With this release, H5P has been added to the list of supported embedded media in the text editor.
Learn SaaS release 3800.17.0: Update to release notes
We prematurely announced that version 3800.17.0 would contain Assist, a student success hub for campus and online resources. We are still testing this feature, and it’s targeted for release in the near future. We apologize for the confusion.
Send course announcement by email
To be sure Ultra course announcements reach as many students as possible, we've added the ability to send course announcements by email. Emails about Ultra announcements are always sent and aren't controlled by the global notification settings. Instructors also receive a copy as the email is sent to all course members. In the email, embedded content appears as links. Students can select the links to view the content.
You can't send an email for an announcement that you schedule for a future date.
We also reformatted the subject line for announcement emails in the Original Course View. Now, they’re consistent with the Ultra Course View.
More on the instructor workflow
Student list view in the gradebook
With this release, we've added a new view option in the gradebook for Ultra courses. The new view, called student list view, improves gradebook performance in courses with very large enrollment numbers. In the student list view tab, instructors can see rows for each student in addition to a tab with rows for gradebook items.
We listened to concerns that instructors have about the current gradebook and we incorporated these concerns into student list view. Items such as last access date, student, and user ID are included so instructors can easily get to the student record they want.
The initial release allows instructors to view all the gradebook items for a single student and grade and give feedback on just those submissions. The next improvement for this feature will include additional filtering and sorting options, messaging, and accommodation options within the student list view.
This view doesn't affect any current workflows that instructors use today. Student list view is an addition to the existing gradebook list view—the default view for Ultra courses.
Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.24+b25671a) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, August 4, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- We’ve improved system performance and stability for institutions with very large courses (many students and many content items).
Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.22+7825384) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 28, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, instructors couldn't access created tests. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.29+ffe3614) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, July 23, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- Some SIS feed files were blocked and couldn't update information in Learn. We've fixed the issue.
- Courses with missing resources couldn’t be deleted because the archive process couldn’t complete. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.21+8a56e93) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 21, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- Some SIS feed files were blocked and couldn't update information in Learn. We've fixed the issue.
- Courses with missing resources couldn’t be deleted because the archive process couldn’t complete. We’ve fixed the issue.
Bb Annotate release to Singapore Polymall environments shifted
The release of Bb Annotate to Singapore Polymall environments has been shifted by one week. It will be available in Test/Stage environments beginning on July 20, 2020, and in Production environments beginning July 27, 2020.
The detailed release plan on Behind the Blackboard and the Community site has been updated to reflect this change.
To learn about Bb Annotate, visit the Bb Annotate Communication & Adoption Toolkit.
More on how to review instructor feedback in Bb Annotate for Students
Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.26+bfd99e6) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, July 16, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, some users still saw incorrect column headers and missing data in exported Outcomes Assessment reports. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Experience, only two lines of a course announcement displayed at a time. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.15.0 (full release number 3800.15.0-rel.15+49a56b1) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 14, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, some users still saw incorrect column headers and missing data in exported Outcomes Assessment reports. We've fixed the issue.
Additional sources for embedded media in the text editor
This release expands our list of embedded media sources in the text editor. The Insert/Edit Video from Web option is now called Insert/Edit Media from Web. Users can add media from these sites:
- VidGrid
- Panopto™
- FlipGrid
- SlideShare
- Prezi
- VoiceThread
- KhanAcademy
- Kaltura
- Soundcloud
- Spotify®
- Genial.ly
- NearPod
- Quizlet
- EdPuzzle
- YouTube™
- Vimeo®
API updates
We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- We added the ability to create, update, or delete institutional hierarchy nodes. We also added the ability to create child nodes for a specific NodeId, and delete and update institutional hierarchy nodes by NodeId.
Journal support for course copy and conversion
With this release, we've added support for Ultra journals in course copy and conversion. Now, Ultra journals are included in the list of content items to copy from one Ultra course to another. Users can also use the Administrator Panel or Copy Content to copy journals between courses. Journals can also be converted from an Original course to an Ultra course as part of the Ultra Course Preview and will be included in the course's export/archive ZIP file. Journal prompts and settings are included when an Original course is converted to the Ultra Course View. Comments and student entries aren’t included.
The conversion workflow for journals will have additional improvements in the future.
At this time, the Ultra journals grading view supports up to 50 users. Future development will expand this number.
We recommend that you use Ultra journals as you build new courses, but our guidance is to limit teaching and grading usage until additional work is completed.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.15.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
SOAP Web Services API removal
Please note that in the August 2020 Learn release, as part of the removal of SOAP Web Services APIs from Learn, we are removing the following Java APIs which have been deprecated since 2015:
- CourseCategoryMembershipLoader
- CourseCategoryMembershipPersister
- OrganizationCategoryLoader
- OrganizationCategoryMembershipLoader
- OrganizationCategoryMembershipPersister
- OrganizationCategoryPersister
Text editor added to course announcements
Instructors rely on course announcements to deliver important, timely information to students. To make announcements easier to read and more visually appealing, many instructors enhance them by adding images, links, and text formatting. Now, instructors can use an enhanced text editor to add and display more types of content, links, embedded media, and file attachments in announcements in Ultra courses.
In the next milestone, available in a future release, instructors will be able to send an email copy of a course announcement to recipients with an email address on record.
Learn SaaS release 3800.15.0: Delay for Continuous Delivery release to Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3800.15.0 Continuous Delivery release to Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for July 7, 2020, until Wednesday, July 8, 2020. The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.
Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.23+f2b803a) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, some SIS integrations didn't process feed files. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, administrators couldn’t see the result categories in an enterprise survey results report. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, certain assessment settings (like rubrics, delegated grading, and peer review) were disabled when an instructor added presentation-only content. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.35+a142044) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, June 25, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, some students couldn’t access enterprise surveys. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.17+e9dcbb4) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 23, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Experience, users couldn't access the date picker to edit a date. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, some grades entered as letters were incorrectly changed to the next highest letter grade. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, the exported Outcomes Assessment report had some incorrect column headers and was missing data. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, some students couldn’t access enterprise surveys. We’ve fixed the issue.
- We enhanced logging for the SAML B2.
Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.34+e7b8bbb) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, June 18, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, when a Learn instance used custom brands or themes based on the 2012 theme, users couldn't see links under the Course Control Panel. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, some grades entered as letters were incorrectly changed to the next highest letter grade. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Experience, the exported Outcomes Assessment report had some incorrect column headers and was missing data. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.13.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.13.0 (full release number 3800.13.0-rel.11+32b12c7) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 16, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, the Grade Center didn't load for users who use the Spanish language pack with a Chilean grading schema. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, when a Learn instance used custom brands or themes based on the 2012 theme, users couldn't see links under the Course Control Panel. We've fixed the issue.
Bb Annotate release to international Production environments
Bb Annotate will be released to international Production environments starting on Monday, June 15, 2020.
The release is staggered by Regional Data Centers. To find your specific date, consult the detailed release plan on Behind the Blackboard or the Community site.
To learn about Bb Annotate, visit the Bb Annotate Communication & Adoption Toolkit.
More on how to review instructor feedback in Bb Annotate for Students
Cumulative Update 4 for FDO Q4 2019 (release 3800.0.4)
Cumulative Update (CU) 4 for the Q4 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.26+6de5309) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, June 11, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, the Grade Center didn't load for users who use the Spanish language pack with a Chilean grading schema. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, recurring Collaborate Ultra sessions didn't appear under Join Session in the Details & Actions section after the first session. We've fixed the issue.
Administrator support panel
We’ve made it easier for full system administrators to find self-help resources while in Learn with the Ultra experience. With this release, system administrators can access Blackboard Help, as well as Behind the Blackboard links for the knowledge base, support ticket submission, and support phone numbers. Select the help icon in the lower-right corner to open the new support panel.
API updates
We’ve made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- We added the ability to provide public APIs to Read Institutional Hierarchy Nodes.
- We added the ability to provide APIs to access and manage user avatars.
Course discussions improvements
In the Ultra Course View, students currently can create their own discussion topics. This sometimes causes confusion in the student workflow when responding to discussions. With this release, instructors can decide if they want students to generate their own discussions or not. By default, students won't be able to create discussions. When students are allowed to create discussions, a label appears under discussion titles to show they were student-created.
Note that the plus sign and the menu now appear in the upper-right corner of the Discussions page along with the new settings icon.
More on the instructor view of discussions
We also made several styling changes and usability improvements to the course discussions workflow, which include:
- The Grader role can't modify a discussion by default, but an administrator can grant that permission if it's needed.
- Students can delete the discussions they created if no one else has responded.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.13.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
System permissions for brands
Some institutions want the ability to grant certain users limited Admin Panel access to allow them to view Ultra's brands and themes configuration. With this release, we've added two new system permissions to allow more granular access to certain areas of the Admin Panel. They are automatically granted to any role that has the Administrator Panel (Integrations) > Building Blocks > Installed Tools permission.
- View Ultra Settings makes the Ultra admin module visible on the main Admin Panel screen, but doesn't confer any other permissions. Additional permissions will be needed to access specific configuration pages. For example, the Brands configuration page requires Administrator Panel > Brands > View Brands and Themes.
- Change Ultra Settings controls access to the existing Ultra settings page, where you can configure Default Landing Page and link to Course and Organization Catalog settings. Any role with this permission will automatically have View Ultra Settings permission.
Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.23+7619f1a) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 2, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- Files attached to discussion threads replaced existing discussion files when copied into existing courses. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, when an instructor created a test from a question set, they couldn't add more than one question. We've fixed the issue.
- Some administrators saw large numbers of assignment submission exceptions in their logs. We’ve added log information to help determine the sources of those exceptions.
Learn SaaS release 3800.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.11.0 (full release number 3800.11.0-rel.13+dc44ed6) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, May 26, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, students with special characters in their name couldn't launch a test in Respondus LockDown Browser. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, instructors couldn't enter maximum points for a graded discussion thread. We've fixed the issue.
- Some administrators still saw "New Box View" as their building block title after Bb Annotate was turned on. We've fixed the issue.
Bb Annotate release to U.S. Production environments and international Test/Staging environments
Bb Annotate will be released to U.S. Production environments starting on Tuesday, May 26, 2020.
Bb Annotate will also be released to international Test/Stage environments starting on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.
The release is staggered by Regional Data Centers. To find your specific date, consult the detailed release plan on Behind the Blackboard or the Community site.
To learn about Bb Annotate, visit the Bb Annotate Communication & Adoption Toolkit.
More on how to review instructor feedback in Bb Annotate for Students
Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.9.0 (full release number 3800.9.0-rel.29+616af15) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, May 21, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, students with special characters in their name couldn't launch a test in Respondus LockDown Browser. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.9.0 (full release number 3800.9.0-rel.25+4afe1a1) to some client Production servers during off-hours beginning Tuesday, May 19, 2020. This update will be applied to clients in the following regions or time zones:
- US Central
- US Mountain
- US Pacific
- Asia and Oceania
Clients in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and the US Eastern time zone have already received this updated version.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, instructors couldn't view a survey's Attempts Statistics from the Grade Center. We've fixed the issue.
Discussions added to Copy Content
With this release, Copy Content now supports discussions. Instructors can create a discussion in one Ultra Course View course and copy it to other Ultra courses they teach.
Journals in Ultra
Journals are now available in the Ultra Course View. Instructors can create a journal assignment on the Course Content page, add them to learning modules, and use conditional release if they want. Journal assignments appear in the activity stream, and students and instructors can discuss the entry in comments. Instructors can make a journal assignment count for a grade and add a rubric so students know what they'll be graded on. The initial release includes a basic grading workflow, where instructors enter grades manually in the gradebook. Full grading functionality and support for course copy and conversion are expected later this year. Continued enhancements are also coming for the Participants panel.
The Ultra journals grading view currently supports up to 50 students. Future improvements will expand this number.
We recommend using Ultra journals as you build new courses, but our guidance is to limit teaching and grading usage until additional improvements are completed.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.11.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Score per Question in Ultra assessments
In the Original Course View, instructors use Score per Question feedback settings to control if students see the score they earned for each assessment question. With this release, in the Ultra Course View, instructors can deactivate the default and choose not to show Score per Question feedback in assessments.
Students can embed media from integrated tools in Ultra
In the Ultra Course View, students can add links and embed media from integrated tools using the Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) standard. When using the content editor in tools such as Discussion Boards and Assignments, students will now also be able to access a list of integrated LTI Tools, choose resources, and include them in their authored content. This will allow students to add media and resources from tools such as Kaltura, among many others. Administrators must configure which tool placements are appropriate for student use and access. Both LTI Advantage and the older LTI 1.1 are supported for this workflow in the Ultra Course View. The placement configuration screen for administrators has also been improved for clarity in this release.
Cumulative Update 3 for FDO Q4 2019 (release 3800.0.3)
Cumulative Update (CU) 3 for the Q4 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.9.0 (full release number 3800.9.0-rel.24+a58123a) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, May 5, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- We changed the title of a basic usage report for Learn administrators. It's now called Insight Report (Beta). Learn more about where to find the report and how to read it.
- In the Original Course View, some tests got stuck in "In Progress" status, so instructors couldn't end attempts or grade them. We've fixed the issue.
- Some Learn instances didn't receive grade events information from Caliper. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Custom SafeHTML filters reverted to the default policy with certain SaaS upgrades. We've fixed the issue.
Bb Annotate release to U.S. Test/Staging environments
Bb Annotate will be released to U.S. Test and Stage environments starting on Monday, May 4, 2020. More information on the Bb Annotate release plan can be found on Behind the Blackboard and the Community site.
To learn about Bb Annotate, visit the Bb Annotate Communication & Adoption Toolkit.
More on how to review instructor feedback in Bb Annotate for Students
Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.9.0 (full release number 3800.9.0-rel.17+0de27ea) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, April 28, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- Administrators couldn't send SMS or text-to-voice notifications to users through Connect for Learn. We've fixed the issue.
- Some Learn instances had performance issues related to mobile Notifications. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.9.0 (full release number 3800.9.0-rel.13+116516d) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- A basic usage report for Learn administrators on system usage and storage. Learn more about where to find the report and how to read it.
- Improved dynamic flow control for better system resiliency and efficient database queries.
- In the Original Course View, the Overall Summary of User Activity report only listed the Guest user in the Access/Date graphic. We've fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, course content that used adaptive release with groups created an unwanted membership criterion that blocked student access to the content. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.6.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.6.0 (full release number 3800.6.0-rel.18+ade3869) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, April 16, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, when grades were transferred with the Grade Journey B2, some grade columns were hidden from instructors in the Grade Center. We've fixed the issue.
API updates
We've made some noteworthy API updates, including:
- We added the ability to search and sort on the timestamp when a course membership was modified. Developers can increase efficiencies in report generation, audit completion, and membership information display.
- We redesigned the Groups API and separated Groups and GroupSets. Now, developers will have easier access to Groups in a GroupSet and behavior that better resembles how the Learn interface presents Groups.
Visit the Developer site for full REST API documentation.
Learn SaaS release 3800.9.0: Update to release notes
We prematurely announced that version 3800.9.0 contained the ability for students to embed media from integrated tools in the Ultra Course View. We are still testing this feature, and it’s targeted for release in the near future. We apologize for the confusion.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.9.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Performance improvements
In this release, we improved the load times for the Calendar and when students and instructors expand folders on the course outline.
Learn SaaS release 3800.6.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.6.0 (full release number 3800.6.0-rel.16+f1c0e8e) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, April 9, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, some students' participation in gradable discussions didn't report correctly to the gradebook. We've fixed the issue.
- Some fixes behind the scenes to keep your environments tidy.
Learn SaaS release 3800.6.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.6.0 (full release number 3800.6.0-rel.16+f1c0e8e) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, April 7, 2020.
Updates in this version include some fixes behind the scenes to keep your environments tidy.
Cumulative Update 2 for FDO Q4 2019 (release 3800.0.2)
Cumulative Update (CU) 2 for the Q4 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Learn SaaS release 3800.6.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.6.0 (full release number 3800.6.0-rel.13+fa0f5ed) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, March 24, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, some students couldn’t see the group they were assigned to after they were randomly enrolled. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, if a course had a large number of enrolled students, instructors couldn't access the Grades and Participation view. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, students couldn’t view completed assignment rubrics if their assignment was graded using delegated grading. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some instructors couldn’t create math equation assessment questions using the math editor. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Students who accessed Blackboard with Google Chrome couldn’t view a full PDF in their course. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some private APIs required permissions that didn’t work correctly with Java 11. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.4.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of the 3800.4.0 Ultra user interface (full release number 3800.4.0-rel.40+d78544e) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, March 19, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, if a course had a large number of enrolled students, instructors couldn't access the Grades and Participation view. We’ve fixed the issue.
Adjust first day of the week in the calendar
Different global regions have different calendar conventions, including which day displays as the first day of the week. With this release, Blackboard calendars will display the most common convention for the first day of the week based on a user's selected language. Users will be able to see the change in the month and day views of both their overall and individual course calendars. The date picker display will also change in the Ultra Course View and for administrator notifications in the Ultra Experience.
Users can change their language in the user profile. Administrators can customize the first day of the week for their language pack if they choose.
Auto-archive on course deletion
With this release, a complete archive package will now be created automatically when a course is deleted. The archive package is stored in the course's autoArchive folder like other automatic archives, but the filename is different:Course_ID_Course_PKID_Course_Title_currentTime_in_milliseconds_bb_permanent.zip. Once a course is archived and deleted, course resources will be automatically purged and won't be in the recycle bin so that disk space isn’t used by a deleted course.
Course-level group self-enrollment
Previously, self-enrollment groups were limited to assignments and discussions in the Ultra Course View. With this release, instructors can create self-enrollment course groups that can apply to any graded content within a course. When they create a new course group set, instructors will see Self-enrollment in the Group students menu.
Instructors can add a description for the group set, specify the start and end times of an enrollment period, and set the maximum members per group. After the group set is created, a course announcement is automatically created to inform students of the enrollment period. When the enrollment period ends, students who haven't joined a group will be assigned to one automatically.
Student view
Global logout with SAML authentication providers
Library upgrades in our SAML authentication provider B2 could affect the first logout attempt of any Learn user session created through a SAML authentication provider with Global Logout support. If a user's session was established before the library upgrade, they won't be able to log out of their SSO session through Learn the first time they try. On first logout, users will be presented with a page that informs them that their SSO session is still active.
Users can log out through the identity provider, or they can log in again, which will present them with the option to log out of their SSO session.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.6.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
New LTI Preview User role
Third-party integrated tools in a course using the LTI Advantage standard from IMS Global can now distinguish between student and student preview users. This allows integrated tools to choose if they want to handle instructors navigating the course as student preview users differently than standard student users. Per the LTI specification, the user is indicated as the type, “test user.” As an example, the Turnitin LTI Advantage integration uses this to filter student preview users from the student list in Turnitin.
Rich text editor improvements
We made some improvements to the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View:
- We moved the file attachment function to the top level so it's easier to access.
- We added a strikethrough font style option.
- We updated our function groupings so they're easier to read on smaller screens.
- We allowed the browser to control the background of highlighted text to improve accessibility.
Learn SaaS release 3800.4.0: Addition to client Production release
As part of our commitment to release quality, the scheduled Production release of 3800.4.0 (full release number 3800.4.0-rel.40+d78544e) during off-hours on Thursday, March 5, 2020 will include an additional update.
-
Some instructors couldn't import content using the Cengage Mindlinks B2. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.4.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.4.0 (full release number 3800.4.0-rel.32+1b0447c) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- When an Original Course used two percentage range rubrics, the second rubric didn’t always have the correct total number of points. We’ve fixed the issue.
- If a user changed their password through their SIS using encryption methods other than SSHA, they could be kicked out of their session after logging back in. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.4.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.4.0 (full release number 3800.4.0-rel.26+312e74d) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, February 25, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- Some integrations using LTI 1.3 deep link couldn't launch a needed resource link. We've fixed the issue.
- Column headers in the Ultra grade center were duplicated after an administrator customized the colors in their institutional brand. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some users couldn't see their avatar thumbnails in the users and groups section of the Original Course View. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.2.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.2.0 (full release number 3800.2.0-rel.25+95332d7) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, February 20, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- Some administrators encountered LDAP authentication problems because the TLS connection failed. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.4.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.4.0 (full release number 3800.4.0-rel.20+6b6dbf5) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, February 18, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, instructors were informed that their institution had made messages read-only for students in English instead of their selected language. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some administrators saw a both successful and a failed login for each sign-in attempt in their authentication logs. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some administrators encountered LDAP authentication problems because the TLS connection failed. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Issues with file uploads and downloads in the Ultra Course View:
- Some users saw the upload icon buffering even though they could upload and download files. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some students couldn’t download files they added to essay questions. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Issue with grading in the Ultra Course View:
- Some student submissions reordered randomly while an instructor was grading. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Issues with file uploads and downloads in the Original Course View:
- Some users couldn’t upload files with % in the filename. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some users couldn’t download files attached to submissions that use Box view. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3800.2.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.2.0 (full release number 3800.2.0-rel.24+29cd420) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, February 13, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Experience, the last login date wasn’t updating accurately for users with cloud profiles. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn’t see images they added to the text editor until their content was posted or submitted. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Issues with file uploads and downloads in the Ultra Course View:
- Some users saw the upload icon buffering even though they could upload and download files. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some users couldn’t download files they had previously uploaded if the filename contained a special character. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some students couldn’t download files they added to essay questions. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Issues with grading in the Ultra Course View:
- Some student submissions reordered randomly while an instructor was grading. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some instructors encountered a blank screen after entering a grade for a student assignment that had multiple attempts. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some instructors didn’t see entered grades in the gradebook until they refreshed the page. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Issues with file uploads and downloads in the Original Course View:
- Some users couldn’t upload files with % in the filename. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some users couldn’t download files attached to submissions that use Box view. We’ve fixed the issue.
Calculated Formula question type for Ultra assessments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
Calculated Formula question types are now available in assessments using the Ultra Course View. Calculated Formula questions require students to make a calculation and respond with a numeric answer. This feature has been highly requested, especially by institutions whose STEM disciplines rely on Learn. Now, instructors can convert Calculated Formula questions from their Original courses or add new ones within the Ultra Course View.
When creating a new assessment, select the plus sign to open the menu and then select Add Calculated Formula question. Begin by adding the question text and answer formula. In Ultra Course View only, instructors can choose whether to display the formula to students with the text. Instructors can then adjust the answer settings and verify the question.
Course ID displays with Course Name
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience
In this release, a Course ID now appears with the Course Name in key areas when Ultra base navigation is enabled. Now, users can find their Course IDs on the Courses page of base navigation, in the Calendar, and when copying course content.
Create Item panel options open by default
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
Now, when instructors create new content on the Course Content page, all options in the Create Item panel will open by default. In previous versions, only the Course Content Items options opened by default. Instructors often missed the arrow to expand these menus, leading them to believe that fewer content items were available than there actually were. Loading these menus by default also makes the content creation workflow faster.
Edit course image option moved to overflow menu
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Experience
In this release, we moved the Edit course image option in the tile view on the Courses page. Now, it can be found in the overflow menu at the top-right corner of the course tile.
Improvements to Discussion conversion in Ultra
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
We're improving the conversion of Discussions from Original to Ultra courses. Previously, the Discussion conversion workflow has caused confusion and manual work to complete. With this release, a graded discussion in an Original course that allows members to create threads will convert to a Graded Ultra discussion and all of its seed child threads and replies will be removed. A graded discussion in an Original course that doesn't allow members to create threads will keep the current behavior. Group boards, forums, and threads won't be converted.
Maintenance items
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.4.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Make Messages Read-only for Students
With this release, administrators can choose whether students are able to create and reply to messages in both Original and Ultra courses. Now Learn Course Messages can better adjust to institutions' different communication preferences and policies. To find this setting, go to Admin Panel > Tools and Utilities > Course Messages.
When you select this option, students also can't forward messages.
Miscellaneous updates
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
- We changed the way students are sorted in Ultra gradebook views for calculated columns and overall grade. Students now sort by last name throughout the gradebook.
- We increased the length of the course name in tile view on the Courses page. Unless the course name is exceptionally long, users should see the full course name.
- We increased the line spacing of discussion posts to make them easier to read.
- We made some additional visual improvements to the Courses pages in Ultra base navigation, the Calendar, and the Copy Content workflow. Among the changes, we updated some text to a heavier weight as a result of the small icon update.
- We updated some small icons in the text editor.
Right-to-left language support for Original Courses and Organizations
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Original Course View
In this release, we've added right-to-left language support in Courses and Organizations using the Original Course View with Ultra base navigation. This feature has been highly requested by users in the Middle East. Future enhancements will bring right-to-left language support to Ultra.
Students won't get notifications for submissions collected offline
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
In this release, students won't see overdue notifications for Ultra Assessments that use the Collect Submissions Offline setting. Because Learn relies on instructors to create the submissions for offline assessments, students were sometimes notified an assessment was overdue even if they turned it in on time. Now, these notifications won't appear.
Text editor word count
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
In this release, we added a word count to the text editor when instructors create Documents and students respond to Assessment essay questions in the Ultra Course View. This feature will help students meet minimum word count requirements their instructors may have communicated. Future enhancements will add the word count feature in other areas of Learn Ultra, including instructor grading workflows.
Text update for adding YouTube videos
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
In this release, we clarified a menu option in the text editor. Previously, users could select Insert Web Content in the text editor to embed a YouTube video. User feedback indicated that many users didn't understand that they could embed YouTube videos. To make options clearer, we changed the menu option to Insert YouTube Video.
Text update for Matching questions
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
In this release, we added text to the Matching question creation workflow. Now, Learn directs instructors to delete the default additional answer field before saving if it's not needed. User feedback indicated it wasn't intuitive to delete this additional option when creating matching questions.
We also removed the student-facing text that suggested answers may be used more than once. Client feedback requested that the direction be left to instructors.
Text update for Ultra base navigation workflow
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Experience
To increase confidence and clarity, we've added some text when administrators turn on the Ultra Experience. Now, when administrators activate Ultra base navigation, the message will include When you enable the Ultra experience, your existing courses aren’t affected. Your institution can choose to use the Original or Ultra Course View for new and existing courses.
Updates to the Ultra Extension Framework
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.4.0 | Release to Production 5 March 2020
Ultra Course View
Updates to the Ultra Extension Framework in this release add capabilities for banners, modals, and notifications. Partners can dynamically create banners within the Ultra-UI to display data to the user while the user is within a course. We also added the ability to notify users in a course through blocking modals, dynamic guidance messages, and notifications.
Cumulative Update 1 for FDO Q4 2019 (release 3800.0.1)
Cumulative Update (CU) 1 for the Q4 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Learn SaaS release 3800.2.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.2.0 (full release number 3800.2.0-rel.20+2226729) to some client Production servers during off-hours beginning Thursday, February 6, 2020. This update will be applied to clients in the following regions or time zones:
- Americas Central
- Americas Mountain
- Americas Pacific
- Asia and Oceania
- Europe, Middle East, and Africa
Updates in this version include:
- In the Original Course View, users couldn’t access pre-existing course glossaries. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn't view inline or download files attached to essay questions if the file names had certain special characters. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, some users couldn’t view inline or download files with New Box View. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some assignments submitted through SafeAssign got stuck in In Progress status and the submission didn’t complete. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Users accessing Learn with the Google Chrome 80 beta release had trouble with SAML login authentication. We’ve fixed the issue.
Phased release schedule for 3800.2.0 Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
The 3800.2.0 Production release will be divided by region or time zone to ensure release quality. All upgrades will occur during off-hours in each region or time zone.
- Asia, Oceania, Europe, Middle East, and Africa: By region.
- Americas: By four major time zones, Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific.
- If your institution lies outside one of these time zones, you'll be included with the nearest time zone. For example, clients in the Atlantic time zone will be upgraded with the Eastern time zone.
- Americas Eastern time zone: In three groups.
- These groups are alphabetical by the official name of your institution on file with Blackboard. If you want to confirm the name we have, please log in to Behind the Blackboard and select My Account > My Institution. Your institution name is displayed in the upper-left corner with your client ID number.
Americas Central
Americas Mountain
Americas Pacific Early Morning
After 2 AM CST
After 2 AM MST
After 2 AM PST
Asia and Oceania
Europe, Middle East, and Africa Evening
After 17:00 SGT / 20:00 AEDT
After 17:00 CET Thursday, February 6, 2020 Americas Eastern Group #1 (institution names A–G)
Americas Eastern Group #2 (institution names H–R)
Americas Eastern Group #3 (institution names S–Z) Evening
After 5:00 PM EST *For alerts or changes to timing on the day of the release, log in to Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Known issue
We're currently investigating a known issue in Learn SaaS v3700.16.0:
- In the Ultra Course View, when you associate multiple group discussions with the same course group set, responses made in one of the group discussions appear in all of the associated group discussions. While we resolve this issue, you can create new group sets for each group discussion.
We'll update this note with more details as they become available.
Learn SaaS release 3800.2.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Ultra Course View
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3800.2.0 (full release number 3800.2.0-rel.14+94469ce) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, January 28, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
-
In the Ultra Course View, students could change their self-enrollment group after they had been assigned a grade for a Discussion. We've fixed the issue.
Group self-enrollment enhancements
We’ve enhanced self-enrollment for students and instructors in the Ultra Course View. Now, students can change self-enrollment groups themselves within the instructor-specified enrollment period. Before, once a student joined a group, they couldn’t change groups themselves.
We also replaced the Number of groups drop-down menu with a counter for instructors. The counter updates with the number of groups instructors create using the + option. Before, if an instructor picked a number of groups from the drop-down menu and then added or deleted a group, the Number of groups count didn't change. This enhancement streamlines the workflow and reduces confusion.
Maintenance items
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.2.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.2.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Course View
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.16.0 (full release number 3700.16.0-rel.56+7b9695c) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, January 9, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
-
In the Ultra Course View, instructors couldn’t upload more than one file at a time to the course outline. We’ve fixed the issue.
-
In the Ultra Course View, instructors couldn’t upload a folder containing multiple files to the course outline. We’ve fixed the issue.
-
In the Ultra Course View, when instructors changed a Content Collection file link using the Assignment text editor, the file was deleted. We’ve fixed the issue.
-
In the Ultra Course View, when instructors dragged files added from their Institution’s Content Collection in and out of folders, the files moved to a read only folder in the course’s Content Collection. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Original Course View, Original Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.16.0 (full release number 3700.16.0-rel.52+5c69d6d) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, January 2, 2020.
Updates in this version include:
-
Some administrators couldn’t export the student goal performance report from the Administrator panel. We’ve fixed the issue.
-
In the Original Course View, some instructors encountered error messages when they created calculated questions that use predefined calculus functions. We’ve fixed the issue.
Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
The Blackboard Learn SaaS Q4 2019 (3800.0.0) release for Flexible Deployment Option customers is now available. Contact Blackboard Support to schedule your upgrade for the time and date that works best for you.
This release includes features released as part of continuous delivery releases since 3600.0.0. Use the category filter to narrow down the list of features in this latest release.
Additional updates in the user interface
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.0.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Course View, Ultra Course View, Ultra Experience
- Links to Blackboard’s Privacy statement and Terms of Use now appear at the bottom of the global navigation bar in the Ultra Experience.
- Previously, disabled students were included in the Participants list for a discussion in the Ultra Course View. This was confusing for instructors since these students don't display in assessment submission lists or in the gradebook. This update removes disabled students from the Participants list in discussions, so this view is now consistent with assessments and the gradebook.
- With this release, Blackboard Learn will remember instructors’ preferences for the Show attempts that don't contribute to user's grade filter on the Needs Grading page in the Original Course View. By default, the checkbox is unselected and student attempts that don’t affect grades won’t show on the Needs Grading list. When an instructor changes the setting, Learn will remember the preference across that user’s sessions and courses.
Ally updates in Ultra courses
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.0.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Ultra Course View
With this release, we’ve expanded Ally support for accessible content in Ultra courses. Now, students and instructors can access Ally’s alternative formats and accessibility indication for content directly in the Ultra course outline.
Ally’s accessibility indication is also now available in Ultra Assessments for content embedded in the rich text editor.
API assessment attempts filter
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.0.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience
With this update, API users can view and filter a list of assessment attempts based on when the attempt was created, modified, or submitted.
Java 11 JDK and Building Blocks
As we have previously announced, Blackboard Learn’s 3800.0.0 release uses a new version of Java, Java 11 JDK. Java are the libraries on which the Learn application runs and also the libraries that power Building Blocks, the add-on tools and features you may use in your environment. We’re implementing Java 11 to improve security and performance. Staying on recently updated libraries is crucial to staying ahead of those who may try to compromise your learning environment.
This important update can impact custom and third-party add-on tools using the Building Blocks (B2) integration framework, and we strongly encourage all clients and partners who use Building Blocks to test them with Java 11. We’ve extended the time 3800.0.0 will stay on Test/Staging servers to allow more time to test Building Blocks (see the Learn SaaS CD Release Schedule).
To help identify potential incompatibilities with third-party add-ons, we’ve developed a Building Block scanning tool. While the tool doesn’t replace functional testing, it can help developers understand what changes need to be made if issues are found with a Building Block. Because the tool can be resource-intensive, it should only be run on your staging or test environment.
For additional resources on Java 11 testing and details about the Building Block scanning tool, visit the Developer portal.
Maintenance items
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.0.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3800.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Pearson's MyLab and Mastering (MLM) Partner Cloud integration
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3800.0.0 | Release to Production February 2020
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
After much anticipation, Pearson’s popular MyLab and Mastering (MLM) courseware can now be used in Blackboard Learn Ultra courses thanks to the new Pearson MyLab and Mastering Partner Cloud integration. Set-up and configuration of the integration is easily managed through the Learn Administrator Panel, and once made available, instructors can efficiently access and add Pearson MLM content into their Ultra courses through the familiar Content Market.
Major features of the Pearson MLM Building Block are available with the new Partner Cloud integration, including single sign-on, deep content linking, and manual grade synchronization. Not using Ultra courses quite yet? This integration works with Blackboard Learn Original courses too. This is especially helpful for schools who may be piloting or fully using the Ultra experience with dual course mode enabled. By implementing the Pearson MLM Partner Cloud integration, administrators can rest assured that instructors can add Pearson MLM content regardless of which course view they choose.
In addition, admins can choose to utilize our migration tool which migrates existing courses and content using the MLM Building Block to Partner Cloud. While migrating to Partner Cloud gives users more flexibility in terms of which course view they can use, the Pearson MLM Building Block will still be supported for institutions who decide to keep their current configuration.
Visit Behind the Blackboard for more information on the Pearson MLM Partner Cloud integration and migration tool, including system requirements and admin guide.
Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Partial delay for Continuous Delivery release to Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3700.16.0 Continuous Delivery release to client Production servers for US East customers, previously scheduled for December 5, 2019. All Continuous Delivery client Production servers will receive an updated version of the 3700.16.0 release during off-hours on Wednesday, December 18, 2019.
More information on the delay available on Behind the Blackboard
Updates in this version include:
- Students and instructors using the Ultra Course View couldn’t download file submissions. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Some instructors couldn’t access Message attachments in the Original Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
- In the Ultra Course View, when an instructor graded one assignment and moved on to the next, the first assignment displayed again instead of the next one. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Instructors couldn’t copy more than 50 questions into a new test in the Ultra Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
- The Rustici fix for Chrome was included in 2017.1.67. This version was applied to 3700.16, 3700.0.5, 3500.0.9, 3400.0.14 versions of the Learn product. Customers that upgrade to these versions won't be impacted by the future Chrome release.
Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Addition to client Production release
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, the scheduled Production release of 3700.16.0 (full release number 3700.16.0-rel.33+fdffbe0) during off-hours on Thursday, December 5, 2019 will include an additional update.
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Users of some LTI tools couldn’t create LTI content or use services because the tools weren’t properly validated. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.16.0 (full release number 3700.16.0-rel.27+2787f87) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, December 3, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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The Content Editor didn't load correctly for some users. We've fixed the issue.
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In the mobile apps, users couldn’t access offline content in courses converted from Original to Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.16.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.16.0 (full release number 3700.16.0-rel.25+b897566) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, November 26, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Some users got an error message when they downloaded student submissions in certain file formats. We've fixed the issue.
-
Some LTI 1.3 workflows didn't launch from Partner Cloud Settings. We've fixed the issue.
Course-level group sets
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Course View
To further support effective teaching and learning, we’ve enhanced the functionality of the Groups workspace for the Ultra Course View. With this release, instructors can create course-level group sets and align them to discussions, tests, and assignments. Within an Ultra course, select Course Groups from the Details & Actions menu. Create a new group set and save. In the settings panel of a discussion, test, or assignment, select Assign to groups. Then select your group set from the Group students menu.
Grade pill color
In the Ultra Course View, the color of the grade pill visually communicates grades/marks to students and instructors. While effective in many instances, we’ve received feedback from some Ultra early adopters that grade color can have an adverse effect on student well-being. We first introduced the ability to turn off grade pill color in the Blackboard App, and with this release we’re bringing this functionality and flexibility to Learn.
Administrators can visit Course Settings > Grade Pill Colors in the Administrator Panel to disable grade pill colors.
Maintenance items
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3700.16.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Text update for Multiple Answer questions
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.16.0 | Release to Production 5 December 2019
Ultra Course View
In previous versions, the prompt for Multiple Choice questions differed from that of Multiple Answer questions. This difference offered an unintentional clue to students when a question had more than one correct answer. Based on feedback from the community, including St. Mary's College, we've made the prompt consistent across Multiple Choice and Multiple Answer question types.
Cumulative Update 5 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.5)
Cumulative Update (CU) 5 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Learn SaaS release 3700.14.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Original Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.14.0 (full release number 3700.14.0-rel.9+dce67da) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, November 5, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Some internal CSS files were processing incorrectly. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.11.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Original Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.11.0 (full release number 3700.11.0-rel.19+09cd901) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 31, 2019.
Learn SaaS release 3700.14.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Original Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.14.0 (full release number 3700.14.0-rel.8+884e842) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 29, 2019.
Learn SaaS release 3700.11.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Ultra Course View
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.11.0 (full release number 3700.11.0-rel.17+dca4b12) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, October 24, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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When instructors reused a question pool in the Ultra Course View, answers to Multiple Choice questions didn't randomize correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.14.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Ultra Course View
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.14.0 (full release number 3700.14.0-rel.3+e156b1f) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 22, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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When instructors reused a question pool in the Ultra Course View, answers to Multiple Choice questions didn't randomize correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.
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The X icon didn't display correctly in some Ultra Course View panels. We’ve fixed the issue.
Account lockout
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
In this release, by default Learn will lock user accounts after 5 failed login attempts. Administrators can disable the feature or edit its limits by selecting Account Lock Settings in the Administrator panel. Administrators can decide the maximum failed attempts allowed within a specified period. They can also choose how long accounts remain locked and whether accounts unlock automatically if users reset their passwords.
More on configuring Account Lock Settings
Ally updates
In this release, we've improved the Ally experience in Ultra courses. Now students can download alternative formats of files and images attached to documents. Just select the download option next to a file and choose the format you want.
Accessibility scores for instructors are also available with attachments in document and tests. The scores appear next to the files they are scoring. This makes it easier for instructors to see how their content scores and fix any issues.
Accessibility scores and alternative format icons are only available with attached files. They aren't available with files and images added in the content editor.
Assessment Settings panel button update
In a continued effort to make Learn Ultra as consistent as possible, we updated the previous Done button to match the rest of the system. We've found that instructors prefer the Save and Cancel options, so we updated the Assessment Settings to align with that preference.
Batch Edit moved into overflow menu
When we first introduced Batch Edit, we wanted to make sure that users saw this new capability. We gave it a level of prominence that, over time, was too strong given the standard usage of the tool. We moved it into the overflow menu to better align with how it's used.
Description field for Ultra documents
Instructors want to be able to give an overview to students so they have a clear understanding of what's expected of them. While instructors generally had the ability to give this overview in the Ultra Course View, we didn't offer this ability when instructors created an Ultra document. With this enhancement, instructors can provide high-level details about what the Ultra documents contain. This reduces unnecessary clicks for students and improves their overall experiences. Instructors can open the Document Settings panel in an existing document to add a description. Students can see descriptions on the Course Content page.
Empty learning modules removed
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Ultra Course View
As an education company, it's sometimes important to display a sense of preference in the system's pedagogical approach. While learning modules are a powerful tool, we understand that displaying one all the time can cause some unintended stress to instructors. Listening to our community is important, so we've removed the learning module when you first log in to an empty template as well as the empty module that appeared on the page.
Error messages when deleting assessments with externally-referenced questions
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Ultra Course View
To help instructors understand why they can't delete some items, we've added three detailed messages. Instructors can't delete question banks, folders, or assessments that contain questions used in question pools in other assessments.
Guest Account can't be enrolled in courses
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Previously, when an unauthenticated user accessed Blackboard Learn and the "Enable Guest" property was enabled they were associated with the "Guest" account. Instructors were able to enroll this "Guest" account in courses and organizations, circumventing application entitlement handling.
This account is a unique Blackboard System Level account that was never intended to be enrolled. Allowing this account to be enrolled meant possible data exposure to unauthenticated users as multiple un-authenticated users could be associated with the account.
Therefore, in this release we removed the ability for the "Guest" account to be enrolled in courses stopping potential data exposure concerns between unauthenticated users. Existing "Guest" account enrollments will remain and be visible to instructors and administrators so they can clean up these existing enrollments through the user interface.
Maintenance items
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.14.0 | Release to Production 7 November 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3700.14.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
New icons
Iconography is incredibly important in Learn Ultra. The icon set we currently use was created when we first brought Ultra to the market. We've done a lot of research with our clients regarding what they liked and didn't like about the iconography in the system. Because of that feedback, we've made some adjustments to the icon set. Most notably, the new icons are darker and appear more prominently now.
System administration notification settings
Learn Ultra has always been designed with the end user in mind, and that includes flexibility and personalization of Notifications. Feedback from the wider Blackboard Community outlined that although this is positive, offering levels of control for an institution to support and manage notifications is an important. Blackboard listened to this client feedback, and we're pleased to outline our support for System Administration Notification Settings in Ultra.
Ultra administrators can change notifications at the system level, configure digest functionality, and set up default notification settings. In the Administrator Panel, select Notification Settings. For every available notification type and source, administrators can select whether notifications are on or off by default. Administrators can also decide whether users can change the default setting in their individual preferences.
Learn SaaS release 3700.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Ultra Course View
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.11.0 (full release number 3700.11.0-rel.13+1c185dd) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, October 1, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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In the Ultra Course View, correct and credited answers to matching questions displayed as Incorrect to some students. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Ultra Course View
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying UI updates to 3700.11.0 (full release number 3700.11.0-rel.11+6b1d246) on client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 24, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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The question pools panel sometimes closed unexpectedly on launch in the Ultra Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.11.0 (full release number 3700.11.0-rel.10+be2cf60) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 17, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
-
Blackboard Learn’s September 4 update introduced an issue with the LTI Advantage version of the Cengage integration for some institutions. The Blackboard gradebook didn’t always synchronize with graded student activities that used Cengage links created prior to the release. The Blackboard Learn September 17 update resolved the issue, and LTI Advantage with the Cengage integration functions as intended.
Additional updates
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
- Partners appearing in the Content Market can now leverage LTI Advantage for their association, even if a previous LTI 1.3 domain was registered through core Blackboard Learn.
Attendance and course copy, archive/restore, and export/import
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
As a first step in improving how attendance data is handled during course copies and exports, we’ve made these improvements:
- Attendance data isn’t included in a course export or when you copy a course into a new or existing course. The attendance option is removed from the copy and export options.
- Attendance data is included in an archive/restore and in an exact course copy.
- Export/import creates an attendance column in the Ultra gradebook and the Original Grade Center that you can’t delete, but no attendance data is added.
Bulk download submissions
When assignments require students to submit files in Learn, it's time-consuming for instructors to download each individual submission to grade it, especially in large courses. With this release, instructors can now download multiple student assignment submissions at once as a ZIP file from the Ultra gradebook.
Instructors can download files from the Ultra gradebook or from the submissions list page with the Download all option. Instructors can then choose whether to download all or select specific submissions. Instructors receive an email and a course message when the ZIP file is ready to download to their computers.
Courses with 5,000 or more students may see page load times of up to 30 seconds. We’ll address the limitation in the near future.
More on bulk download in Learn Ultra
Decimal point values for assessments
To balance the total points possible in their courses, instructors need the flexibility to assign fractional possible points to test questions and assessments. With this update, instructors can now enter decimal values in the Points field for individual questions and in the Maximum points field for assessments that don't contain individually graded questions.
When creating a question in an assessment, instructors can enter values with up to two numbers after the decimal in the Points field. For assessments with no individual questions, the Maximum points field will accept values with up to two numbers after the decimal.
Delete copied course attendance data
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
When instructors prepare a course for an upcoming term, they commonly copy all content, including the gradebook, from the last term’s course. For courses that used the attendance tool, the copied attendance gradebook column was difficult to remove. With this release, instructors can delete attendance gradebook columns added during a course copy from the destination course’s gradebook.
Instructors can delete copied attendance columns from the gradebook menu. The attendance column that is correctly associated with the course can be deleted if all students’ attendance records are removed first.
In the Ultra Course View's gradebook list or grid view, open the menu for the extra attendance column from a course copy and select Delete.
In the Original Course View's Grade Center, open the menu for the extra attendance column and select Delete Column.
Maintenance items
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3700.11.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Regrade questions in question pools
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.11.0 | Release to Production 3 October 2019
Ultra Course View
This release allows instructors to regrade individual questions within a question pool in Ultra. Questions within pools can be regraded from a student’s submission using the same options available for questions not within a pool. Instructors can also regrade from the assessment panel after selecting View questions in a question pool. When regrading, a message informs the instructor if a question is used in other course assessments. Question updates made while regrading affect all instances of that question in the course.
Select all and clear all questions for question pools
When adding questions to a question pool, instructors need to be able to select large groups of questions quickly and efficiently. As instructors create question pools for their Ultra assessments, the options to Select all and Clear all question choices now appear on the Add Question Pool page.
Learn SaaS release 3700.9.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.9.0 (full release number 3700.9.0-rel.24+374338b) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, September 12, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Blackboard Learn’s September 4 update introduced an issue with the LTI Advantage version of the Cengage integration for some institutions. The Blackboard gradebook didn’t always synchronize with graded student activities that used Cengage links created prior to the release. The Blackboard Learn September 12 update resolved the issue, and LTI Advantage with the Cengage integration functions as intended.
UPDATE: Upcoming changes to Open JDK and impact to Building Blocks in Learn SaaS deployments
To address recent changes in Oracle’s Java support model, Blackboard Learn is transitioning to adopt a more recent version of Java, Java 11 JDK. Our new target for adopting Java 11 is 3800.0.0. Please confirm release dates with the SaaS release schedule.
We strongly encourage all clients and partners who use Building Blocks to test them with Java 11. Partners and clients can access early builds of Learn with Java 11 by requesting to join the Learn SaaS Technical Preview program.
As part of this change, we are transitioning from the Oracle-supported version of Java 11 to the AWS-supported version of Java 11 called Corretto. This does not impact SaaS or Managed Hosting clients. Operational changes for self-hosted clients are minimal.
For further details on Java 11 Technical Preview testing with Building Blocks and Corretto changes for self-hosted clients, see the following articles:
View the Behind the Blackboard announcement
Join the conversation on Blackboard Community
We previously announced this change to Java 11 to be part of Blackboard Learn release 3600.0, scheduled for April 2019. Later, we'd communicated a new target of June 2019 followed by September 2019. Based on the results of testing with Technical Preview participants and our partners, we concluded that Java 11 adoption should be delayed further.
Previous announcements:
To address recent changes in Oracle’s Java support model, Blackboard Learn is transitioning to adopt the latest version of OpenJDK as it’s released. We previously announced this change with the introduction of OpenJDK 11 as part of Blackboard Learn release 3600.0, and later announced a new target of June 2019. Based on the results of initial testing with Technical Preview participants and our partners, we concluded that Java 11 adoption should be removed from those target releases due to compatibility issues with extensions. The delay allowed for continued testing to uphold the user experience and minimize disruptions.
For developers, partners, and institutions, testing Building Blocks for compatibility is highly recommended because libraries may have changed. For developers, recompiling Building Blocks using the updated Java libraries is also a best practice and should be performed for Java 11.
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We’re changing the way we adopt Java updates in Blackboard Learn. These changes start with Blackboard Learn SaaS release 3600.0 with the adoption of Open JDK 11.
While we expect that building blocks will continue to work as is, Blackboard is aware that some fundamental library changes could affect compatibility. To help ensure that you’re able to thoroughly test for these upcoming changes, we’re introducing a Learn SaaS Technical Preview program.
Partners in the Blackboard Developers’ Network (BbDN) should enter a support case requesting to participate in the program.
Cumulative Update 4 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.4)
Cumulative Update (CU) 4 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Cumulative Update 3 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.3)
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience
Cumulative Update (CU) 3 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Learn SaaS release 3700.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.9.0 (full release number 3700.9.0-rel.23+e0c105e) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, September 3, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Some mobile users saw an error message in the Activity Stream. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Some users couldn't customize their default brand in the Ultra Experience. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Users couldn't create new accounts on Open Education. We’ve fixed the issue.
Some users had trouble logging out in the Original Experience. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.9.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.9.0 (full release number 3700.9.0-rel.16+4fb2947) to client Test/Stage servers during off-hours on Tuesday, August 27, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Users encountered an error message when saving changes to their default brand in the Ultra Experience. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Open Education pages returned errors site-wide. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Assessments took longer than usual to load in the Ultra Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
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For users preparing to migrate to a SaaS deployment, the Move Legacy Content tool caused problems with Turnitin feedback. We’ve fixed the issue.
Additional updates in the user interface
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
- In an Original course, if instructors delete a content folder in a content area that contains graded items with no attempts, the corresponding columns are also deleted from the Grade Center.
- We've made these refinements to question pools in Ultra Course View:
- A more accessible button structure
- Clearer error and confirmation modal messages
Collaborate Ultra in private mode
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Ultra Course View
Create Collaborate sessions in your course before making it live. Now instructors can pre-schedule Collaborate sessions in their Ultra courses any time. Even when the course isn't available to students.
Filter students by grading status
Grading student work is one of the most important, yet time consuming tasks in the management of a course. Often, an instructor knows which course and assignment needs to be graded, but it can be difficult to identify which students have made submissions. In order to help instructors locate submissions and begin grading more quickly, we have added a Needs Grading filter to the submissions list for individual assessments.
On an item's Submissions page in the Ultra gradebook, instructors can use the new Filter menu to display only those submissions that need grading. At this time, instructors can filter by All statuses and Needs grading.
The Filter menu doesn't appear for group and discussion items.
Group self-enrollment
Instructors can create self-enrollment groups for students to join to complete group assignments and discussions. Instructors choose the number of groups, can set the maximum members per group, and may allow students to view other members of the groups before they choose a group.
Instructors may set an enrollment period that students see on the Course Content page and with the group items. Instructors see Self-enroll on the Course Content page and with group assignments and discussions.
Integrations with LTI Advantage
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For both Original and Ultra courses, tools integrated with LTI Advantage that report submission and grading status show this information in the Original Grade Center or the Ultra gradebook. Upcoming due date or overdue notifications for students are dismissed if the tool indicates the student submitted the assignment.
In Ultra Course View, tools integrated with LTI Advantage behave more like standard Learn assignments. Reported grades aren’t displayed to students until they are posted by the instructor.
Learn SaaS release 3700.9.0: Delay for Continuous Delivery release to Test/Stage environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re delaying the Blackboard Learn SaaS 3700.9.0 Continuous Delivery release to client Test/Stage servers, previously scheduled for August 13, 2019. The new release date is August 15, 2019, two days later than previously announced. The release schedule has been updated to reflect this change.
Maintenance items
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.9.0 | Release to Production 5 September 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3700.9.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3700.7.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.7.0 (full release number 3700.7.0-rel.31+c948a62) to client Production servers during off-hours on Friday, August 30, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Users couldn't create new accounts on Open Education. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Open Education pages returned errors site-wide. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.7.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
UPDATE: We have resolved the AWS resource issue affecting EU clients. All Learn SaaS Production instances should now have received the updated 3700.7.0 version.
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.7.0 (full release number 3700.7.0-rel.27+ce363ca) to client Production servers during off-hours on Wednesday, August 14, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Users experienced extremely slow response times during the upgrade. We’ve fixed the issue.
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The banner thumbnail image caused a large number of temporary files to fill the root file structure. We’ve fixed the issue.
Additional updates in the user interface
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
- When students open an assessment in the Ultra Course View, the Submit button is disabled until they add content or answer at least one question.
- When a student or instructor uses Box View in an assignment, it opens by default and displays using more screen space.
- We've added a display warning to help administrators identify when they are enabling a feature that may send data outside the specified compliance boundary. This allows administrators to make more informed decisions about the features they enable.
- We've changed the height of the Institution Page banner image to 160 pixels. Because screen size width varies on wider screens, the banner image crops the top and bottom of the image as the content area gets wider.
Create question pools
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Ultra Course View
To help build assessments quickly and encourage academic integrity, instructors can now create question pools in the Ultra Course View. With question pools, students receive different sets of questions to answer. Instructors can add questions from all existing tests, assignments, and question banks in their courses.
In the Ultra Course View, question pools replace the Original Course View's random blocks and question sets. Instructors can create as many question pools as they want and add, edit, and remove questions in the pools. Edits appear anywhere questions are used.
Create Ultra Organizations
In this release, we've brought Ultra Organizations to life. Administrators can now create Ultra Organizations, which have the same functionality and workflow as Ultra courses. Administrators can choose to create Original Organizations, Ultra Organizations, or let users choose. Administrators can import and export existing courses and organizations.
Create Ultra Organizations using the same workflow as Ultra Courses. You can create groups, make the organization private or visible to students, and create content within the organization.
More on creating Ultra Organizations
Learn SaaS release 3700.7.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.7.0 (full release number 3700.7.0-rel.20+09250fe) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Wednesday, July 31, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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What's New blog notifications didn't display correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Details on files uploaded to essay questions didn't display correctly. We've fixed the issue.
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The Redis cache building block didn't display status and statistics correctly in the Administrator panel. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.7.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.7.0 (full release number 3700.7.0-rel.9+7230020) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 23, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Some users received an error message when opening the Grade Center. We’ve fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
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Instructors weren't able to edit anonymous Discussion Topics in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.
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Some custom Building Blocks weren’t reachable using the HttpAuthModule class. We’ve fixed the issue.
Maintenance items
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.7.0 | Release to Production 12 August 2019
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3700.7.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Show answers option in Ultra assessments
In Ultra assessments, instructors can decide if students see the answers to questions that were answered incorrectly. For example, instructors may want students to see which questions they missed on a multiple attempt assessment, but don’t want to show the correct answers. Instructors may also hide answers until all students complete their submissions.
In the assessment settings panel, a new option appears: Show correct answers. The option isn’t selected by default, so correct answers are hidden from students. Instructors need to return to the assessment settings and select Show correct answers so students can review them with the assessment content.
More on the Show correct answers option
Updates to branding
In this release, we've included the ability to filter brands by roles or host names from the brands listing page and view which brands were just created. We included a notification if a custom login is specified but won't be visible to users based on brand associations. Administrators can choose to allow the navigation logo area to be filled with a theme color, like the base navigation area.
In the Brands listing page, an Administrator can now view the Host and Role Associations assigned to any specific brand and search those brands by clicking the Find a Brand function to filter the list based on the Brand Name or Host Association.
Learn SaaS release 3700.5.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.5.0 | Release to Production 11 July 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.5.0 (full release number 3700.5.0-rel.17+4d20a83) to client Production servers during off-hours on Thursday, July 18, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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Some custom Building Blocks weren’t reachable using the HttpAuthModule class. We’ve fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.5.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.5.0 | Release to Production 11 July 2019
Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we're applying an updated version of the 3700.5.0 Ultra user interface (full release number 3700.5.0-rel.14+eacb9cf) to client Production servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 16, 2019.
Updates in this version relate only to the Ultra Course View and include:
Instructors weren't able to edit anonymous Discussion Topics in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.5.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.5.0 | Release to Production 11 July 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.5.0 (full release number 3700.5.0-rel.14+eacb9cf) to client Test/Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, July 2, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
The Discussion Board post count displayed inaccurately. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.5.0: Update to client Test/Stage environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.5.0 | Release to Production 11 July 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.5.0 (full release number 3700.5.0-rel.12+64e9d47) to client Test and Staging servers during off-hours on Tuesday, June 25, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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We’ve removed the Learn Legacy Authentication Provider type, which represented the authentication framework deployed on versions prior to 9.1 SP8.
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Instructors received error messages when they created a folder or downloaded a file with special characters in the filename with SafeAssign. We’ve fixed the issue.
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When a student submitted a file with spaces in the filename, the instructor couldn’t preview or download it in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
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A few improvements for Mobile users:
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Students using the Blackboard App received errors when starting an assignment attempt in the Original Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Students using the Blackboard App on an Android device couldn’t see what they were typing in an assignment because the keyboard was hiding the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.
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Learn SaaS release 3700.3.0: Update to client Production environments
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.3.0 | Release to Production 6 June 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.3.0 (full release number 3700.3.0-rel.9+2a83306) to client Production servers during off-hours on Friday, June 21, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
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When a student submitted a file with spaces in the filename, the instructor couldn’t preview or download it in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
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A few improvements for Mobile users:
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Students using the Blackboard App received errors when starting an assignment attempt in the Original Course View. We’ve fixed the issue.
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Students using the Blackboard App on an Android device couldn’t see what they were typing in an assignment because the keyboard was hiding the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.
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Additional updates in the user interface
- To ensure privacy, only instructor names—not instructor usernames—appear to students throughout the Ultra experience.
- Building on the URL and role branding feature released earlier, administrators can see a brand’s host and role associations from the Brands page.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3700.5.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Office 365/G Suite Integration: Individual authentication
The ability to support institutionally managed access to cloud storage alongside personal storage is an important major request we hear from our clients. This release provides the ability for institutions and schools who leverage Microsoft or Google to select their preferred solution and allow users to access their institutional cloud storage account from within their profile or directly upload content in the Ultra Course View.
Allow your instructors and students to access Office365 or Google accounts from Blackboard Learn. Users can access cloud storage from their Ultra courses, profile, and the Tools page. Multiple entry points make it easier to get to the files they want when they want it. Administrators must configure the institution account to turn on instructor and student access. On the Administrator panel, go to Institution Cloud Storage to set up the integration.
Cumulative Update 2 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.2)
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
Original Experience
Cumulative Update (CU) 2 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
New updates for Ally customers
The latest release of Ally (v. 1.31) contains improvements that may apply to your product. Visit the Ally release notes to learn more. Don't have Ally? Learn more about Ally.
Learn SaaS release 3500.0.5: Update to FDO client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3500.0.5 (full release number 3500.0.5-rel.49+4a09578) to Flexible Deployment Option client Production servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 5:00PM EST on May 20, 2019.
Learn SaaS release 3700.3.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.3.0 (full release number 3700.3.0-rel.7+29b16e7) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 5:00AM EST on May 31, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
- When a student submitted multiple attempts on a test in quick succession, the system's responsiveness would slow or stop. We've fixed the issue.
- On the Courses page in the Ultra experience, longer course names were appearing with unexpected symbols. We've fixed the issue.
- A few improvements for custom themes in the Ultra experience:
- We've improved how custom themes are created and updated on the backend in the Ultra experience to improve performance.
- Deleted custom brands weren't being removed from the database properly, leading to unexpected behavior. We've fixed the issue.
- When an administrator uploaded a custom navigation logo, the custom login logo was cleared. We've fixed the issue.
- Some users reported losing the ability to upload a logo to the Institution Page. We've fixed the issue.
- The Institution Page associated with a custom brand wasn't available for administrators if modules weren't visible. We've fixed the issue.
Add external calendars in Blackboard Learn
Instructors and students often use calendars to organize and keep track of events. Access to a course calendar is crucial to meeting deadlines and overall success. Having access to all events—both personal and academic—in one place helps keep everyone on track. In this release, users can synchronize external calendars with Blackboard Learn, building on the previously released capabilities.
On the Calendar page in the base navigation, open Calendar Settings and select Add Calendar. Drag and drop or click to upload your calendar file in ICS format. When you connect your external calendar to Blackboard Learn, all course events appear one year in the past and into the future.
Additional updates in the user interface
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3700.3.0 | Release to Production 6 June 2019
Blackboard Learn SaaS Flexible Deployment Option Q4 2019
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
- Previously, the Courses page in the Ultra experience listed a user's oldest courses first. The order has been flipped and now the newest courses are listed first. If a user designates any courses as favorites, those courses still appear first in the list.
- To improve performance for system tasks, we’ve introduced new retention settings. You can configure how long your system retains information on asynchronous system tasks, including “complete,” “error,” and “incomplete” tasks. Find these options in Administrator Panel > Logs > System Tasks Status > Retention Settings.
- We’ve updated file behavior for Portfolios to improve performance. When a user downloads a portfolio, the assets will reference assets stored on Blackboard's content delivery network (CDN). File names will use https://learn.blackboardcdn.com/. Related updates are described on Behind the Blackboard.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3700.3.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Office 365/G Suite integration for Ultra Course View
Learning institutions all over the world are adopting Office 365 and G Suite. With the many benefits they offer, these cloud suites are a compelling solution for education. In this release, we’re pleased to introduce the Office 365 and G Suite integration with Blackboard Learn. Instructors and students can now add files from their institution cloud storage account directly into their courses. Before this release, they could only add files from their personal cloud accounts.
Administrators need to allow and set up the integration with the institution's suite account. The service provider and domain name are needed to complete institution account configuration. After configuration, authenticated institution cloud accounts are associated with Blackboard Learn accounts. This means that users don't need to authenticate more than once. The institution accounts display in their course no matter what device or browser they use.
Users must use a login ID that matches the domain configured for institution accounts to display.
Under Integrations in the Administrator Panel, select Institution Cloud Storage to set up the integration.
More on Institution Cloud Storage
Parallel grading in the Ultra Course View
For higher stakes assessments, a double marking process is sometimes used in which each student’s submission is evaluated by two graders and a final grader reviews those evaluations to make the final decision on a student’s grade. This approach intends to reduce bias and is often paired with student anonymity. When setting up an assignment in the Ultra Course View, instructors can enable parallel grading and select non-student course members to act as graders and reconcilers. Instructors can also hide student names to prevent unintended bias.
Update to the Organizations and Courses pages in the Ultra experience
In this release, we've updated the Courses and Organizations pages in the Ultra base navigation.
We've brought the Ultra design language to the Organizations base page. Courses and organizations also now include the ability to add images. You can also view the Courses and Organizations pages as either a list or a grid, where banner images are on display. The Organizations page contains the same functions and workflows as the Courses page.
More on how instructors access the Courses page
URL and role branding for the Ultra experience
Institutions want to be able to express their own brand and identity within the learning management system, and this often extends to specific branding for their faculties or affiliations. With the introduction of URL and role branding in the Ultra experience, institutions can now create their own domain and role specific Ultra brands, providing a sense of personalization for instructors and students.
Create a new brand from the Brands link on the Administrator Panel. You can customize the login logo, navigation and login icon, color selection, and Institution Page for a brand. Associate the brand to a new host/domain name and/or institution role in the Ultra experience.
More on custom brands in Ultra
Cumulative Update 1 for FDO Q2 2019 (release 3700.0.1)
Cumulative Update (CU) 1 for the Q2 2019 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Learn SaaS release 3700.0.0: Update to FDO client Test/Stage environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.0.0 (full release number 3700.0.0-rel.23+4c6d4de) to Flexible Deployment Option client Test/Stage servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 5:00AM EST on May 15, 2019.
Learn SaaS release 3700.0.0: Update to Ultra Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of the 3700.0.0 Ultra user interface (full release number 3700.0.0-rel.23+4c6d4de) to client Production servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 1:00 PM EST on May 13, 2019.
Updates in this version relate only to the Ultra Course View and include:
- Instructors weren't able to use rubrics on graded group discussions in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.
- Students saw an error message when opening a rubric applied to a graded group assignment submission in the Ultra Course View. We've fixed the issue.
After your environment is updated, users will need to refresh their browser or log out and log in again to see the updates.
Learn SaaS release 3700.0.0: Update to client Test/Stage and Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.0.0 (full release number 3700.0.0-rel.23+4c6d4de) to client Test/Stage and Production servers.
Your Production instance may be updated starting on May 9, 2019. Your Test/Stage instance may be updated starting on May 10, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
- An issue introduced with the 3700.0 release caused Learn Ultra to frequently query the entire content management resource link. This caused extreme garbage collection and out-of-memory issues across application servers leading to system instability and eventual outage. We've fixed the issue, restoring environment stabilization and operations. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3700.0.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.0.0 (full release number 3700.0.0-rel.14+b5a694ef) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 1:00AM EST on April 30, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
- A bug was introduced related to discussions in the Ultra Course View. Discussion settings weren't retained when an Ultra course was duplicated. We've fixed the issue.
Learn SaaS release 3700.0.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3700.0.0 (full release number 3700.0.0-rel.10+745b49a) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 5:00AM EST on April 15, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
- System and course role privileges weren't appearing in the user interface as expected. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
- A critical security vulnerability has been internally identified and we have fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
Gradebook improvements: Filter based on merged courses
Grading tasks and workflows vary widely from instructor to instructor. To support these specific workflows in Ultra, we’re building features to help ease the administrative burden of working in the grade book. In this release, instructors can filter their gradebook view based on child courses that have been merged. Instructors who manage merged courses can filter the gradebook view to show only students in a specific child course.
Individual feedback for group assessments
Instructors often use group-based assessments as part of their curriculums. There are times when instructors want to provide specific feedback for individuals in a group, in addition to group feedback overall. In this release, we introduce the ability to provide feedback for an entire group as well as individual members.
For group assessments, instructors can add individual feedback for each student within a group. Previously, each student in a group received the same feedback and only differentiated grades were supported. Now group members can see feedback for the group and their individual feedback if provided.
More on how to give individual feedback on group assessments
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3700.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Preview course as a student
This feature was previously announced as part of 3600.0.0. We found an issue with this feature that would impact the user experience. After carefully reviewing the issue and to ensure release quality, we concluded that we should remove Student Preview from that release for quality concerns.
This feature is now confirmed as part of 3700.0.0.
Instructors want to be confident that their courses are well-designed and function as intended—before their students see them. Instructors can use student preview to review the course content. They can also validate the course behaviors, such as those that control course content availability or require a particular interaction from the students to be triggered. With student preview, instructors can experience their courses exactly as their students do.
Start student preview from the Details & Actions menu within your Ultra course. The preview creates user in your course that you can use to view everything as a student would.
Question Banks in the Ultra Course View
With this release, instructors can now directly import question banks, including question pools that have been exported from Original courses and packages of questions that have been purchased from a publisher. These questions are then available for use and reuse across the assessments in that course. Imported question banks display in the same area of the question reuse search and filter panel as pools that were converted from Original courses. As with any conversion from Original to Ultra, question types that are not yet supported are dropped during the processing of the imported file.
Instructors can import question banks to use in their assessments. Access to question banks now appears on the Course Content page in the Details & Actions panel.
Learn more about question banks
Additional updates in the user interface
- On the Details & Action panel of the Ultra Course View, the Collaborate link has been updated to say Blackboard Collaborate. It previously said Course Room. We've also updated the link text in this menu.
- Previously, assessment descriptions weren’t properly converted to plain text when a course was converted to the Ultra Course View. Assessment descriptions are now converted to plain text like other content descriptions in Ultra.
Flexible Deployment Option Q2 2019
The Blackboard Learn SaaS Q2 2019 (3700.0.0) release for Flexible Deployment Option customers is now available. Contact Blackboard Support to schedule your upgrade for the time and date that works best for you.
This release includes features released as part of continuous delivery releases since 3500.0.0. Use the category filter to narrow down the list of features in this latest release.
Learn SaaS release 3600.0.0: Update to client Production environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3600.0.0 (full release number 3600.0.0-rel.11+318243c) to client Production servers. Your instance may be updated starting in the early evening hours on April 13, 2019 based on your region and timezone.
Updates in this version include:
- A critical security vulnerability has been internally identified and we have fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
Cumulative Update 5 for FDO Q4 2018 (release 3500.0.5)
Cumulative Update (CU) 5 for the Q4 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Learn SaaS release 3600.0.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3600.0.0 (full release number 3600.0.0-rel.9+22b493d) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 6:00AM EST on April 1, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
- Instructors and students were unable to view portfolio submissions after a recent upgrade. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
- In the Original Course View, the breadcrumb navigation bar at the top of the browser window appeared twice. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
- In the Ultra Course View, we've removed the new Student Preview feature to address quality concerns. It will be included in an upcoming release.
Course role for facilitators
Facilitation privileges have been long requested functionality in Blackboard Learn's Original Experience. We’re excited to bring this ability to both the Original and Ultra Experiences.
3600.0.0 marks the culmination of previous content lockdown releases with the introduction of the Facilitator role. This course role contains a set of default privileges regarding course calendar, discussions, gradebook, announcements, materials, and groups. Course members can be granted this role to help maintain the pace of the course throughout the term or as needed.
This release includes two new privileges to grant a user the ability to create or delete a discussion in the Ultra Course View.
Additionally, the privileges list shows when certain entitlements are inherited by other privileges. For example, the Course/Organization (Content Areas) > Edit Material Availability privilege is automatically granted to a user who also has the Course/Organization (Content Areas) > Edit Materials privilege. We’ve made this association clearer in the user interface.
If your environment already contains a custom course role with FACILITATOR as the Role ID, you may notice errors after the 3600.0.0 update. We're working on addressing this issue before the release reaches Production servers. To troubleshoot, copy your custom role, rename it to eliminate FACILITATOR, apply it to the appropriate users, and remove the old custom role.
Improvements for auto-archived courses
This release includes improvements to automatically archived courses to provide clients with greater flexibility and customization. You can access these settings through the Course Settings area of the Administrator Panel. Administrators can choose the length of time to keep a course archive on their system and whether course archives should include content that lives outside of the course’s directory.
More on automatic course archives
Improvements to how the Activity Stream shows external content
The Activity Stream is the go-to place for instructors and students to understand what’s happening in a course. We’ve improved reporting behavior so third-party content due dates appear in the Activity Stream in a more dynamic way.
Previously, instructors and students could see an upcoming due date for this type of content. When the due date passed or the content status changed, the notification in the Activity Stream wouldn’t update. With this release, the Activity Stream more accurately reports on third-party content to keep everyone more up to date. Specifically, LTI and manual grade column notifications will update in the Activity Stream when:
- The item transitions from due to overdue
- The item’s due date is updated
- The item is deleted
- The item is graded
- The item’s visibility is changed
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3600.0.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Self-service log download and removal of Kibana Building Block
We’ve added support for server log storage and access from within the Blackboard Learn user interface. Select Manage Content in the Administrator Panel to access logs.
Server logs are created once every hour and stored in the internal > logs folder. Logs are grouped by year, month, day, and hour. Logs are generated in the same format as those you’re used to viewing in Kibana as a JSON file.
The hour folder uses the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) hour. Logs are transferred to the local file system once per hour, but on a four-hour delay. For example, if the current hour is 4 then during this hour logs from hour 0 will be transferred.
As part of the 3600.0.0 release, we will remove the Kibana Building Block and stop sending logs to Kibana. All logs will need to be accessed via the new workflow in the user interface.
More on how to download and reformat system logs in Blackboard Learn SaaS
Share calendar with external services
Instructors and students often use calendars to organize and keep track of events. Access to a course calendar is crucial to meeting deadlines and overall success. Having access to all events—both personal and academic—in one place helps keep everyone on track. In this release, users can synchronize their Blackboard Learn Ultra calendars to external calendars.
Generate a URL to share course calendar details with an external service. Share the URL only with trusted sources. When you connect your Blackboard Learn calendar to an external calendar, all course events appear one year in the past and into the future.
Support for IMS Global’s Questions and Test Interoperability (QTI) specification
Instructors and instructional designers use various technologies to develop assessments and need to be able to move assessment items such as questions from one system to another easily. To ensure compatibility and easy re-use, IMS Global developed the Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) standard so questions can be shared between learning management and assessment systems. In this release, instructors and course builders can add QTI packages to Blackboard Learn in the Original Course View.
Learn more about QTI at the IMS Global site
Additional details:
- Blackboard Learn handles QTI 2.1 packages as pools for import and export. If a QTI import package contains multiple assessment objects, multiple pools are created.
- Blackboard Learn supports the following question types for import/export in QTI 2.1 format: true/false, multiple choice, multiple answer, fill-in-the-blank, and essay.
- For embedded media, Blackboard Learn will import HTML5 and HTML Object tags. It will export HTML5.
- In scenarios where there is a mismatch in question configuration options, Blackboard Learn will prioritize fidelity of the question and answer text over settings. For example, some exam systems allow differing partial credit allocations to be set per possible answer response whereas Blackboard Learn maintains a list of correct answers. In this case, all answer options will be imported as correct so they can be reviewed for continued applicability in Blackboard Learn.
- Question metadata such as tags, categories, and alignments are not exported or imported at this time.
- Questions using the optional QTI response processing are skipped and not imported.
- Because different assessment tools have different features and varying media/HTML/equation handling capabilities, you should always review and test questions after transfer between solutions.
Additional updates in the user interface
- If your institution uses the Turn It In Building Block, students will no longer receive a Past Due notification when they have submitted an assignment on time.
- We’re building more and more content capabilities into the Ultra Course View. In this release, you’ll notice a redesigned menu to accommodate additional options in course content, gradebook, discussions, and documents.
- Users who subscribe to email notifications will notice we’ve updated the message format. We’ve reduced Blackboard branding and optimized the format for better appearance on more devices and email clients.
- We’ve updated the Global HTML filter to accept .txt files for student submissions
- Push notifications in the Ultra experience support Ultra course discussions. Students can receive notifications when someone responds to their discussion, someone replies to their posts, an instructor creates a new discussion, or when participation deadlines are approaching. Instructors can receive notifications for replies to discussion threads or posts they authored.
Learn SaaS release 3500.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3500.11.0 (full release number 3500.11.0-rel.10+071f567) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 6:00AM EST on March 4, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
- Participants in an Organization saw an "Oops! Something went wrong" message when clicking on Organizations in the Ultra base navigation. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
- Users weren't able to log in to Blackboard Learn with the Ultra experience with Microsoft Edge browser versions 30-41. We've fixed the issue. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3500.11.0: Update to client Test/Staging environments
As part of our commitment to release quality, we’re applying an updated version of 3500.11.0 (full release version 3500.11.0-rel.9+0b3fe2f) to client Test/Staging servers. Your instance may be updated starting at 6:00AM EST on February 22, 2019.
Updates in this version include:
- In the Ultra Course View, students with accommodations and assessment exceptions can be granted additional time in timed assessments.
- Users can access SCORM content in a copied course. More information on Behind the Blackboard.
Blackboard Learn achieves LTI Advantage certification
Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) is an initiative managed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium to seamlessly integrate learning applications used by instructors into their courses. It includes a standard protocol for establishing a trusted relationship between the tool provider and the Learning Management System (LMS), so that students and teachers can have a seamless, integrated experience of using the tool within the context of their course.
Blackboard Learn is now LTI Advantage certified. Blackboard is among the first edtech companies to meet the rigorous IMS certification requirements for all components of LTI Advantage. LTI Advantage builds on the latest set of IMS standards and provides educational institutions and edtech suppliers with a set of extensions that allow deeper integration and enhanced interoperability between IMS certified tools and LMSs. LTI Advantage also leverages a robust security framework that offers more advanced protection of sensitive student data and adds features to support the delivery of innovative learning tools and applications necessary for digital transformation within an institution.
Content lockdown: Expanded user privileges for course announcements control
3500.11.0 contains enhancements for granular entitlements in Original and Ultra course roles in support of the formalized facilitator role. Facilitation privileges have been long requested functionality in Blackboard Learn's Original Experience. We’re excited to bring this ability to both the Original and Ultra Experiences.
The set of privileges contained in this release relate to course announcements. Individuals with these privileges can create course announcements in both course views. Additional entitlements allow users to view draft announcements in addition to posted announcements.
Cross-origin resourcing tool for administrators
Administrators may need to allow an external script or third-party application to make direct calls to their Blackboard Learn instance’s REST API. Previously, these requests would be blocked at the browser level. In this release, we introduce a Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) tool to allow your institution to leverage cloud-based or third-party extensions more fully. Administrators can also use the CORS tool to strictly define the allowed domains within an access control list and headers allowed as part of those requests. This secure, scalable tool lets you explore more integration possibilities using REST APIs.
From the Administrator Panel, select Cross-Origin Resource Sharing in the Integrations menu. Select Create Integration to get started.
Enhanced discussion analysis metrics
To better inform grading and provide additional insight in to the level of engagement in graded discussions, we've added three new metrics to the Discussion Analysis area of the Ultra Course View. Now, in addition to sentence complexity, critical thinking, and counts of responses and replies, graders can view statistics for the number of substantive posts, lexical classification (counts of content and functional words), and the percentage of word variation in a student’s posts for a given discussion. These market-leading analytics provide instructors a holistic overview of the level at which students are writing and may better inform differentiation in grading discussions.
Find discussion analytics on the Grades & Participation page for a discussion. Select a student’s name to view their responses and replies. Discussion Analysis appears next to the student’s discussion activity to give you an overview of their engagement.
Grant students exceptions in specific assessments
This feature is included in the 3500.11.0 release, but wasn't enabled in time for the push to client Test servers. It will be available when the release reaches client Production servers.
There are times when unforeseen circumstances lead an instructor to grant a student extended access or additional attempts for a specific assessment. With the introduction of assessment exceptions, instructors are no longer forced to create copies of an assessment for individual students, create and remove accommodations, or use other cumbersome workarounds.
Instructors can grant individual students additional time to access an assessment, even if it is hidden to other students. Additional attempts may also be configured, again for an individual student on an individual assessment. In the future, we hope to introduce due date exceptions so that students who are granted extended access will not be marked late for submissions made after the original due date.
On the Submissions page, you can add an exception for an individual student. You can adjust the number of attempts or the assessment’s availability.
Granular Activity Stream settings
In this release, Activity Stream notification settings are more granular for students and instructors, giving them the option to choose which information they wish to receive.
Settings have been reformatted so users can select to receive all notifications at a high level, like notifications for new discussions. Users can also choose to see updates about specific events or activity in their Activity Streams. For example, an instructor can choose to be notified when a blog entry is edited.
Existing settings are carried over and saved in the new format. Visual cues display if all, some, or none of the notification types are selected.
Kaltura integration in the Ultra Course View
This feature was previously announced as part of 3500.5.0
Instructors can now use Kaltura in the Ultra Course View. Specifically, instructors can use Kaltura in these ways when configured in Blackboard Learn:
- Add a link to the Kaltura My Media (personal video storage repository) and the Kaltura Media Gallery (course shared media repository). An instructor can add these links to their Course Content page from within Books & Tools and Content Market.
- Embed video content directly from Kaltura into the editor using the Insert/Edit LTI Item option. This allows instructors to embed videos in documents, assessments, discussions, conversations, and messages.
Administrators can leverage LTI tools and placements to create these access points for instructors.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3500.11.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Miscellaneous updates
- Instructors at institutions based in the EU/UK will be able to use the recording feature in assessment feedback. This feature will be enabled in the eu-central-1 region when this release reaches Production servers. More on recording creation for administrators.
- A word count appears when drafting responses and replies in discussions in the Ultra Course View.
- The Messages page in the Ultra Course View wasn’t responsive for users on mobile devices. We’ve made it responsive.
- Instructors can now rename an LTI link from the gradebook in the Ultra Course View.
- Users enrolled in a demo environment may have noticed their SMS notifications were overwritten when upgrading to the 3500.9.0 release. We fixed this issue before the release reached Production servers.
- In a previous release, some institutions may have noticed the CAS authentication provider threw errors. We fixed the issue.
- When an administrator sought to delete all users not enrolled in a course, the system didn’t correctly list the number of users it would remove in the operation. We’ve fixed the issue.
- When copying an Ultra course using SIS, the new course duration was overwritten by the source course. We’ve fixed the issue by excluding a duration on the course copy.
- Users may have received an error message when attempting to connect to OneDrive for Business through Blackboard Learn. The vendor has fixed the issue.
- Group submissions in the Ultra Course View weren’t appearing consistently in the gradebook. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Instructors may have received an error message when saving course reports to the Content Collection. We’ve fixed the issue.
- A synchronization issue caused unexpected behavior in custom language packs. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Course messages with attachments sometimes resulted in an error message asking the user to contact their system administrator. We fixed the issue.
- SafeAssign Originality Reports weren’t loading correctly for users with Korean language packs enabled. We’ve fixed the issue.
- SafeAssign Originality Reports weren’t loading for users after a system update to the 3500.7.0 release. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Unenrolled users can view announcements in unavailable courses.
Regrade questions in the Ultra Course View
Without the ability to edit and regrade test questions after they have been delivered to students, instructors were forced to open each student’s submission and update scores one-by-one. With this release, test questions can be edited in one place. These edits, along with any score adjustments, are automatically performed for all submissions that contain the updated question.
In some cases, a question may be beyond repair and it is more appropriate to give all students full credit for the question, regardless of their answers. To support this scenario, full credit can be given to all students for a specific question. Instructors can trigger question regrading from the assessment canvas or from any student’s submission – the result is the same. When an instructor edits a question, the update appears in all submissions for that assessment and students’ grades adjust automatically based on the new correct answer or selection of the Give full credit for question option.
To edit or regrade a question, go to the assessment. Point to the question's menu and select Edit/Regrade to modify the question.
Cumulative Update 4 for FDO Q4 2018 (release 3500.0.4)
Cumulative Update (CU) 4 for the Q4 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Collaborate Attendance Integration with Blackboard Learn
This will be available with the Collaborate February release scheduled 6-7 February 2019.
Let Collaborate take attendance for you. In this Collaborate release, Blackboard Learn instructors can host a Collaborate session without tracking attendance manually.
Based on criteria you can set, Collaborate tracks if a student is present, late, or absent from a session. Collaborate then sends that information directly to the Attendance page in your Blackboard Learn course.
Attendance from the Collaborate session is counted in each student's average attendance in the course, which can also be used in calculating student grades.
More on Collaborate attendance reporting in Blackboard Learn 9.1
More on Collaborate attendance reporting in Blackboard Learn SaaS
Cumulative Update 3 for FDO Q4 2018 (release 3500.0.3)
Cumulative Update (CU) 3 for the Q4 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Content lockdown: Expanded user privileges for course calendar control
3500.9.0 marks the third release containing enhancements for granular entitlements in Original and Ultra course roles. Our next and final release of this feature will include the formalized facilitator role. Facilitation privileges have been long requested functionality in Blackboard Learn's Original Experience. We’re excited to bring this ability to both the Original and Ultra Experiences.
The set of privileges contained in this release relate to course calendar events. Individuals with these privileges can add, edit, and delete course calendar events in both course views. In the Ultra Course View, individuals with these privileges can also add, edit, and delete office hours and course schedules.
Gradebook improvements: Search gradebook columns and categories
There are times when an instructor needs to check on the status for a single gradebook column or create a simple, filtered view of a specific gradebook category across all students. Building on the student search we built for the gradebook grid view in an earlier release, instructors can search using column and category criteria. These additional search options reduce the scrolling and visual scanning required to quickly verify or filter.
Begin typing the title of a column or category in to the gradebook grid view search field. Search results include any columns, categories, or even students who match the search term or phrase. We've included a label within the search results to help distinguish among these three types of results.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3500.9.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Miscellaneous updates
- To improve performance times and user experience, course messages no longer appear in the activity stream.
- Instructors are now prompted to name content they create in the Ultra Course View.
- We’ve made several AX improvements in Ultra:
- Improved the color contrast ratio for reorder and move icons on the Course Content page.
- Added a stroke around the panel close button to comply with color contrast ratios.
- Improved the hover and keyboard states for active elements to be more visually significant.
- We’ve updated gradebook entitlements to address security concerns. Visit Behind the Blackboard for more information and guidance. The solution listed in the article will be included in 3500.9 when it reaches Production servers.
- In the Original Course View, we’ve updated the color key in the Course Coverage report to match the legend more accurately.
- When an instructor attached a file as feedback on a graded discussion, students encountered errors trying to download it. We’ve fixed the issue.
- When an unread discussion post appeared as a link in the What’s New module, users encountered errors when opening it. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Calculated questions using exponents in answers in the Original Course View were marked incorrect when students input an acceptable answer. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Instructors encountered an error when trying to use anonymous grading for attempts still in progress. We’ve fixed the issue.
- We’ve improved the logic for grading multiple choice questions when a student selects both correct and incorrect answers in the Ultra Course View.
- We’ve removed the ability for students to edit graded group discussion forum titles and descriptions.
- We’ve fixed a CSS error that caused text tagged with <em> HTML to appear on separate lines.
- We’ve improved the course import feature to preserve the content package’s folder structure.
Proctoring service using Respondus Lockdown Browser
Respondus LockDown Browser is the top choice of educators for securing online exams in classrooms or proctored environments. The LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard Learn, which means that students are unable to copy, print, access other applications, or visit other websites during an online exam. It works seamlessly with Blackboard Learn and is built in to the assessment settings. When instructors configure an assessment to require the LockDown Browser, students will only be able to begin their attempts if they access the assessment with the LockDown Browser.
Secure assessments are delivered using tools provided by Respondus. If this integration is available at your institution, you can access the Respondus Dashboard in the Settings area of both assignments and tests in the Ultra Course View. On the dashboard, choose to deliver the assessment using Respondus LockDown Browser alone, or include the Webcam.
More on Respondus integration with Blackboard Learn SaaS
Push notifications to Blackboard App
Many students use push notifications on their devices to check and engage with content. Push notifications for Learn Ultra will allow students to gain direct insight via this notification modal. Notifications may help students stay on top of new content added to their courses, new grades and feedback that have been created for assessed items, and due date reminders for upcoming assessments that need to be completed and submitted.
Push notifications further the integration between the Blackboard Learn Ultra experience and the Blackboard mobile app for students. In this release, users on the Ultra experience can select which push notifications they’d like to receive. In the app, they’ll see notifications for due date reminders and new grades and feedback. Push notifications for new content will be available in the app in the coming months.
SCORM advanced settings and reporting
Over the past year, Blackboard has been focusing development attention on incorporating SCORM functionality into the Ultra Course View. This release includes the advanced settings functionality as well as reporting analytics for instructors.
Advanced settings options appear for instructors when they add a SCORM package to their course. After students submit SCORM attempts, instructors can view detailed reporting on time spent, average score, and attempts completed.
This marks the final milestone for SCORM’s foundation. Our next focus will be on xAPI and partnering with a Learner Record Store to use the deeper reporting functionality of the xAPI format.
Select theme colors
Institution branding is an easy way for institutions to differentiate their learning management system and adds an element of personalization at an institution level. Many institutions have requested to move away from the default purple in Ultra to express institution colors as part of their user experience. This functionality covers three highly used areas but will be expanded to further the institution’s color schema to more locations over time.
To customize the theme color, go to the Institution Page. Select the gear icon to open the settings panel. Enter a hex code to find your precise color or use the color picker. A preview appears to show you how the new color would look to all users. Don’t like what you see? You can revert your choice back to the default.
More on how to select a theme color
Blackboard SOAP Web Services deprecation
With the release of Blackboard Learn Q2 2019, Blackboard is deprecating our SOAP APIs. We recommend that if you use Blackboard's SOAP APIs as an external application or as part of a Building Block, you should immediately refactor your integration using our Blackboard REST APIs.
Blackboard SOAP APIs will become unavailable with the release of Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q2 2020.
Visit Behind the Blackboard for more information on SOAP web services deprecation and guidance on migrating to REST APIs.
Cumulative Update 2 for FDO Q4 2018 (release 3500.0.2)
Cumulative Update (CU) 2 for the Q4 2018 Flexible Deployment Option (FDO) release of Blackboard Learn SaaS is available.
Caliper 1.1 update for Blackboard Learn Telemetry Service
Blackboard is pleased to announce updated support for the Caliper Analytics® standard in Blackboard Learn. Caliper is a specification from the IMS Global Learning Consortium® that defines a standard for the exchange of user activity information. Blackboard Learn supports this standard, giving institutions the option to emit near-real-time and batch user event data to an event store system for further analytics and reporting.
The centralized service that processes the Learn telemetry stream into Caliper events data currently uses the Caliper 1.0 specification. On January 3, 2019 this service will change to use the Caliper 1.1 specification.
For more information about how this update affects your Blackboard Learn environment, visit Behind the Blackboard
More on Caliper event configuration is available on the Developer Community
Gradebook improvements: Search submission list and pagination
There are times when an instructor needs to find a specific submission or submission status for a specific student. To address this need, we’ve expanded gradebook search capabilities. Previously, we added the ability to search for students in the grade book grid view. This release brings that capability to the submission list view.
An instructor can go to the submission list and quickly locate a particular student to check the status of submissions or access the submission itself. Additionally, we’ve added pagination to the submission list. The default view is for 25 students, but instructors may also set the page to display 50 or 100 users. This setting is sticky, so a selection of 50 or 100 is retained when instructors leave the submission list and return later.
More on searching the submission list
Learning modules supported in conversion from Original to Ultra
In an earlier release, we brought the learning modules capability to the Ultra Course View. Starting with this release, learning modules are preserved in course copy, export, import, and restore operations.
When converting a learning module from the Original Course View to the Ultra Course View, the force sequence requirement is unchecked by default. Additionally, the file and folder structure may be flattened because the Course Content page only supports nested content two folders deep.
Student activity in a learning module is removed when converting to Ultra. However, instructors and administrators can choose to keep student progress in learning modules when exporting and copying an Ultra course.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3500.7.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Miscellaneous updates
- This release resolves an issue where the Blackboard app and Blackboard Instructor app weren’t compatible with Session Fingerprint settings. Session fingerprint settings to Create New Session When Fingerprint Changes are now compatible with the mobile apps’ mBaaS architecture.
- When you access individual students' attendance record in the Ultra Course View, the date column has been renamed Meeting and now appears first.
- An updated version of the Vital Source Building Block (v3.101.2018040483) is bundled with this release.
- To accommodate Microsoft Azure SAML requirements, we’ve added the option to keep the SAML session age unlimited.
- When viewing assessments that were graded using a rubric more than a year ago, users may have noticed a discrepancy between rubric totals and the grade displayed in the Grade Center. Raw data was not affected. We fixed the issue.
- Grade Journey wasn’t consistently displaying optional data when the extraction was initiated from merged courses. We fixed the issue.
- Users may have encountered an error when attempting to download a file package in the Content Collection. We fixed the issue.
- When a student submission was deleted, attached files were orphaned and retained in storage, sometimes unnecessarily. We fixed the issue.
- When an Ultra assessment was set to assign automatic zeros, the system wouldn’t log a zero score in the gradebook when a student had saved a draft but not submitted work. We fixed the issue.
- Importing a Canvas course to the Ultra Course View resulted in missing content. We fixed the issue.
New Originality Report available for SafeAssign integration
We've updated the design of the SafeAssign Originality Report in Blackboard Learn SaaS environments. The new Originality Report uses Blackboard's Ultra design philosophy and includes some new information about a submission's overall risk for being copied from another source. This new report interface is also more responsive for mobile devices and more accessible to screen readers than the old design; we will be seeking VPAT compliance for this new design soon!
This release also allows the SafeAssign team to be more iterative and provide updates to the new report design on a more regular basis and without requiring an update to the LMS platform. We'll still be communicating changes on the SafeAssign help pages, so make sure to follow those pages as well for new information!
Users can switch back to the old Originality Report design for a little while longer to help ease the transition. Blackboard Learn 9.1 users should expect to receive the new Originality Report design with the Q2 2019 release next year.
Question analysis and report download
Instructors who make use of Item Analysis in Original courses recognize the benefit this report provides, specifically for reviewing the quality of assessment questions and improving assessments from one term to the next. However, many instructors are either unaware that this report is available or are not familiar with the term “item analysis” and don’t open the report.
In the Ultra Course View, we’ve updated the title to Question Analysis as a way to raise awareness of this powerful report and encourage its use. We’ve also made the help content more accessible and added helpful explanatory text to help instructors understand the statistics within the report.
Question analysis provides statistics on overall performance, assessment quality, and individual questions. This data helps you recognize questions that might be poor discriminators of student performance. Question analysis is for assessments with questions. You can also download the report with raw question data to analyze it or keep it for future uses.
Instructors can use question analysis in these ways:
- Improve questions for future assessment administrations or to adjust credit on current attempts
- Discuss assessment results with your class
- Provide a basis for remedial work
- Improve classroom instruction
Batch edit due dates in course content
Building on the previous feature to batch edit visibility of course content, we’ve added the ability to adjust due dates in bulk.
Instructors often teach the same courses and curriculum each semester or year. When these courses use the same material, it can be challenging to update due dates for each item to reflect the new course calendar. In the Original Course View, this was achieved with Date Management. In this release, we bring that ability to Ultra.
With Batch Edit, you can update selected course content using a new course start date. Enter the new course start date and the existing start date. The tool calculates the difference between the two dates and uses the number of days to shift dates in all selected course content at once. You don’t have to spend time opening course content and determining new dates. Alternatively, you can shift all due dates backward or forward based on a chosen number of days.
Content without due dates isn't affected by batch editing dates.
Learn more about batch editing dates in the Ultra Course View
Content lockdown: Expanded user privileges for gradebook control
As part of an earlier release, we added entitlements for course roles so administrators can grant additional permissions for users that allow them to view course content but not modify it. In this release, we expand on those entitlements with respect to gradebook access and control.
Grading within a course is multi-faceted. Assigning a grade is only one piece of the process, which can also include grade maintenance, data download and upload, and release of grades. Institution administrators can grant some or all of these permissions to trusted facilitators to help ease the grading responsibility in larger courses.
Course Groups
Instructors often need to organize students into groups. Previously, instructors created groups of students only in the context of assessments and discussions. This ability is useful and important, but it didn’t account for many other reasons why an instructor would want to create groups independent of assessments.
In this release, instructors can create groups and group sets at the course level, outside of assessments. Group sets help identify students who are paired together based on specific attributes or purposes.
In a future release, instructors will have the ability to apply course groups to graded content.
Learning modules and forced content sequence
This feature was initially expected to be part of 3500.5.0 and is now confirmed as part of 3500.5.0. In an earlier update, we incorrectly stated the feature had been delayed to a later release. We apologize for the confusion.
Learning modules are a valuable way to organize and present content in the Original Course View. Modules let content creators require students to access learning materials in a specified order, walking learners through a guided path. In this release, we bring the power of learning modules to the Ultra Course View.
Use learning modules to organize content for an immersive learning experience. Students can work on content in sequence without needing to close and open content items. Instructors can also enforce a content sequence so students access and complete content in the sequence specified.
Learning modules are available in new courses only. Courses created in a Learn environment prior to this release won’t have access to learning modules.
Maintenance items
You can view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3500.5.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Miscellaneous updates
- The Consulting Central Building Block is bundled with this release. Learn more about Consulting Central on Behind the Blackboard.
- The French language pack previously used an incorrect phrase to label new discussions. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Users saw an error when downloading an annotated PDF with comments. We’ve fixed the issue so the downloads now include a summary list of comments.
- To avoid permissions and grading issues, all LTI tools are excluded from the Copy Content option in the Ultra Course View.
- When a student attempted to access an unavailable course in the Ultra experience, the date was recorded in the Performance Dashboard under “Last Course Access.” We’ve fixed the issue.
- When a user attempted to access Organizations in the Ultra experience while using a touchscreen device, the page would display an error. We’ve fixed the issue.
- When the Attendance tool was set to unavailable or inactive at the system level, instructors may have encountered error messages in the gradebook. We’ve fixed the issue.
- Optional data wasn’t consistently included in Grade Journey extractions using REST. We’ve fixed the issue.
- When an administrator attempted to move a user f