Release Notes for Learn SaaS
This page contains features and updates currently on Learn SaaS Test/Stage and Production environments. Visit Archived SaaS Release Notes to see features and updates in older versions. Visit In-Product Updates to learn more about in-product updates.
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More on Learn with the SaaS Deployment | Export the list of Known Issues | Access the latest API and database documentation | Blackboard Learn SaaS release notes archive | Learn Releases White Paper
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View the SaaS release schedule
Learn SaaS release 3900.67.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.67.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 9 May 2023 | Release to Production: Thursday, 1 June 2023
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.67.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.67.0-rel.19+0c69b18 to Test/Stage servers to take place on 30 May 2023.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3900.65.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.65.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 11 April 2023 | Release to Production: Thursday, 4 May 2023
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.65.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.65.0-rel.17+fc3b8f5 to Production servers to take place on 18 May 2023.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
June 2023 – 3900.67 Release
The June 2023 - 3900.67 release is robust with features in six areas:
- Assessment and grading;
- Richer course and content;
- Data and analytics;
- Communication and social engagement;
- Integration, extension, and management; and
- Course upgrading
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.
Features with this icon are controlled by a client facing feature flag:
Instructors:
- Add Exemptions for Anonymous Assessments
- Add Exceptions from Gradebook Grid View and Student Overview page
- ‘Base calculation on points earned out of total graded points’ support for Custom Calculations
- Upload questions from a file to tests
- Support for anonymous grading of tests
- Journals Grades & Participation list filters
Instructors and students:
- Course Links improvements
- Announcements in the top navigation
- Course Term display logic improvements
Students:
All users:
Administrators:
Original Course View: Improved Assignment Submission page – 3900.67
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Blackboard Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Original Course View
Impact: Students
Students submitting an Assignment in Original Course View have several possible actions. They can upload files, author a submission, and attach a note to their instructor. Previously, these actions could be confusing for students. The option to add comments always displayed. The option to author a submission required selecting a button that was easy to miss.
We redesigned the Assignment submission page to be less confusing and easier for students to use.
Students have three distinct actions they can take. Each section can be opened independently. Students can open more than one. The page will retain added content when a student closes a section.
- Create Submission
- Upload Files
- Add Comments
All Assignment information has been grouped together:
- Due date
- Points possible
- Grading rubric
- Group membership and update statuses
- SafeAssign disclosure
Image 1. The new student Assignment submission page has three sections: instructions, submission, and assignment information
Image 2. The “Create Submission” section opened
Image 3. The “Upload Files” section opened
For administrators: This feature is available for all Original courses. There are no configurations needed.
Integration, Extension, and Management
Prevent passwords exposed in data breaches – 3900.67
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Blackboard Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Impact: All users allowed to change passwords in Learn
Some institutions use an identity provider, such as Azure Active Directory, to authenticate users. Others manage passwords within Learn. In recent releases, we have prioritized improvements to the security of passwords managed in Learn.
Now institutions can also restrict users from selecting passwords exposed in a data breach. This is an important security measure since passwords like "123456," "qwerty," or "password123" are frequently targeted by hackers.
When a user attempts to change their password within Learn, we check it against a global database of breached passwords. If the chosen password is among passwords in the database, we notify the user and require them to select a different password. This helps to ensure that users' passwords are strong and secure, reducing the likelihood of unauthorized access to their account.
Image 1. A user is informed that their proposed password was exposed in a security breach
Image 2. An administrator configures the exposed password protection policy
For administrators: For most institutions, this feature is off by default. It must be enabled by an administrator.
For United States government clients in FedRAMP boundaries: This feature is on by default. If your compliance boundary changes, you should confirm your configuration.
Managed privilege to view System Roles – 3900.67
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Blackboard Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Administrators, Developers
Developers create applications that expand the functionality of Blackboard Learn. Some of these apps integrate using REST APIs. Administrators manage the privileges for integrated apps. As a best practice, an integration should only have the minimum privileges necessary to function.
In the past, if an integration needed to read System Role information, the integration user had to be set as a full System Administrator. Now administrators can configure an integration user with fewer privileges and still grant access to view System Role information.
In the System Role privileges manager, administrators can now grant the privilege, Administrator Panel (Users) > System Roles. No System Roles have this privilege by default. An Administrator must always grant the privilege to any System Role. It isn’t possible to grant this privilege to a Course Role.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn environments. There are no configurations needed at the administrator level. To improve security, admins should reduce privileges for a REST application if System Administrator privileges were granted previously as a workaround.
May 2023 – 3900.65 Release
The May 2023 - 3900.65 release is robust with features in five areas:
- Assessment and grading;
- Richer course and content;
- Data and analytics;
- Integration, extension, and management; and
- Course upgrading
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- Grading attempt selector improvements
- Question Banks - Reuse Questions option
- Add Exemptions via the gradebook grid view
- Rubrics improvements
- Send Messages from the Submission page
- Remove category assignment requirement when editing LTI items via the gradebook
- Hotspot question zoom in / out
- Drag and drop desktop folders to upload to the Course Content page
- Instructor’s Notes on Student Overview
- Improved conversion for Flickr Mashups
- Improved conversion for Discussion Forums and Threads
Instructors and students:
All users:
Administrators:
Symbol font removed in Original Course View – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Original Course View
Impact: All Users
Unicode is a standard encoding system that allows popular fonts to support characters across various languages. In the past, specialized mapped fonts were used, which replaced one character for another. However, both the author and viewer had to have the exact same font installed on their device, making communication difficult.
In the Original Course View Content Editor, the Symbol font is an example of a mapped font for Greek. Some browsers and operating systems no longer support the Symbol font. This can result in students seeing Latin characters when authoring and instructors seeing Greek ones when reading. This has caused confusion for instructors trying to grade student work.
To avoid this confusion, we removed the Symbol font from the Content Editor in Original Course View. Instead, users can choose other common fonts that support Greek characters. To type in Greek, add the Greek language and keyboard layout to your device's operation settings. This feature is supported in Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.
Existing content formatted to use the Symbol font will remain in that font if the browser supports it.
For administrators: This change is for all Original courses. There are no configurations needed.
Integration, Extension, and Management
Login As Permission Improvements - 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Impact: Administrators
In the February release, administrators gained the ability to impersonate end users. This is helpful for troubleshooting purposes. Now we are improving the permissions structure to offer better controls. Some of these improvements include: When using the institutional hierarchy, node administrators with login as permissions cannot impersonate users from a different node. No user can ever impersonate a full administrator (z) role.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn environments. The privilege “Administrator Panel (Users) -> Users -> Login As” can be assigned to system roles. These roles can be applied to system and node administrators.
Reduced email notifications when purging data sources – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Impact: Administrators
In the past, when an administrator purged data in the Data Sources page, they would receive an email for each deleted record. When purging hundreds or thousands of records, the administrator would receive an overwhelming number of emails.
To improve the user experience, administrators will now receive only one email when purging a Data Source. This change simplifies the email notification process and reduces the clutter in the administrator's inbox.
For administrators: This feature is available for Learn environments. There are no configurations needed.
REST APIs to read Goals alignments – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Administrators
Learn courses offer a unique opportunity to see how institutional objectives align with each other and how the objectives relate to internal or external goals. This information can be invaluable to educators and administrators who wish to measure the effectiveness of their curriculum and ensure that their goals are being met.
To make it even easier for institutions to access this important data, we are pleased to announce the release of our new Goal Alignments Public API. This API includes a set of GET endpoints that allow users to retrieve goal alignments data for their courses.
The endpoints included in this API cover two main use cases:
- retrieving all goal alignments from a course
- retrieving all alignments for a specific goal across all courses
By providing access to this data in a simple and easy-to-use format, we are empowering educators and administrators to make data-driven decisions. This helps to improve the overall effectiveness of our clients' curriculum.
For administrators: The REST integration user must have the privileges “Course/Organization > Goals Alignments, View” and “Administrator Panel (Tools and Utilities) > Goals” to make use of the new endpoints.
Personal information restricted in passwords – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Impact: All users allowed to reset their passwords in Learn
Some institutions use an identity provider, such as Azure Active Directory, to manage and authenticate users. Sometimes, user accounts are created in Learn. These users can set their own passwords. To bolster security, we are now restricting the use of personal information in user passwords.
Personal information includes fields such as first name, middle name, last name, username, and student ID. Users will now be unable to incorporate this information when creating a password. The system will notify users if they attempt to use profile information as part of their password.
Image 1. User is informed about not using profile information when changing a password
For administrators: This feature is always on, and it doesn’t require any configuration. Administrators should also avoid using personal information when setting a password for another user.
Toggle records between enabled and disabled states – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Administrators
Various record types have different states. For example, an enrollment can be unavailable. This allows instructors to continue to grade student work and submit a final grade even when the student can no longer access the course. An enrollment can also be set to disabled. In this state, the enrollment is locked and hidden from users. A student information system (SIS) might disable an enrollment when a student drops the course.
Previously, administrators had to rely on data integration processes to change a record’s enablement state. This could require processing a file through the integration framework.
Now administrators can toggle the enablement state in the administrator panel. They can modify user, course, organization, and enrollment records. This allows administrators to temporarily re-enable a course or user to access information. It can also allow a help desk representative to grant access to a user waiting on an institutional data process.
When a user first enables or disables a record in the user interface, they must accept a disclaimer. It must only be accepted one time. Manual record changes are captured in the system logs.
Image 1. Administrator manually disables a course
Image 2. Administrator re-enables an enrollment record
For administrators: By default, only a full System Administrator (role Z) can use this feature. There are 5 new privileges that can be configured to distribute this privilege to others at the user or node level. This allows granting access specifically to the types of records one should manage.
- Administrator Panel (Courses) > Courses > Edit > Enrollments > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Courses) > Courses > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Organizations) > Organizations > Edit > Enrollments > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Organizations) > Organizations > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Users) > Users > Enable/Disable
Looking for older release notes?
Check out the Blackboard Learn Release Notes Archive for more information on past releases.
