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.
Filter the list of features to learn more.
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
Looking for Blackboard Learn 9.1 release notes?
Follow this page to get email updates when we publish new release notes
View the SaaS release schedule
Learn SaaS release 3900.102.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.102.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 17 September 2024 | Release to Production: Thursday, 3 October 2024
Original Course View, Ultra Course View
For full feature details, please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.102.0 version included below on this page. Details can be found on Anthology Global Support.
Latest release: 3900.102.0-rel.23+4749f73 to Production servers to take place on 10 October 2024.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Anthology Global Support.
October 2024 – 3900.102 Release
The October 2024 - 3900.102 release is robust with features in 9 areas:
- Instructional design;
- Mastery learning and learner pathways;
- Tests and assignments;
- Communication and collaboration;
- Flexible grading;
- Gradebook;
- Integrations;
- Mobile; and
- Upgrade to Ultra
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- Usability improvements for Documents
- Video Studio: Enhanced caption support for uploaded files
- Usability improvement for Knowledge Checks
- Generate question banks
- Quickly access items that need grade reconciliation
- Show unavailable students in the gradebook
- Brightspace conversion improvements
Instructors and Students:
- Award Course Badges with Achievements
- Award Open Badges Automatically with Anthology Milestone
- Enhancements to student submission review page
- Flexible Grading performance improvements
All users:
Instructional Design
Usability improvements for Documents – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Related Topic: Create Documents
We made several usability improvements for Documents.
- For uploaded files, we've restored the default of View and Download in the Edit File Options.
- If there isn’t enough space when resizing blocks with keyboard navigation, the option to expand right is hidden.
- The Redo button now continues to display and function after removing an HTML block.
- The cursor function works as expected when dragging a block.
- We've restored the Content Collection option in the Insert content + in the Content block.
- For institutions that have not enabled support for the Content Designer for Documents, we've restored the option to generate a question bank directly from a Document.
For administrators: A new configuration option is on the Ultra configuration page in the Administrator Panel: “Enable support for customizing Ultra document layouts.” The default state is on.
Video Studio: Enhanced caption support for uploaded files - 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Related Topic: Video Studio (admin page), Video Studio (instructor page)
Video Studio gives instructors the ability to easily upload or record audio and video within Documents, creating a more engaging learning experience. We have enhanced the capabilities of Video Studio to help create a more accessible learning environment. Now Video Studio auto-generates captions for all file types.
Video Studio is a premium solution. We are offering customers a free trial until June 30, 2025. This will provide access to the full version of Video Studio as a feature flag. Video Studio is set to OFF as a default in test/stage environments. If you want to enable it in your institution’s production environment, you can do that for free until the end of June 2025. Customers will have to purchase Video Studio to continue to use it beyond this date.
For administrators: For configuration and settings, see the Administrator page for Video Studio.
Usability improvement for Knowledge Checks– 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
We modified the default for the Difficulty metric to display as "--" until there is at least one attempt. We also updated the answer instruction text for instructors to align with the instructions given in a test. It now reads "Choose one or more correct answers."
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Mastery Learning and Learner Pathways
Mastery tab in the gradebook – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Administrators
This feature will be available on September 17, 2024.
The new Mastery tab in the Gradebook allows instructors and students to see how their activities align with institutional goals. Based on the goal performance scale set by your institution, the tab displays the mastery of each alignment.
The Mastery tab enables instructors to:
- View the level of mastery per alignment for each student.
- View how each student is performing against those alignments.
- Drill down view for individual student mastery performance.
Image 1. The instructor view of the Mastery tab
The Mastery tab enables students to:
- Access a visual display of their mastery performance.
- View specific skills and competencies that they need to master. This insight helps students understand where they should concentrate their efforts. This leads to more targeted and effective learning.
- Access their performance as it relates to each specific criterion. This allows them to identify areas for improvement and work towards mastery.
- Focus on key areas where mastery was not achieved. This fosters a growth mindset and a deeper understanding of the course content.
Image 2. Instructor view of a student’s mastery of goals
The color schema used in the Goal Performance Scale (shown in Image 5) indicates levels of mastery. Instructors can select View Scale to view the Goal Performance Scale from the Mastery tab..
Image 3. Instructor view of the Mastery tab with View Scale selected
Goals tab
Students can drill down on the Goals tab to individual content items to see how goals align with their mastery progress.
Image 4. Student view of details of mastery on the Goals tab
Configuring the Performance Scale (Administrators)
The performance scale is an institutional configuration. This allows for consistent aggregation across courses. It also creates consistency for students in mastery-based programs.
Administrators can configure the number of levels as well as the labels and colors for each.
Image 5. Goal Performance Scale (Administrator only)
Notes:
- Students will always see the Goals tab and instructors will always see the Mastery tab. When there are no goals aligned, the tab will be empty. The Mastery tab will display to other users depending on privileges. If their course role or system role allows them to create or view goal alignment, users will see the tab.
- Users can select the student column header on the Mastery tab to sort students by last name.
- Instructors can preview what the Goals tab will look like for students.
- The calculation method is points-based. To weigh different items, different point values should be assigned. For example, an instructor wants to weigh performance on a rubric criterion ten times greater than a matching question on a test. Therefore, the rubric row should be set to 50 points and the matching question to 5 points.
- The calculation method prioritizes more granular alignments. Priority is given to alignments on individual rubric rows or test questions, and other alignments are then ignored. When the alignments are only on the assessment itself, those alignments will apply to all the assessment’s test questions or rubric criteria.
For administrators: The Administrator panel has a new configuration option on the Ultra Experience Management page: Enable support for Mastery Tab in Gradebook. The default state is OFF. Note that if enabled, students will see the Goals tab even when goals are not aligned to content items. In addition, all instructors will see the Mastery tab. The ability to control this feature at the course level will be available in a future release.
Award Course Badges with Achievements – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
Related topic: Achievements
Achievements is a new capability for Ultra courses to help keep students motivated and congratulate them for their participation in a course. With Achievements:
- Instructors can create course badges and set criteria for students to earn the badges.
- Instructors can view which students earned a course badge.
- Students can review the requirements to earn a course badge.
- Students can view both earned and unearned course badges.
- Leaders can use achievements in Ultra organizations.
Achievements support learning in many ways:
Supports self-directed learning pathways. Instructors can give learners tasks, goals, or quests with clearly defined criteria. Learners have more flexibility in how they approach their activities; they might choose to focus on a particular area of development before moving on to another. This flexibility can replace a set sequence to personalize learning.
Engages and motivates learners. Some learners respond to extrinsic motivations. They feel accomplishment when they complete tasks. Teaching methods can use achievements to add game mechanics to a course.
Adds transparency to learning. Course badges that define the skills and competencies in a course can help students:
- Follow how they’re developing competencies.
- Understand and articulate to others what they’re learning.
With this release, there are two achievement types: course badges and Open Badges.
Create course badges
Users with privileges to manage achievements can:
- Create, publish, and delete course badges.
- Select a badge image from a badge library.
- Set performance criteria for one or more assessments in the course. With multiple performance criterion, students must meet all to earn the course badge.
- Preview how the course badge appears to students.
Image 1. Instructor view of the Achievements tab with saved course badges and the New Course Badge button
Image 2. Instructor view of the new course badge screen where you can set the title, description, badge image, and earning requirements
View recipients of achievements
On the Achievements tab, instructors can view the recipient count for each course badge. Select an achievement to review details about the recipients, including the date and time they earned the course badge. To review the settings for the badge, select Badge Settings.
Image 3. Instructor view of the Recipients tab displays course badge earners
Review achievements as a student
On the Achievements tab, students can review the details of badges and the requirements to earn them. They can also determine which badges they’ve earned, and which remain unearned. When a student earns a badge, the badge displays the date and time the badge was earned.
Image 4. Student view of the Achievements tab with details of earned and unearned course badges
Notes:
- When overall grade or a calculated column is a performance criterion, that calculation itself is not enough to earn the achievement. Students must have scores for all gradable items used for the calculation. This requirement prevents a running total issuing a badge before a student completes all tasks.
- When a gradable item has multiple attempts, it is calculated using one of the following: last attempt, first attempt, highest score, lowest score, or average of all attempts. If you need to change this setting, we recommend doing so before grading submissions. If you change it after grading, calculation updates may not award new achievements to students. If you encounter this issue, you can update student grades again for the item.
- An earned achievement isn’t revoked if an instructor changes a student’s grades.
- Custom badge images aren’t supported in this release.
- Student preview isn’t supported in this release.
- Once an achievement is published, it can’t be changed. If there is a configuration error, delete the achievement and create it again.
- Achievements from Original course view do not convert when copying or importing a course.
- Achievements can’t be copied from one Ultra course to another. We plan to support this in a future release.
- Blackboard sends out events for changes to calculated columns every 4 hours; therefore, Achievements using a calculated column will have a delay before they are awarded.
- For calculated columns, if there are contributing gradable items that are ungraded, any Achievements based on that calculated column will not be issued until all grades are posted.
Considerations for early adoption:
- The Achievements tab appears for all students, even when achievements aren’t used in the course. We plan to improve this in a future release.
- Student preview isn’t supported in this release.
- Course copy for achievements isn’t supported in this release.
- Administrators can restrict who can manage achievements and view recipients of badges. Manage privileges for Achievements in Course Role and System Role configurations.
- The Achievements management pages found in the Administrator panel main page and the Tools area are only for Original. These don’t apply to Achievements in Ultra.
For administrators: This feature is opt-in using the administrator toggle Achievements in Ultra. Enable it in the Ultra configuration page of the administration panel.
Award Open Badges Automatically with Anthology Milestone – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Academic leaders
Achievements in Blackboard can be linked to Open Badges in Anthology Milestone. When linked, earned Open Badges are issued automatically to the student’s profile in Blackboard.
Anthology Milestone is a solution for managing institutional micro-credentials and badges. It can issue transferable Open Badges that offer several benefits for education, professional development, and career advancement:
- Verified and Trustworthy: Transferable Open Badges are digital credentials that are securely checked for authenticity. They prove that the skills and achievements they represent are reliable and recognized by schools and employers.
- Easy to Share: These badges can be shown on different platforms like LinkedIn, personal websites, digital resumes, and social media. This makes it easy for people to keep a consistent record of their skills and achievements, no matter where they work or study.
- Supports Lifelong Learning: Transferable Open Badges allow people to collect and show their skills over time, helping them continue learning throughout their lives.
- Personalized: Individuals can choose and organize their badges to reflect their unique skills, learning experiences, and career goals. They can manage and display their badges with a free Achievement Studio account or transfer them to another system.
- Clear and Trustworthy: The information included in Open Badges makes it clear what skills were demonstrated and how they were assessed.
- Works Across Platforms: Open Badges follow open standards, so they can be used and recognized on different systems and platforms.
- Inclusive: Open Badges can recognize a variety of skills, including those that might not be acknowledged by traditional education, like soft skills, informal learning, and community involvement.
Set up Open Badges with Achievements
An administrator must first set up the Anthology Milestone integration.
Once enabled, users with privileges to manage achievements in Blackboard can:
- Add an Open Badge to a course or organization.
- Set performance criteria required to earn the badge.
Add an Open Badge
On the Achievements tab, select Use Open Badge. Search for and select an Open Badge from Milestone. Then work with the badge like any other. For more information, see Achievements.
Image 1. Instructor view of the Achievements tab with Milestone integration enabled. The Use Open Badge button appears on the tab
Image 2. Instructor view of the Select an Open Badge screen. It displays a list of Open Badges from Milestone
Set performance criteria and preview the badge
After you select an open badge, you can set performance criteria for one or more assessments in the course. With multiple performance criterion, students must meet all to earn the Open Badge.
In the Summary section, you can preview how the Open Badge will appear to students in Blackboard.
Image 3. Instructor view of Earning Requirements where you can set the performance criteria required to earn the Open Badge and preview the how the badge appears for students
Students earning Open Badges
When students earn an Open Badge, they receive an email at the address associated with their Blackboard profile. Students can manage their earned Open Badges using an Achievement Studio account. To manage their Open Badge, the Achievement Studio account profile should include the same email address.
From Achievement Studio, students can:
- View an Open Badge
- Add it to a collection
- Download it
- Get a sharing link
For more information about student tasks in Achievement Studio, see Badges Overview.
Image 4. Student view of an Open Badge in Achievement Studio
Enable Anthology Milestone
If you license Anthology Milestone, you can integrate it into the Achievements tool in Blackboard. When using Ultra courses in Blackboard, instructors and course builders can link performance criteria to Open Badges in Milestone.
Currently, there are not distinct production and test/stage instances of Milestone. Therefore, we recommend only integrating Milestone with your production instance of Blackboard. This is to avoid accidentally issuing authentic Open Badges from a testing environment.
To set up the integration, contact Product Support for Milestone. In the request, provide the following:
- State your request to integrate Milestone with Blackboard.
- Provide the tenant ID of your production Blackboard instance.
- Access the Administrator Panel.
- Navigate to Building Blocks and click the link to list Installed Building Blocks.
- In the context menu for Foundations Connector, select Settings.
- The Tenant ID is second in the list.
Notes:
- Administrators must set up the integration with Milestone.
- Open Badges can be used in Ultra courses and organizations.
- Users without an email address won’t be able to use the Open Badge picker. Students must have an email address in their Blackboard profile to receive Open Badges they earn.
- Any user with privileges to manage achievements can link to Open Badges. We plan to limit this access in a future release.
- An earned achievement isn’t revoked if an instructor changes a student’s grades.
- Deleting an achievement that’s linked to an Open Badge doesn’t delete that badge in Milestone.
- Student preview isn’t supported for earning Open Badges.
For administrators: This feature requires licensing Anthology Milestone. The integration is configured as an LTI tool. A new LTI placement type adds appropriate Open Badge tools into the Achievements tool. This placement type should not be used for other LTI tools.
You can manage the Achievements privileges in Course Role and System Role configurations. In this release, there aren’t separate privileges for users who can set up Open Badges versus course badges using Achievements. You may want to consider a limited rollout of Achievements until we address this with separate privileges in an upcoming release.
Tests & Assignments
Generate question banks - 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Related Topic: Question Banks
Creating questions is time consuming. Instructors now have the option to generate questions in a question bank. Generating question banks from course materials provides inspiration and saves time.
To generate a question bank, select the Auto-generate option from the + on the Question Banks page.
Image 1. Auto-generate a question bank
From the menu, instructors can select content items. These content items provide context for the questions. Instructors can further refine the questions they ask by entering a description of the learning objectives or topic.
Image 2. The context picker for creating new questions
Instructors can select the type of question to generate, such as multiple choice or fill in the blank. The complexity of the questions can also be adjusted. Instructors choose which questions to include in the question bank.
Image 3. The Auto-Generate Question Bank page
For administrators: The option to generate questions only appears for instructors when the tool is on. Select Building Blocks from the Administrator Panel, then select Installed Tools. Locate "AI Design Assistant and Unsplash" and select Settings from the dropdown. The default state is off. You must also activate privileges. Assign the “Use AI Design Assistant” privilege for the appropriate Course Roles (for example, Instructor).
Enhancements to student submission review page – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Students, Instructors
The student submission review page makes it easier for students to access instructor feedback on their submissions.
We made several enhancements to this page:
- When an instructor selects student preview, they can now access the student submission review page.
- Students can now access offline submissions from this page.
- Students now have a Read more option for overall and attempt feedback.
We also made general usability improvements, including additional labels and other indicators, to help students easily find the information they need.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Communication & Collaboration
Email notifications for followed discussions – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users
Related Topic: Discussions
To encourage participation in discussions, we expanded notifications to include email. Emails are sent when users opt for Email me right away notifications.
Key Enhancements:
User Notification Settings: New notification options allow users to manage their emails for discussions they follow. To help with consistency, these settings align with the user's settings for their activity stream.
- Activity on my responses
- Activity on responses I have replied to
- Responses from instructors
- Responses for followed discussions
- Replies for followed discussions
Administrator Settings: New administrator controls allow institutions to set defaults for user notification settings. These are enabled by default:
- Discussion activity on the current user’s responses
- Discussion activity on responses the current user has replied to
- Discussion responses from instructors
- Discussion responses and replies for followed
Image 1. The notification settings available for the Email me right away option
Image 2. An example of an email for discussion activity
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed. However, administrators can change these notification settings to default off, always off, or always on if desired.
Quickly access items that need grade reconciliation – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
With parallel grading, multiple people can share grading responsibilities for a course. For example, an instructor can divide up the grading tasks among teaching assistants and other graders. The designated reconciler reviews all grades and feedback to determine the final grade.
A Needs reconciling section now appears on the gradebook Overview tab. In this section, reconcilers can easily access all items ready for reconciliation.
Image 1. The reconciler's view of the Needs reconciling section on the gradebook Overview tab
This section is hidden when the grader has no items for reconciliation.
Graders can select Reconcile now to open the Submissions tab for the item. They can review grades and feedback from others before determining the final grade.
The Gradebook tab displays an exclamation point when there are items to reconcile or post.
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Show unavailable students in the gradebook – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors
Instructors may have students in their courses whose access to Blackboard is temporarily restricted. For example, if a student has a payment pending, an administrator can set the student’s user account as unavailable until the hold is lifted.
In direct response to user feedback, we’ve made changes to how unavailable students appear in the gradebook. Now unavailable students appear in the gradebook for their enrolled courses, but their avatar has a strikethrough to indicate the unavailable status.
Image 1. Instructor view of the gradebook showing an unavailable student
To completely hide unavailable students from their gradebooks, instructors can use the Students Visibility setting introduced in the last release.
When the hide unenrolled students from the gradebook option is turned on, unavailable and unenrolled students are hidden from these gradebook areas:
- Grades page
- Students page
- Calculation student list
- Gradable items student list
- Submission tab for an assessment
- Group Submissions tab for an assessment
- Student Activity tab for an assessment
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Flexible Grading
Flexible Grading performance improvements – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Students, Instructors
We made several adjustments to improve the performance of Flexible Grading. Users will experience faster loading when:
- Scrolling in the Student list (instructors)
- Posting all grades (instructors)
- Viewing the rubric (instructors and students)
For larger classes with more than 2000 enrollments, the Flexible Grading page loads 25% faster!
For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.
Mobile
Email notifications for followed discussions – 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users
Instructors and students sometimes need to pay special attention to one or more discussions or threads in a course. Users can now easily follow specific discussions to receive email updates on new contributions. Institutions can set notification defaults for discussion activity and responses for followed discussions. This feature makes it easier for users to monitor and engage with class discussions from the Blackboard Mobile App.
For Administrators: You can configure this feature in the Administrator Panel by selecting Notification settings and enabling/disabling your institution’s preferences.
Upgrade to Ultra
Brightspace Conversion Improvements - 3900.102
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View and/or Original Course View
Impact: Instructors
Related Topic: Migrate from D2L Brightspace
Question Library and Sections
We further refined the conversion of courses from Brightspace. The question library and sections in Brightspace now convert to question banks. This enhancement is important for converting quizzes that include question pools and sections.
Important notes:
- The question library and sections will be flattened. Nested question banks are not supported in Blackboard.
- Any sections without questions will not convert to question banks.
Gradebook Columns
Numeric, selectbox, text, and pass/fail grade Items in Brightspace are now preserved when converting a Brightspace course to Blackboard. Formula and calculated grade Items are not preserved and are dropped from the gradebook. Instructors should check if their formula or calculated grade items can be rebuilt in Blackboard’s calculated column. For more information, see Calculate Grades.
For Administrators: These features and improvements are available for all Ultra and Original courses. There are no configurations needed.
Looking for older release notes?
Check out the Blackboard Learn Release Notes Archive for more information on past releases.
