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Learn SaaS release 3900.65.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.65.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 11 April 2023 | Release to Production: Thursday, 4 May 2023
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.65.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.65.0-rel.17+fc3b8f5 to Production servers to take place on 18 May 2023.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
May 2023 – 3900.65 Release
The May 2023 - 3900.65 release is robust with features in five areas:
- Assessment and grading;
- Richer course and content;
- Data and analytics;
- Integration, extension, and management; and
- Course upgrading
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- Grading attempt selector improvements
- Question Banks - Reuse Questions option
- Add Exemptions via the gradebook grid view
- Rubrics improvements
- Send Messages from the Submission page
- Remove category assignment requirement when editing LTI items via the gradebook
- Hotspot question zoom in / out
- Drag and drop desktop folders to upload to the Course Content page
- Instructor’s Notes on Student Overview
- Improved conversion for Flickr Mashups
- Improved conversion for Discussion Forums and Threads
Instructors and students:
All users:
Administrators:
Assessment and Grading
Grading attempt selector improvements – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Multiple attempt assessments can be a beneficial assessment option. Multiple attempts allow students to learn from their mistakes. It may also help students improve their understanding of the material.
At the same time, managing multiple submissions introduces some complexity for instructors. To help, we have added an attempt selector on the grading page. By default, the grading page displays the most appropriate attempt based on the “grade attempts” setting:
Table 1. Attempt displayed based on Grade Attempt Setting and Grading Status
| Grade Attempts setting | Grading completion status | Default attempt displayed |
|---|---|---|
| Last attempt with a grade | Any | Most recent attempt |
| First attempt with a grade | Any | Fist attempt |
| Attempt with the highest grade | All attempts are graded | Attempt with the highest grade |
| Attempt with the lowest grade | All attempts are graded | Attempt with the lowest grade |
| Average of all attempts | All attempts are graded | Most recent attempt |
| Attempt with the highest grade | There are ungraded attempts | Oldest ungraded attempt |
| Attempt with the lowest grade | There are ungraded attempts | Oldest ungraded attempt |
| Average of all attempts | There are ungraded attempts | Oldest ungraded attempt |
This allows instructors to quickly evaluate and grade student work. When the grade calculation method requires additional grading tasks, the instructor is taken to that task. If not, the most appropriate graded attempt is displayed.
Image 1. Instructor view of the attempt selector on the grading page
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Question Banks - Reuse Questions option– 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Aside from course content, test questions are some of the most valuable resources in a course. Instructors invest significant time and effort creating and refining banks of test questions. Instructors use these banks to easily reuse questions across various assessments.
Now instructors can copy questions between question banks. To copy a question, an instructor can select the new Reuse Questions option. Additionally, instructors can copy questions from existing assessments directly into their question banks. This process makes it easier to build and expand question libraries.
Image 1. Instructor view of the Reuse Questions option in the drop-down menu when working in a question bank
Image 2. Instructor selects four questions from another question bank and chooses to copy them into the current bank
Image 3. Instructor receives a notification that the four questions successfully copied
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Prevent backtracking in tests with page breaks – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Effective assessment settings are essential for accommodating various instructional scenarios. For example, instructors can insert page breaks into an assessment to create sections. Now instructors may prevent backtracking in paged tests. This option ensures that students progress through the pages of an assessment in a predetermined sequence. This option will be helpful when upcoming questions provide hints or reveal answers to questions on previous pages.
Instructors can activate this setting in assessments that contain questions.
Image 1. Assessment Settings panel with prohibit backtracking for a test using page breaks
Once a student answers the question on a page and proceeds to the next page, the student cannot go back. If a student skips a question, an alert informs the student that they cannot go back to the question on the previous page.
Image 2. Student view of a paged assessment with backtracking prohibited
Image 3. Alert if a student tries to skip a question
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Add Exemptions via the gradebook grid view – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors may need to excuse specific students from assessments or activities in a course. In the past, instructors could apply an exemption from the submissions page and student detail view. Now instructors can also access the option to exempt students from the gradebook grid view.
When an instructor exempts an assessment or activity:
- The exempted item is not factored into the Overall Grade calculation.
- The exempted item is not marked late for students who do not submit.
- The students with an exemption will not receive an automatic zero.
Students can still submit work for exempted items. Instructors can assess and provide feedback on these submissions for exempted items.
Image 1. Add or edit exemption from the gradebook grid view
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Rubrics improvements – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Rubrics play a critical role in the grading process for many educators. We've made significant enhancements to the rubric-based grading experience.
Performance level descriptions are now hidden by default. This change streamlines grading when instructors are familiar with the performance level requirements. Instructors can choose to display the performance descriptions if needed for grading.
Sometimes instructors change their minds when grading. Now it’s possible to deselect a performance level if choosing another level of performance isn’t appropriate. Criterion feedback is also collapsible, allowing for a more streamlined view of the grading panel.
Making Blackboard Learn inclusive and accessible is important to us, so we’ve improved keyboard navigation of rubrics. Navigate between rubric criteria with tab and use up/down arrows to select a performance level.
Image 1. Option to show criterion descriptions
Image 2. Option to collapse criterion feedback
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Send Messages from the Submission page – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
During an assessment, instructors may need to communicate with students. For example, an instructor may wish to send reminders to non-submitters. Or an instructor may want to notify students about their grades. To support this need, now instructors can message students from the Submissions page.
To get started, instructors can search or filter to find and select recipients. Then, select the "Send Message" button to open the messaging interface to craft the message.
We understand that student confidentiality is important. Thus, when an instructor selects more than one student as a recipient of a message, the recipients will be on BCC. This ensures that students’ identity and contact information remain confidential.
Image 1. Instructor view - Submission page filtered by “No Submission;” the instructor may select desired students to send a message
Image 2. Instructor view of the messaging page with selected recipients
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Remove category assignment requirement when editing LTI items via the gradebook – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors may need to adjust the due dates for third-party activities in their courses. In the past, when making such changes, instructors also had to assign these activities to a specific category within the gradebook.
Now instructors can edit gradebook columns for LTI-based activities without assigning them to a category. This change streamlines the process without forcing category selection.
Image 1. Instructor view of editing the grade column of a LTI item
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Hotspot question zoom in / out – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
When assessing a student's knowledge of visual content, the hotspot question type is a popular choice. To further enhance this question type, we have added two new features: Zoom In/Out and Full-Screen view. These controls enable instructors to define hotspots more precisely. These new controls are also accessible using convenient keyboard shortcuts.
Image 1. Instructor view – Zoom In / Out and Full-Screen controls
Image 2. Instructor view – Full-Screen view
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Richer Course and Content
Control where Web Links open – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Opening links in a new window is generally considered best practice, especially for external websites. This avoids browser security features blocking content from loading. There may be situations when an instructor or course author prefers linked content to open in a panel in the Ultra course.
When content is hosted on the Learn environment or on the institution’s website, the content is less likely to be blocked. In this example, opening content in a panel in the Ultra course is a better experience for students.
We understand that instructors need to have control over this aspect of their course design. Now instructors may specify where linked content should open - in a panel in the Ultra course or a new window. This option gives instructors and authors greater flexibility in designing their course content. Opening content in a panel in the Ultra course can be particularly beneficial for content authored with tools like Articulate Storyline, Articulate Rise, Adobe Captivate, and Adobe Dreamweaver.
Image 1. Instructor view – Option to control where the web link opens; default is new window
Image 2. Student view – link opened in new window
Image 3. Student view – link opened in a panel in the Ultra course with banner with option to open content in a new window/tab
Some content will not display on a panel in the Ultra course. A banner appears warning the student that some content may not be displayed unless opened in a new window. The student can choose to open the content in a new window or close the banner.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Drag and drop desktop folders to upload to the Course Content page – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Efficiency is key for instructors when creating course content. To assist with this, we've added a drag and drop support for uploading folders with files to the course content page. Instructors may drag and drop a folder from their computer to the course content page.
If an instructor drags and drops more than 25 files at the same time, a warning message appears. This message does not restrict the upload, but it informs the user that it may take a few minutes to complete. During the upload process, the instructor can cancel at any time. If the upload is canceled, the files are deleted.
Image 1. Locating folder on computer to drag and drop on the Course Content page
Image 2. Dragging folder from computer to Course Content page
Image 3. Dropped folder and files uploading to the Course Content page
Image 4. Folder added to the Course Content page
Image 5. Files inside folder displayed after being dragged and dropped on the Course Content page
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Data & Analytics
Instructor’s Notes on Student Overview – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Teaching many courses is challenging. Keeping track of student details can be even harder. To help, we've created a dedicated space for instructors to take notes about students in each course. These notes are private. Only instructors, administrators, and higher roles can access them.
To access the notes, instructors may select the Notes tab on the Student Overview page. From there, an instructor can add notes and review any other notes for a student in that course. They can also review notes added by other instructors in the same course.
The text editor for notes includes basic formatting options such as bold, italics, colors, styles, and font size.
The most recent notes appear at the top of the list.
Image 1. An instructor adds a note using different formatting options
Image 2. Notes taken about a particular student by an instructor and a teaching assistant
These notes have many possible uses:
- Tracking the evolution of a student's progress over time.
- Noting agreements with a student, such as extensions on assignments or meeting times.
- Noting students with behavioral issues or a history of academic dishonesty.
- Recording considerations for grading, such as student athletes.
Key considerations:
- Each note includes the author's name and a timestamp with its creation date. If a note is edited, a separate timestamp for the latest edition is added. This helps instructors keep track of changes.
- Authors can edit and delete their own notes. Instructors in the course cannot edit or delete another instructor's notes.
- Instructors, teaching assistants, facilitators, and grader roles can view all notes in their course and create, edit, and delete self-authored notes.
- Administrators may delete any note. Administrators may also assign the privilege to delete notes to other roles. An administrator can grant view only privileges.
Image 3. An administrator gives the delete notes privilege to a role in the administrator panel
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed. We recommend reviewing which roles are granted the ability to view, author, and delete notes to align to institutional policies.
Option to turn off “How Am I Doing?” Report for Students– 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Students, Instructors, Administrators
The “How am I Doing” report allows students to see how they perform in comparison to the class.
Certain institutions may prohibit the sharing of this information with students. To support institutions' preferences, administrators can now control the visibility of this report.
Image 1. An administrator toggles the “How Am I Doing?” report for students to “Off”
When report availability is set to "Off" the following changes occur for students:
- The pie chart icon in Grades tab in base navigation no longer appears.
- Prior notifications from the “How Am I Doing?” report are removed in the Activity Stream. No new notifications related to this report are sent.
- The “My grades and activity” section in the Activity Stream notifications settings panel is removed for students.
Image 2. When the “How am I doing?” report is available to students, the pie chart icon in the Grades tab of the base navigation is visible
Image 3. When “How am I doing?” is set to “Off,” the pie chart icon in the Grades tab of the base navigation is removed
Image 4. When the report is "On,” students receive Activity Stream notifications related to the “How am I doing?” report; students can access links to the report. When the report is not available, these options do not appear to students.
When the report is turned off, instructors and administrators also experience changes. The option to notify students related to the "How Am I Doing" report no longer display. Instructors will not be able to notify students based on these course alerts in the Course Activity report or Gradebook.
Administrators will no longer see options related to the report in the Notification Settings page.
- No Recent Activity
- Grade Low or at Risk
- Grade Dropped
- Low Class Activity
- Grade Increased
- Grade in Top 10%
- Class Activity in Top 10%
- Grade Below Threshold
Key considerations:
- It may take up to 15 minutes to hide all stream notifications after an administrator turns the report off.
- If an admin turns off the report and then turns it back on, prior data and notifications will reappear after several minutes.
For administrators: Administrators can find this setting on the Ultra Experience Management page in the Administrator Panel. The default setting is "on" to maintain consistency with existing behavior. This feature requires a cloud service update, which administrators can expect within a week of the 3900.65 release (on or before May 11).
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.
Toggle records between enabled and disabled states – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Administrators
Various record types have different states. For example, an enrollment can be unavailable. This allows instructors to continue to grade student work and submit a final grade even when the student can no longer access the course. An enrollment can also be set to disabled. In this state, the enrollment is locked and hidden from users. A student information system (SIS) might disable an enrollment when a student drops the course.
Previously, administrators had to rely on data integration processes to change a record’s enablement state. This could require processing a file through the integration framework.
Now administrators can toggle the enablement state in the administrator panel. They can modify user, course, organization, and enrollment records. This allows administrators to temporarily re-enable a course or user to access information. It can also allow a help desk representative to grant access to a user waiting on an institutional data process.
When a user first enables or disables a record in the user interface, they must accept a disclaimer. It must only be accepted one time. Manual record changes are captured in the system logs.
Image 1. Administrator manually disables a course
Image 2. Administrator re-enables an enrollment record
For administrators: By default, only a full System Administrator (role Z) can use this feature. There are 5 new privileges that can be configured to distribute this privilege to others at the user or node level. This allows granting access specifically to the types of records one should manage.
- Administrator Panel (Courses) > Courses > Edit > Enrollments > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Courses) > Courses > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Organizations) > Organizations > Edit > Enrollments > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Organizations) > Organizations > Enable/Disable
- Administrator Panel (Users) > Users > Enable/Disable
Course Upgrading
Improved conversion for Flickr Mashups – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
In the past, Flickr Mashups conversions resulted in unexpected outputs. The description of the mashup was not transferred correctly. Instead, the image metadata took its place. The link associated with the image directed users to the wrong page. This made it difficult to find the intended image.
Image 1. Flickr Mashup in Original Course View
To provide a better experience, we updated the conversion process of Flickr Mashups. The description of the Flickr Mashup is now transferred as expected. We also corrected the link issue so users go to the correct page.
Image 2. Flickr Mashup converted as a Web Link in Ultra Course View
Image 3. Web Link displaying the correct Flickr Image
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Improved conversion for Discussion Forums and Threads – 3900.65
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Discussion Forums in the Original Course View are an essential feature. Instructors often create discussion prompts as threads within a forum. Students respond by creating a thread or replying to existing threads in the forum.
In other cases, Discussion Forums serve as containers. Instructors create a thread for each discussion prompt within the forum. Students respond to the discussion prompt by replying to the thread.
To better support each of these use cases, we have updated our conversion process.
Now, when the "allow members to create new threads" setting is selected, the Discussion Forum converts to a Discussion in the Ultra Course View. If this setting is not selected, the Discussion Forum will become a folder in the Ultra Course View. All threads within the forum convert to Discussions inside the folder.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Learn SaaS release 3900.62.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.62.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 7 March 2023 | Release to Production: Thursday, 6 April 2023
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.62.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.62.0-rel.42+3609815 to Production servers to take place on 27 April 2023.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
April 2023 – 3900.62 Release
The April 2023 - 3900.62 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:
- Multiple Grading Schemas: Add, Edit, Copy
- Submission page sorting controls
- Gradable Items View usability improvements
- Discussion navigation improvements
- Deactivated students no longer show in student progress reports
- New access points to Student Overview
- Course Activity Report accessibility improvements
Instructors and students:
- Hotspot question: Circle Shape and Usability Improvements
- Bb Annotate: Enhanced comments
- Cloud document “Refresh” button improvement
All users:
- Course Content Title Search
- Primary Instructor improvements
- Course Upgrading: Remove HTML for plain text fields
- Updated Text for Copies and Imports
Administrators:
Assessment and Grading
Hotspot question: Circle Shape and Usability Improvements – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Instructors may want to assess a student’s knowledge of visual content. The hotspot question type is popular for this type of assessment. This question type is also good for reducing the potential of cueing or guessing.
Hotspot questions present an image without any answer options for students to choose. Students must mark a certain area of the image that is within the area the instructor defined as correct.
We continue to improve this question type:
- Instructors may now use a circle-shape selector to draw a circle to mark the hotspot.
- Now when students select the image, a pin is automatically placed on the selection.
- The polygon shape selector and selected pins have improved color contrast.
Image 1. Instructor view - Add circle hotspots to an image
Image 2. Instructor view – Color change for first point in polygon shape
Image 3. Student view – Color change when student selects a pin
For administrators:The feature flag for this feature has been removed. Hotspot questions are now always available.
Multiple Grading Schemas: Add, Edit, Copy – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
In the past, Ultra courses allowed only one grading schema per course. Now instructors can add, copy, and edit up to 100 grading schemas per course. Items copied from other courses will keep their grading schemas. When copying, any configured schemas copy even if not aligned to gradable items.
Instructors can now choose the best grading schema for each assessment in a course.
Image 1. Grading schema creation
Image 2. Instructor view - Grading schema gradebook grid view
Image 3. Student View - grading schema
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed at the administrator level.
Submission page sorting controls – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Record sorting provides a more efficient grade review experience. Instructors may wish to sort students by grade to identify submissions at a grade boundary. This helps instructors make any changes necessary before posting grades.
Any sorting applied yields a temporary change to the sort order of all columns on the Submissions page.
Instructor view – sorting students by name
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed at the administrator level.
Gradable Items View usability improvements – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
It is important for the gradebook to support efficient workflows. We have made several improvements to improve the Gradable Items View:
- Instructors can now sort the records of any column on this page. Sorting helps instructors more easily find the desired information. For example, instructors may sort on Grading Status to locate assessments that need grading.
- Selecting the assessment name now navigates the instructor to the selected assessment.
- Selecting '# to grade’ now navigates to a Needs Grading filtered Submissions page. This provides instructors with quick entry into the grading process.
- The new Post column provides instructors with status information for an assessment. This also simplifies the action to post all grades for the assessment.
Image 1. Instructor view – Sorting by Grading Status
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed at the administrator level.
Bb Annotate: Enhanced comments – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
It is important for instructors to provide rich and meaningful feedback for students. We have improved formatting and editing options for instructors.
- Instructors can now include richer formatting in comments. This includes font colors, bold, underline, and hyperlinks.
- Instructors can now edit already placed comments.
This feature won't be available at the same time the release takes place, nor on April 13th as previously planned, but soon. The deployment information will be updated on status.blackboard.com.
Course Content Title Search – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users
It is sometimes difficult to remember the location of a course item. In the past, locating an item was a time-intensive task and unintuitive. Searching for the item would involve opening every folder or learning module to find the item.
You can now search course content titles to find these items on the course content page. The course search icon, a magnifying glass, is easy to find at the top of the course content page. When a user types a few letters, the course search function displays a list of matching items by title. A user may expand the search results to view more information related to the course item(s).
Image 1. Course content with course search icon in top right
Image 2. Course Search Text Box
Image 3. Course Search findings
Image 4. “Show all item results” window
Image 5. “Clear search” option
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Discussion navigation improvements – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors often review various aspects of course discussions to assess and engage students. To improve navigation and increase visibility, we have introduced a new tab navigation:
- Discussion
- Student Activity
- Grading & Participation
The Grading & Participation appears only when the discussion is marked for grading.
Image 1. Discussion tab
Image 2. Student Activity tab
Image 3. Grades & Participation tab
Image 4. Tab options when a discussion is not marked for grading
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed at the administrator level.
Data & Analytics
Deactivated students no longer show in the student progress reports – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors want to know their students’ engagement with course material. The per item progress report offers the information needed, such as if a student has started or if an item is unopened. Now this report excludes deactivated students. This may happen when a student drops the course. The numbers in the report are aligned with the actual number of active students in the course. Students who cannot access the course but are not deactivated will continue to display. These students who cannot access are identified in the report.
Image 1. Progress report before and after students have been deactivated.
Before:
After:
For administrators: You must enable progress tracking to see this report. A deactivated student is one where the Student Information System sets the row status of either the user or enrollment record to the disabled state.
New access points to Student Overview – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Quick access to student information is helpful during the grading and feedback process. The Student Overview page provides the most important information for each student.
Image 1. Student Overview
Now instructors can access the Student Overview page in 3 locations:
- Roster
- Messages
- Discussions
These additional access points provide instructors with convenient access to this student information. As before, instructors can continue to reach this page by selecting a student in the Gradebook.
Image 2. An instructor may access the Student Overview by selecting a student from the Roster
Image 3. An instructor may access the Student Overview by selecting a student in the conversation participants section of a Message or in a Message thread
Image 4. An instructor may access the Student Overview by selecting a student in a discussion response or reply
Most of the time when closing the Student Overview, the instructor will return to the point of access. However, if navigating deeply and opening many panels, there may be times when navigation varies. An instructor may return to the student list in the Gradebook when closing the Student Overview. This navigation is designed to avoid circular referencing.
For administrators: This feature is available for all courses and organizations. There are no configurations needed to allow instructors to use these access points to the Student Overview. To view the Progress tracking tab in the Student Overview progress tracking should be enabled.
Course Activity Report accessibility improvements – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Instructors
We commit to providing accessible and inclusive solutions for all users. Many users navigate Ultra using assistive technologies. To better support instructors using assistive technology, we have made several accessibility improvements to the Course Activity Report:
- The description of the Course Activity Report includes a “Learn more” link. Now the screen reader states this link, directing the instructor to the related Help documentation.
- Instructors can sort data on any column. Now screen readers indicate if column sorting is in ascending or descending order.
- Instructors can select many students to send messages. Now screen readers state the number of students selected.
- Screen readers now state when an instructor selects or deselects all students.
- In medium and small screens some options of the Course Activity Report combine in a single drop-down menu. Now screen readers state that the 3-dot menu contains more options.
Image 1. The screen reader indicates the “Learn more” link directs the user to the related help page
Image 2. The screen reader indicates that sorting is applied to the Overall Grade in descending order
Image 3. The screen reader indicates that 2 students are selected
Image 4. The screen reader indicates that the 3-dots button displayed in medium and small screens contains more options
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed. To experience these improvements, users need to turn on a screen reader tool using the assistive technology installed on their personal devices.
Integration, Extension, and Management
Cloud document “Refresh” button improvement – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
User experience in Ultra is of utmost importance to us. To help users better focus on interacting with Microsoft OneDrive Cloud Documents, we removed a banner.
Image 1. Before - Informative banner for the Microsoft OneDrive Cloud Document
We retained the "Refresh" button for student and instructor users.
We made this change to both embedded cloud documents and cloud collaborations.
Image 2. After – Refresh button for a Microsoft OneDrive Cloud Document
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
LTI Tool Content: Standardize default icons – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Administrators
Content icons are an important aspect of identifying content types in the course. In the past, when LTI tool icons were not defined the iconography was inconsistent. Now, all LTI tool icons that are not defined will display the default rocket icon.
These icons appear in these locations in the base navigation and Ultra course:
- Content Outline
- Gradebook grid view
- Gradebook list view
- Gradable Items tab
- Students Grades Overview
- Grades tab on Base Navigation
- Course Calendar Day Schedule
- Course Calendar Day Due Dates
- Base Nav Calendar Day Schedule
- Base Nav Calendar Day Due Dates
- Books & Tools
- Base Nav Calendar
- Overall Calculations
Image 1. LTI Tools default icon as shown on the Course Content page
For administrators: We recommend administrators review LTI placement configurations. When the tool provider manages their icons, those are always used and cannot be changed. When the tool provider does not supply an icon, the administrator can add one. When no icon is defined, a default icon is used.
Configure decimal and number separators in locale– 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Administrators
People use different number formatting around the world. Larger numbers are grouped in different ways, and different punctuations are used for decimals. In Learn, these behaviors are included in the locale settings, so this is done automatically. A number would appear as 1,095.5 in the United States and 1.095,5 in Germany.
For some language selections, however, there can be variance from one country to another. In Spanish-speaking countries, for example, the decimal point is used in Mexico, but the decimal comma is used in Colombia.
Previously, custom configurations could be applied for Original courses. Now, these same custom settings will also apply to Ultra courses.
In Ultra courses, there are two places that will still display decimal point when the locale uses decimal commas:
- Numeric questions
- The Overall Grade configuration. Final calculations are not affected.
We plan to fix these in an upcoming release.
The Attendance tool always uses decimal points regardless of locale.
Image 1. The Spanish locale has been edited to use decimal points instead of decimal commas
For administrators: The improvement in this release is limited to left-to-right languages. Action is only necessary if your local number handling doesn’t match what is coded into your selected locale. To change the number handling:
- Export the appropriate language pack
- Manually edit the locale settings
- Upload the language pack and make it available
Primary Instructor improvements – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: All users
The Ultra Course View supports the designation of a primary instructor. In the past, when a course contained more than one instructor any instructor could change the primary instructor setting. To support diverse needs regarding changes to this designation, now administrators may grant this as a privilege for system and course roles:
"Course/Organization Control Panel (Users and Groups) > Users > Set instructor as primary in Ultra Course View"
Administrators can now manage primary instructor designations SIS integration and REST API integration frameworks. The SIS integration framework supports the primary instructor indicator on course memberships through the flat file and XML formats.
The primary instructor designation impacts how course instructors display for a course.
- When no instructor is selected as primary, the first two instructors display based on alphabetical order in Ultra courses.
- When there is more than one instructor and only one is designated as primary, only one instructor displays in Ultra courses. The other instructors display when users select "Show more."
- When there is more than one instructor and two or more are designated as primary, at most two instructors display in Ultra courses.
- Course cards in the Base Navigation course timeline display primary instructors first for both Ultra and Original courses. Original courses do not have a user interface to set primary instructor so these must be set through integration.
To better support enrollment state management for archive/restore and course copy, we made a change. Now, when membership records are stored/retrieved, the primary instructor indicator is also stored/retrieved. Primary instructor designations are reflected as expected.
Image 1. In the course faculty only one instructor of many displays if only one is indicated as primary
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses and organizations. A user that needs to modify the Primary instructor flag will need this new Privilege: “Course/Organization Control Panel (Users and Groups) > Users > Set instructor as primary in Ultra Course View.” The primary instructor flag can be set for Original courses using data integration only. This will impact name order in Base Navigation.
Course Upgrading
Remove HTML for plain text fields – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users
Sometimes users may add HTML to fields in the Original Course View to change styling. For example, users cannot change the color of web link objects like they can for other items. Users worked-around this by adding HTML into the text field to change the color of the web link.
Image 1. HTML in a Web Link Name Field to change its color to red
When converted to the Ultra course view, the same fields no longer support HTML, and the HTML becomes exposed. Users then must rename the objects and remove the exposed HTML.
Image 2. HTML code is now exposed
Now we remove any HTML that is no longer supported during conversion. Conversion preserves the text-based content within the HTML tags.
For administrators: There are no administrative configurations required.
Updated Text for Copies and Imports – 3900.62
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users
When copying entire courses or individual items from courses, instructors may have seen the following message: "Oops! An error occurred copying your content". The message has created concerns when copying materials from Original courses. The text gives the impression that there are a lot of errors with copy and conversion. Yet, most exceptions are notifying instructors of changes during conversion.
Image 1. Misleading Error Message
We have updated the message to reduce the association of exceptions with errors. Exceptions are for the most part changes to content during conversion. Our hope is that this change will reduce fear when copying from Original courses.
Image 2. Updated Error Message
Another example of where we have made a change is with the results from a copy, import, or conversion. Before, instructors would see this message under each category: "# items were not copied". The message gave the impression that each exception message was a failure to copy, which is not true.
Image 3. Misleading Text on Copy Results
We have updated the message to inform users that they have exceptions to review.
Image 4. Updated Text on Copy Results
For administrators: There are no administrative configurations required.
Learn SaaS release 3900.60.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.60.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 7 February 2023 | Release to Production: Thursday, 2 March 2023
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.60.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found on Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.60.0-rel.41+9d324a9 to Production servers to take place on 30 March 2023.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
March 2023 – 3900.60 Release
The March 2023 - 3900.60 release is robust with features in six areas:
- Assessment and grading;
- Data and analytics;
- Mobile app;
- Integration, extension, and management;
- Communication and social engagement; and
- Course upgrading.
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- Improved attempt switching when grading student submissions with multiple attempts
- Sorting Controls on the Anonymous Submissions Page
- Sorting on Overall Grade in the Gradebook Student List View
- Course Activity Report Table Enhancements
- Unsupported Course Cartridge and ePack Features Removed
- Support for concurrent course copies
- Preserve empty content areas
- Preserve font families
- Reschedule announcements
Instructors and students:
All users:
- PDF version of the SafeAssign Originality Report
- Improvements to the user profile
- Password age, re-use, and expiration policies
- Blackboard Assist (K12 availability)
Administrators:
Assessment and Grading
Improved attempt switching when grading student submissions with multiple attempts – 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Multiple-attempt assessments can be more complicated for instructors because there are more submissions. To switch between attempts for a student in the past, an instructor would have to close an attempt then select a different attempt. This wasn’t intuitive and required extra clicks. Now instructors can navigate directly between a student’s attempts. If a student has multiple attempts for an assessment, an instructor will see an option to switch attempts. This is more efficient.
Image 1. Instructor view of the attempt drop-down menu on the grading page
When the instructor clicks a student name in the Submissions list, the most recent submitted attempt will be loaded.
The attempt selector displays information to help instructors select the desired attempt:
- Attempt number
- Submission time stamp
- File size
- Grade (if graded)
- Late indicator (if applicable)
Image 2. Navigating between student attempts using the attempt drop-down menu
For administrators:As part of the March release, this feature will be available by default. It will be possible to opt out of using this feature. At that time, you can set the feature to unavailable on the Ultra Experience Management page in the administrator panel. The feature flag will be removed in the May release and this feature will become permanent.
Sorting Controls on the Anonymous Submissions Page – 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Record sorting provides a more efficient grade review experience. Instructors need to sort students by grade to identify submissions at a grade boundary. This helps instructors make any changes necessary before posting grades.
Any sorting applied yields a temporary change to the sort order of all columns on the Anonymous Submissions page.
Image 1. Instructor view - students sorted by highest to lowest grade
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Sorting on Overall Grade column in the Gradebook Student List View – 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors need sorting controls in the Gradebook. These sorting options are helpful for organizing the Gradebook data for various contexts:
- identifying students with grades at a grade boundary
- ordering students from highest to lowest grade, or vice versa
Now instructors can sort the Gradebook Students list view on the Overall Grade column. Any sorting applied yields a temporary change to the sort order of all columns.
Image 1. Instructor view - students sorted by highest to lowest Overall Grade
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
PDF version of the SafeAssign Originality Report – 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Managed and Self-Hosting
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: All users
The SafeAssign Originality Report is a valuable teaching and learning tool. Instructors use the report to ensure students express original thoughts and cite sources. Some instructors allow students to view the report. This is helpful for teaching students how to cite their work.
In the past, users could download the report as PDF. However, users could not open the sources from the PDF.
Now, users can open matched sources from the PDF. We also made some usability improvements to the PDF, such as text alignment and font adjustments. To better support peak usage, we made infrastructure improvements.
Image 1. Improved PDF version of the SafeAssign Originality Report
For administrators: Managed and Self-Hosting clients must upgrade to the newest version of the SafeAssign Building Block for these improvements.
REST APIs to read Rubrics associations – 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Blackboard Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Administrators
Providing access to Rubric associations within our REST API framework offers many benefits:
- additional administrative control for assessments
- flexibility for external third-party integrations
- supports instructor-student communication about performance expectations
In this release we are glad to make available a new Rubrics Associations API. This public API includes a set of GET endpoints. This helps to inform users about existing rubric associations in a course:
- Rubrics associations
- Rubrics associations by rubrics ID
- Rubrics associations by associations ID
For administrators: The REST integration user must have the entitlement “course.rubrics.VIEW” to make use of the new endpoints.
LTI Tool Content Icons on Calendar – 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Base Navigation, Calendar View
Ultra Course Calendar
Impact: Instructors, Students
In the past, LTI content icons did not appear in the calendar on the base navigation or in the course. The icons help users identify and distinguish between content types. Now, the LTI content icons used in the course will display as follows:
- Course Calendar: Schedule Day
- Course Calendar: Due Dates Day
- Base Navigation Calendar: Schedule Day
- Base Navigation Calendar: Due Date Day
This improvement applies to icons for LTI tools.
Image 1. Instructor view - LTI Tool with default icon in the Calendar
Image 2. Student view - LTI Tool with default icon in the Calendar
For administrators: We recommend administrators review LTI placement configurations since icons can help users differentiate content. Icons for LTI Tools are displayed in the places mentioned above, as well as in other areas. Only LTI content icons in the Calendar are affected in this release. When the tool provider manages their icons, those are always used can cannot be changed. When the tool provider does not supply an icon, the administrator can add one. When no icon is defined, a default icon is used.
Manage Roster - 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Institutions often have policies about hiding students' personal information. Institutions can now manage Roster visibility. This level of control is for both Ultra and Original Course Views when Base Navigation is enabled.
Administrators can define the Roster visibility at the institution and node levels for both courses and organizations. When permitted, instructors can define the Roster visibility setting at course/organization level.
The Details & Actions menu in Ultra Course View will not display the Roster to students when it is hidden. Instructors can manage the Student Roster visibility in Original Courses when allowed by the administrator.
For instructors: your institution may enforce a policy and not allow you to change this setting.
Image 1. Instructor view - Roster visibility control
Image 2. Student view - Roster does not appear in the Details & Actions menu when the Roster is hidden
Image 3. Roster visibility controls from the Administrator Tools Panel
Instructors, Teaching Assistants, and Course Builders roles have the privilege to view and edit the Roster by default. For other roles, the following privileges must be configured:
- View Roster: Administrator Panel (Courses) > Courses > Edit > Enrollments or Course/Organization Control Panel (Users and Groups) > Users
- Edit Roster visibility: Course/Organization Control Panel (Customization) > Tool Availability
For administrators: Administrators can configure the Roster visibility from the Administrator Panel > Tools and Utilities > Tools.
Open the padlock to allow individual instructors to edit their Roster tool availability. Lock the padlock to enforce the institutional policy for Roster availability.
Security: Registration of all domains required– 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Administrators
Various methods of verifying users help to make the Blackboard Learn application more secure. One method is to confirm all requests come to authorized domains. Administrators manage this in the Administrator Panel > Hostname Configuration.
In the past, requests from some parts of the application would work even if the requester domain wasn’t registered. In the near future, this will no longer be allowed. This improves security of Blackboard Learn.
Image 1. The hostname configuration page allows administrators to register all domains used to access the Learn application
For administrators: If your institution created alternate domains for your Learn environment, you must register all of them.
Communication & Social Engagement
Discussions - Deactivate post activity – 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Blackboard App
Impact: All users
Before this release, the only way to prevent posts in a discussion was by defining a due date. Instructors now have a checkbox option in the Discussion Settings panel. When checked, participants cannot edit or delete posts in a discussion.
Image 1. Instructor view - Deactivate Post Activity in the Discussion Settings panel
Image 2. Student view – Discussion view after the instructor has elected to prevent editing
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed at the administrator level.
Course Upgrading
Support for concurrent course copies - 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Administrators
Copies are a queued task in Blackboard Learn. In the past, when copies were initiated by an SIS, Learn could process two copies in parallel at any given time. The same was not true for copies initiated by end users. Copies initiated by end users process one at a time.
With this update, we have increased the limit to four for both SIS and end user-initiated copies. The limit will now allow a total of 8 copies to process at any given time: 4 copies from the SIS and 4 copies from end users. Increasing the limit reduces the wait time associated with copies.
For administrators: There are no administrative configurations required.
Preserve empty content areas - 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Administrators
Institutions use empty content areas to create the initial structure in a course. They are often used for templates to help instructors know where to place items. In the past, empty content areas were not brought over during copy, import, and conversion processes.
We now preserve empty content areas during the copy, import, and conversion process.
For administrators: There are no administrative configurations required.
Default Menu settings no longer apply to new courses and organizations using the Ultra view - 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Administrators
Blackboard administrators can configure a default menu for new courses and organizations. The default menu is a great way to create the initial structure of a course. Having a default structure can help instructors know where they should put items.
Unfortunately, the default menu settings were being applied to new Ultra courses. They should have only applied to courses using the original course view. The way Original and Ultra courses display and structure content is different. Because of this, the default menu settings created an undesired structure for new Ultra courses.
Institutions also use different structures for Original and Ultra courses and organizations. Having the default menu applied to new Ultra courses and organizations created work. The Ultra courses needed to have the default menu removed before faculty could use them.
Now new Ultra courses and organizations will not inherit the default menu settings. New Ultra courses and organizations can still leverage templates by copying a template from another course.
For administrators: To review the existing default menu settings navigate to Admin > Course/Organization Settings > Default Course/Organization Menu.
Preserve Font Families - 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
In the past, we would set all fonts to Arial during the conversion process. The Ultra course view did not always support different font families.
We now preserve font families during the conversion process using the following logic:
- If font family is Arial in Original Course View, set to Arial in the Ultra Course View.
- If font family is Comic Sans MS in Original Course View, set to Comic Sans MS in the Ultra Course View.
- If font family is Courier New in Original Course View, set to Courier New in the Ultra Course View.
- If font family is Times New Roman in Original Course View, set to Times New Roman in the Ultra Course View.
- If font family is Verdana in Original Course View, set to Verdana in the Ultra Course View.
- If font family is anything else or not defined in the Original Course View, set to Open Sans in the Ultra Course View.
The font families in the Original course view are different from those in the Ultra course view. The above logic tries to preserve font families as best as possible to reduce cleanup.
Font families are preserved when converting text associated with the following items:
- Announcements
- Discussions
- Assignments
- Documents
- Journals
- Groups and Group Sets
- Tests and Question Types
For administrators: There are no administrative configurations required.
Reschedule Announcements - 3900.60
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors have not had the ability to reschedule announcements. If the show on and hide after date fields were set for the future, a pop-up window would not generate. Instructors prefer a pop-up window because it helps students see the announcement. If there is no pop-up, a student may not know there is an announcement for them to view.
Some instructors were recreating announcements from scratch to generate these pop-ups. With this update, instructors can now reschedule announcements without having to recreate them. They can do this by changing the show on and hide after fields to a future date.
When users first enter a course, the rescheduled announcement will trigger a pop-up.
For administrators: There are no administrative configurations required.
Learn SaaS release 3900.58.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.58.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 10 January 2023 | Release to Production: Thursday, 2 February 2023
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.58.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found on Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.58.0-rel.36+3daac77 to Production servers to take place on 16 Ferburary 2023.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
February 2023 – 3900.58 Release
The February 2023 - 3900.58 release is robust with features in five areas:
- assessment and grading;
- data and analytics;
- groups;
- mobile app; and
- integration, extension, and management.
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- Technical Preview: Improved attempt switching when grading student submissions with multiple attempts
- Gradebook List View – Gradable items sorting
- Progress Tracking: visibility filters for the Student Progress tab
Instructors and students:
- Exemptions
- Extra credit questions in assessments
- Hot spot question type – polygon shapes
- Show Course Group Members
- Progress Tracking: Ally alternative format views count towards progress
- Attendance tool available in GovCloud
Students:
All users:
Administrators:
Assessment and Grading
Technical Preview: Improved attempt switching when grading student submissions with multiple attempts – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Multiple-attempt assessments can be more complicated for instructors because there are more submissions. To switch between attempts for a student in the past, an instructor would have to close an attempt then select a different attempt. This wasn’t intuitive and required extra clicks. Now instructors can navigate directly between a student’s attempts. If a student has multiple attempts for an assessment, an instructor will see an option to switch attempts. This is more efficient.
Image 1. Instructor view of the attempt drop-down menu on the grading page
When the instructor clicks a student name in the Submissions list, the most recent submitted attempt will be loaded.
The attempt selector displays information to help instructors select the desired attempt:
- Attempt number
- Submission time stamp
- File size
- Grade (if graded)
- Late indicator (if applicable)
Image 2. Navigating between student attempts using the attempt drop-down menu
For administrators:In the February release, this feature can only be enabled in test/stage environments for testing. In the March release, this feature will be available by default. In March, it will be possible to opt out of using this feature. At that time, you can set the feature to unavailable on the Ultra Experience Management page in the administrator panel. The feature flag will be removed in the May release and this feature will become permanent.
Exemptions – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
There are times that instructors need to exempt students from assessments or activities in the course. Now instructors can provide exemptions. Students can view exempted items. A student is not expected to complete an exempted task. When exempted, a student’s overall calculation will adjust for them. The overall points possible or weighting for a student with exemptions may change compared to other students.
Instructors may exempt any gradebook item in two ways:
- From the submission list view, select the ellipsis menu of a student and choose to add or edit the exemption.
- From the student detail view, select the ellipsis menu of the item and choose to add or edit the exemption.
When exempting an item, the item will not be:
- included in the overall grade calculation,
- marked late for students who do not make a submission, or
- assigned an automatic zero.
Students can still supply submissions for exempted items. Instructors can grade and provide feedback for these submissions.
Image 1. Add or edit exceptions from the submission list view
Image 2. Add or edit exemptions from the student detail view
For administrators:This feature is enabled by default behind a feature flag. Administrators will have the possibility to turn it off at the institution level.
Extra credit questions in assessments – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
There are times when instructors allow students to overachieve on an assessment. Some instructors may allow students to earn back points lost on other assessments or activities.
Now instructors can assign one or more questions as extra credit in an assessment. A correct answer results in adding the extra credit question points to the points earned for the assessment. Students are not penalized for incorrect answers to an extra credit question. In other words, points are not deducted because the question is excluded from the assessment’s possible points. If a student answers extra credit questions correctly, it may be possible for the student to earn a score greater than 100% on the assessment.
Students can discern how many extra credit points are available on the assessment. While students are taking an assessment, they can identify questions designated as extra credit. Students can also filter the test to find extra credit questions if present.
Image 1. Instructor view – assign one or more questions in an assessment as Extra Credit
Image 2. Student view – students can identify which questions are extra credit and the total amount of extra credit available on the assessment
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Hotspot question – polygon shapes – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Instructors may want to assess a student’s knowledge of visual content. The hotspot question type is popular for this type of assessment. This question type is also good for reducing the potential of cueing or guessing.
Hotspot questions present an image without any answer options for students to choose. Students must mark a certain area of the image that is within the area the instructor defined as correct.
Building on the initial hotspot question introduced in the 3900.52.0 release, we are adding two enhancements to this question type:
- A new polygon shape selector can be used to draw more complex shapes.
- Improved keyboard controls. Instructors can now create and place new hotspot shapes on the image canvas directly via the keyboard.
Image 1. Instructor view - Add one or more polygon hotspots to an image
Image 2. Student view – students may add a pin to the image to mark their selection
In Original Course View, instructors can only create hotspot questions using a mouse. In the Ultra Course View, instructors can create the hotspot question using a mouse or keyboard. Students may answer hotspot questions via a mouse or keyboard.
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Gradebook List View – Gradable items sorting – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors may want to sort the items in the Gradable Items view of the Gradebook. Sorting provides a more efficient grading experience. For example, instructors may want to sort by grading status to quickly locate items that need grading.
The sorting controls provide temporary changes to the sort order for all columns in the Gradable Items view. We have also moved the grade post status to a dedicated column.
Image 1. Gradable Items view with sorting controls; here items are sorted in descending order by Grading Status
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Student Gradebook sorting – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Students
Students may want to sort the information in their Gradebook. Sorting may help students locate information more efficiently. For example, sorting by due date helps students discern items that are due next.
Now students can use sorting controls to temporarily change the order for all columns in the Gradebook.
Image 1. Student gradebook view with sorting controls; items are sorted in descending order by grade
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Attendance tool available in GovCloud – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience, Ultra Course Viw
Original Experience, Original Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Attendance can be an important factor in determining a student’s level of participation. Sometimes this is used for part of a student’s grade. Previously, the Attendance tool was unavailable to United States government clients hosted in GovCloud. Now government clients can enable this tool.
For each class meeting, instructors can mark whether a student is present, late, absent, or excused. The attendance records for each student appear in a single column next to other grades. On the Attendance page, profile pictures appear. The profile pictures help instructors identify students. Instructors can use attendance as part of grade calculations the same as assignment grade columns.
Image 1. An instructor accessing the Attendance tool in Ultra Course View
Image 2. An instructor accessing the Attendance tool in the Original Course View Control Panel
Image 3. An instructor marks attendance for today’s class session
For administrators: The Attendance tool is not verified for use under FedRAMP certification. If you comply with that security standard, you might choose not to adopt Attendance. In GovCloud, the Attendance tool is off by default. An administrator must enable it with these steps:
- Go to Admin Panel > Building Blocks > Installed Tools.
- In the context menu for Attendance, choose “Set Available.”
- Accept the notice about FedRAMP compliance.
- Go to Admin Panel > Tools.
- Enable Attendance for courses and organizations as appropriate.
Groups
Show Course Group Members – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Instructors and students need to see group memberships. In the past, there was not an obvious way for instructors and students to see the members in a group.
From the Course Groups page, users may expand a group set to see a list of groups. Now each group has a "Show Members" option. Group members are listed alphanumerically in a panel. Users may search for a specific group member. A future release will provide profile cards and options for messaging group members from the search results.
Note: Students see only the groups and members for groups where they have membership.
Image 1. Show Members option
Image 2. Group Membership panel with search option
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed at the administrator level.
Data & Analytics
Progress Tracking: visibility filters for the Student Progress tab – 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
The Student Progress tab helps instructors track individual student progress in a course. An instructor can see completed and outstanding tasks for each student. Now instructors can change the Student Progress view to see a student’s progress against everything on the Course Content page. This view includes the items not visible to the student. This helps instructors better understand students’ progress considering all course content.
Viewing with the “Visible to Students” filter:
- This is the default filter for the Student Progress tab.
- The view displays only items visible to the student.
- The display indicates items that the student cannot yet access because they do not meet release conditions.
Viewing with the “All” filter:
- This filter is new in this release.
- The entire Course Content page is displayed.
- Items the student cannot see are indicated with a not visible icon.
- An item can be hidden from a student’s view for two reasons:
- It is not available to students.
- Settings indicate the item should be hidden when release conditions are not met.
Image 1. Student Progress tab with the “Visible to students” content availability filter applied; the instructor only sees content visible to this student
Image 2. When the “All” content availability filter is applied, the instructor sees all Course Outline items; the view indicates the items that are not visible to the student
For administrators:Progress Tracking is available behind a feature flag. Administrators need to enable it first.
Progress Tracking: Ally alternative format views count towards progress– 3900.58
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
An accurate representation of course progress is key for both instructors and students. With this latest addition, any Ally alternative format accessed by a student will reflect in their presented course progress.
Students will:
- See the progress indicator updated to “started” as they download an alternative format using Ally.
- Be able to mark an item as complete after accessing any alternative format.
Instructors will see the progress made by each one of their students based on access to the original file or an alternative format.
Image 1. Student view - a PDF in the course content with no progress indicated
Image 2. Student view - selects an Ally alternative format
Image 3. Student view – after downloading the alternative format, the PDF in the course content indicates progress
For administrators: Progress Tracking is available behind a feature flag. Administrators need to enable it first.
Learn SaaS release 3900.56.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.56.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 6 December 2022 | Release to Production: Thursday, 5 January 2023
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.56.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found on Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.56.0-rel.31+e33c6d6 to Production servers to take place on 26 January 2023.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
January 2023 – 3900.56 Release
The January 2023 - 3900.56 release is complete with features in five areas:
- assessment and grading;
- richer course and content design;
- mobile app;
- integration, extension, and management; and
- course upgrading;
These improvements primarily impact instructors and students. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- See and edit grades for anonymous submissions prior to posting
- Essay Question Model Answer
- Non-posted grades included in Grade History
- Test Question and Page Randomization
- Progress Tracking: Status and filters for group submissions
- Original Course View: “Needs Grading” flow kept when AWS auto-scales
- User Interface Improvement-Microsoft OneDrive Integration
- Course Upgrading: Convert Test Passwords to Passcodes
- Course Upgrading: Remove Unsupported Text Colors
- Course Upgrading: Preserve Text Sizes
- Base Navigation: Activity Stream New Submission link improvement
- Bb Annotate: Create categories inside the content library
- Assist banner update
Instructors and students:
- Show icons for Third-Party app content (LTI) in Gradebook and Grades
- Discussions – No Activity After Due Date
- Improvements to Messages recipient types by course role
All users:
- Expand and Collapse Course Faculty, Details & Actions, and Course Content sections
- Custom HTML/CSS content blocks in Institution Pages
- Base Navigation: Visibility controls for the Course and Organization Catalog; Hide Organizations tab
Other - Support roles:
Bb Annotate
Bb Annotate: Create categories inside the content library - 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience, Ultra Course View
Original Experience, Original Course View
Impact: Instructors
Creating and reusing comments is a useful practice for instructors. When using Bb Annotate, instructors can use the content library to store comments across courses. Now instructors can also organize comments into categories. Categories helps instructors find the comments they want to use. The process of providing student is more efficient with the new option. Existing comments will be part of a general comments category until instructors decide to move them to a new one.
Now instructors will be able to:
- Create as many categories as needed
- Move comments to new or existing categories
- Collapse or expand the categories to easily locate the comments
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Assessment and Grading
See and edit grades for anonymous submissions prior to posting – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Anonymous grading is an important practice to ensure fair and consistent grading. In the past when anonymously grading, instructors could view grades on the Submissions page only after posting grades. This prevented instructors from editing grades before students could view grades.
Now instructors can view grades on the Submission page before they post grades. Student anonymity is still preserved until the grades are posted. To edit a grade, an instructor can open the attempt.
Image 1. Grades are viewable on grading submissions page when anonymously grading
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Essay Question Model Answer – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Instructors want to ensure that they grade students’ work fairly and consistently. This can be especially challenging when evaluating student responses to essay questions. Instructors like to have a reference while grading. Now instructors can include a model answer for essay questions. Instructors and graders can see this when grading.
Image 1. Model answer when authoring essay questions
Students can see the model answer when reviewing their results if the test is configured to show correct answers. Students do not see the model answer when they take a test.
Image 2. Student viewing the model answer along with their own response
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Non-posted grades included in Grade History – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Grade history provides a log of changes to grades in a course. This is important in situations such as grade challenges and ensuring grading errors were not made. The grade history now includes non-posted grades. Including non-posted grades supplies greater insight into grade changes in the course.
Image 1. Grade history download file with non-posted grade information
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Test Question and Page Randomization – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors randomize test question to improve academic integrity. In the past, instructors couldn’t randomize questions if the test contained text blocks, files, or images.
Now instructors can enable randomization when the test has text blocks, files, or images. The non-question elements are locked in place. The test randomizes questions between those non-question elements.
Image 1. Instructor sets randomize option for a test with non-question elements
Instructors can also randomize questions in a test that contains page breaks. Questions randomize within their assigned page. If a page contains non-question elements, the questions randomize between those elements.
When there are pages for the test, instructors can also randomize page order. If instructors randomize the page order, they can also lock the first page into position. This is useful when the first page is a cover page or contains test instructions.
Image 2. Instructor selects to randomize both questions and pages
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Progress tracking: Status and filters for group submissions– 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors need clear information about the status of group progress on an assessment. In the past, the submission view of assessments and discussions included two status columns:
- Student status
- Grading status
Now we also show both in the group submission page. This gives instructors greater clarity into group work status. We also separated the filter to allow compound filtering of student and grading statuses. The default filter shows everything. The filter resets every time an instructor accesses the submission view.
Image 1. Group submission filters
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Richer Course and Content Design
Improvements to Messages recipient types by course role - 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
In the past an “all course members” recipient type appeared for all course users. Students could send messages to all course users, on accident or on purpose.
Now students can only send messages to:
- all instructors
- selected course members
Instructors can send messages to:
- all course members
- all instructors
- all students
- selected course members
Image 1. Instructors can send messages to all course members, all instructors, all students, or selected users
Image 2. Students can send to all instructors or selected users
Image 3. Selected recipients appear to the author of a Message
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Discussions - No Activity After Due Date – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
In the past students could continue posting in Discussions after the due date had passed. This created problems for instructors when grading discussions. Now instructors may lock the discussion after the due date has passed. When selected, students can’t create, reply to, or edit posts after the due date. Students with a due date accommodation can continue to create, reply to, and edit posts after the due date.
Image 1. Instructor view of the “Stop discussion activity after due date” setting
Image 2. Student view of Discussion once the due date has passed
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Integration, Extension, and Management
Assist Banner update - 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Base Navigation
Ultra Assist View
Impact: Instructors
To better align with feedback and needs from clients, we updated the Assist banner. We have made the following changes:
- Removed Space Dog Banner banner image
- Removed "Blackboard" from the title
- Modified the Assist page to have greater visual consistency with other aspects of the base navigation
Image 1. Blackboard Assist banner
For administrators:This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Show icons for Third-Party app content (LTI) in Gradebook and Grades – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
In the past, it has been difficult for users to differentiate between third-party app content (LTI tools). In the December 2022 release (3900.54), we began displaying icons selected by the third-party app provider or an administrator. Now we display icons in the following additional areas:
- Gradebook grid view
- Gradebook list view
- Gradable Items tab
- Students Grades Overview
- Grades tab on Base Navigation
Image 1. Third-party app icon added by a System Administrator
Image 2. Third-party app icon in Gradebook grid view
Image 3. Third-party app icon in Gradebook list view, Gradable Items tab
Image 4. Third-party app icon in Student Grades Overview
Image 5. Third-party app icon Grades tab on Ultra Base Navigation
For administrators:We recommend Administrators review LTI placement configurations after this release because icons will now display to users in more places. Icons set for the placement type Deep Linking Content Tools will display in the Course Content and Gradebook areas. Other placement types will continue to display generic icons. Tool providers may also set the icons. An administrator can retrieve icons set by tool providers using the “Synchronize placements” action. When the provider sets icons, they will replace and override institutional icon choices because they are the owner of their branding.
Blackboard Learn Mobile App
Expand and Collapse Course Faculty, Details & Actions, and Course Content sections – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Mobile App
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users
In the past users on a mobile device had to scroll through the Course Faculty and Details & Actions sections to see course content. Now users can collapse these sections, making it easier and faster to access course content.
Image 1. Collapsible sections
For administrators:This feature is available for all users of the Mobile App. No action is needed from users who have enabled automatic updates on their devices. Users who have disabled automatic updates on their devices must download the update.
Integration, Extension, and Management
User Interface Improvement - Microsoft OneDrive Integration – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors can embed OneDrive files in a course. These files may be read-only for students or allow collaboration for students and instructors. In the past, instructors accessed the option to create these files under Cloud Document in the Create Item panel.
We heard from users that these options were not obvious. Acting on client feedback, we updated the user interface. Now instructors will find two options as separate items in the “Create Item” panel:
- Embedded Cloud Document – this creates a link to a read-only file
- Cloud Collaboration – this creates a document that students and instructors can edit together
Image 1. Before improvements to the user interface
Image 2. After improvements to the user interface: Access the two items in one click
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. For clients who have already enabled the Microsoft OneDrive integration, you will need to resynchronize the LTI 1.3 tool and LTI tool placements for this enhancement to take effect. This can be done by following these steps:
1. Administrator Panel – Integrations - LTI Tool Providers
2. Select Synchronize LTI 1.3 Tools
3. Search for Microsoft OneDrive LTI Tool in the main tool list
4. Select Manage Placements – Synchronize Placements
Privileges: Support role can access Course Content page without progress setting privilege - 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Support roles
Users with system role privileges may be configured to access courses. In the past, these support users couldn’t access the Course Content page if they were missing the privilege Course/Organization Control Panel (Customization) > View Progress Tracking Configuration. These users would see an error and the course page would close.
Now support users without this privilege who have the privilege Course/Organization (Content Areas) > View Material Settings can view the Course Content page.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Course Upgrading
Convert Test Passwords to Passcodes – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
The Original Course View allows instructors to add passwords to Tests. In the past when an instructor converted an Original test to Ultra, the passwords were lost. Now a generated passcode replaces passwords when the Test is copied. Instructors can view the new access code in Test settings. They may need to update references to passwords in the course.
For administrators: There are no configurations needed.
Additional Improvements to Unsupported Text Color Removal – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
The Original Course View allows instructors to choose any color for text. This content may be difficult to read or not accessible. Ultra Course View has a curated set of text colors to ensure readability: black, gray, purple, blue, and green. During conversion, we remove unsupported text colors. This text becomes black. This release adds several areas where text colors are corrected for readability:
- Journals
- Groups within group sets
- Tests
We remove unsupported text colors during conversion from the following:
- Announcements
- Discussions
- Assignments
- Documents
- Journals
- Groups and Group Sets
- Tests and Question Types
For administrators: There are no configurations needed.
Preserve Text Sizes – 3900.56
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
In the past, the text copied from Original to Ultra Course View did not support different text sizes. During the conversion process, text would be set to size 14 pixels. Now we preserve text sizes during the conversion process using the following logic:
- If text size is less than or equal to 10, set to 10 pixels.
- If text size is 11 or 12, set to 12 pixels.
- If text size is 13 or 14, set to 14 pixels.
- If text size is less than 17, set to 14 pixels.
- If text size is greater than or equal to 17, set to 18 pixels.
- If text size is less than 22, set to 18 pixels.
- If text size is greater than or equal to 22, set to 24 pixels.
- If text size is less than 31, set to 24 pixels.
- If text size is greater than or equal to 31, set to 36 pixels.
- If text size is less than 43, set to 36 pixels.
- If text size is greater than or equal to 43, set to 48 pixels.
Text sizes are different in the Original and Ultra Content Editors. The conversion logic preserves similar text sizes to reduce cleanup.
Sizes are preserved when converting text associated with the following items:
- Announcements
- Discussions
- Assignments
- Documents
- Journals
- Groups and Group Sets
- Tests and Question Types
For administrators: There are no configurations needed.
Release notes for earlier versions
Release notes for earlier versions available in English only:
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