Release Notes for Learn SaaS
This page contains features and updates currently on Learn SaaS Test/Stage and Production environments. Visit Archived SaaS Release Notes to see features and updates in older versions. Visit In-Product Updates to learn more about in-product updates.
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More on Learn with the SaaS Deployment | Export the list of Known Issues | Access the latest API and database documentation | Blackboard Learn SaaS release notes archive | Learn Releases White Paper
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View the SaaS release schedule
Learn SaaS release 3900.50.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.50.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 13 September 2022 | Release to Production: Thursday, 6 October 2022
Original Experience
Ultra Experience
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.50.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found on Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.50.0-rel.12+b0cddc4 to Test/Stage servers to take place on 27 September 2022.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
Learn SaaS release 3900.48.0
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3900.48.0
Release to Test/Stage: Tuesday, 16 August 2022 | Release to Production: Thursday, 1 September 2022
Original Experience
Ultra Experience
For full feature details please review the corresponding notes for the Learn 3900.48.0 version included below on this page. Details can also be found on Behind the Blackboard.
Latest release: 3900.48.0-rel.18+c7edfda to Production servers to take place on 22 September 2022.
For more information on updates and bug fixes, please visit Behind the Blackboard.
October 2022 – 3900.50 Release
The October 2022 - 3900.50 release is complete with features in four areas:
- assessment and grading;
- richer course and content design;
- integration, extension, and management; and
- course upgrading.
These improvements primarily impact instructors and students. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- Improved access to Student Grades Overview
- Student Progress report for course content
- Preserving the forced sequencing setting on Learning Modules during course upgrades
Instructors and students:
Students:
All users:
- Global HTML Filter Requirement Change
- Messages for courses with +100 people
- Improvements to Blackboard App Settings
- Base Navigation - Grades: Reduce height of course tiles for courses without grades
- Course Name in browser tab
Administrators:
Course Messages recipient picker improvement for courses with more than 100 participants – 3900.50
Blackboard Learn Original
Original Experience
Original Course View
Impact: All users
Course Messages is a useful tool for course communication.
In the past, the recipient picker did not work as expected in courses with more than 100 participants. When a user clicked the “Add recipients” button, the Compose Message page collapsed and was unusable.
Now users may add recipients as expected.
Image 1. Recipient picker for courses with more than 100 users
When users select recipients, a recipient chip is created. If the user wishes to edit the list of recipients, the user should remove the chip and select the desired recipients.
Image 2. Recipient chip with all selected recipients
For administrators: There are no configurations needed.
Integration, Extension, and Management:
Global HTML Filter Requirement Change – 3900.50
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Original Experience
Original Course View
Impact: All users
We conduct continuous reviews of Blackboard Learn to improve our security. Learn has an HTML filter in the Original Experience and Original Course View. This filter removes scripts that users add in the content editor. This helps prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.
In the past it was possible for an administrator to turn off this filter. Starting with this release, the filter will always be on. Administrators can still allow certain users to bypass the filter. They can grant users the privilege Add/Edit trusted content with scripts. As before, we recommend administrators restrict the number of users with this privilege.
The Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View do not use this filter. In the Ultra Course View, HTML blocks render in an iframe from a separate domain. This prevents XSS risk to the Learn application.
For administrators: There are no configurations needed. This change will happen automatically. It will not be possible to turn off the global HTML filter.
Improvements to Blackboard App Settings – 3900.50
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: All users
Users expect to have access to their courses on mobile devices. The transition between mobile and desktop applications should be seamless and frustration free. To support effortless movement between the two, we added settings categories and mobile-specific categories. A new design of this section provides simplified toggles for configurating your preferences.
Image 1. Stream notification option in the Settings section
Image 2. Stream notification settings
Image 3. Disrupted connectivity alert
For administrators: This feature is available for all users of the Mobile App. Users with enabled automatic updates on their devices are not required to do any actions. Users with disable automatic updates on their devices must download the update.
September 2022 – 3900.48 Release
The September 2022 - 3900.48 release is complete with features in four areas:
- assessment and grading;
- richer course and content design;
- diversity, equity, and inclusion; and
- integration, extension, and management.
These improvements primarily impact instructors and students, but value is truly added for all users. Some features do require administrative action.
Instructors:
- Rubric Copy between Courses
- Question Bank Sorting Controls
- Discussion replies are available on the individual discussion grading page
- Grade History: Non-Posted Grades included
- Set points for manually added gradable items
- Prevent copying an entire course into the same course
Instructors and students:
Students:
Administrators:
All users:
Summary list of annotations for inline grading – 3900.48
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students
File submissions can be annotated inline when grading. Now a side panel will summarize all comments in a list. Selecting a comment will navigate the instructor or student to the location of that comment in the document. This change makes it easier to find all comments and feedback in a student’s submission.
This functionality will be released in September, independently from the 3900.48 release.
Rollout schedule by region:
- Korea (prod-ap-northeast-2) - Tue 06 Sep 1pm EDT
- Singapore (prod-ap-southeast-1) - Tue 06 Sep 2pm EDT
- South Africa (prod-af-south-1) - Tue 06 Sep 7pm EDT
- GOV US (prod-us-gov-west-1) - Wed 07 Sep 6am EDT
- Sydney (prod-ap-southeast-2) - Wed 07 Sep 11am EDT
- EU (prod-eu-central-1) - Wed 07 Sep 7pm EDT
- Canada (prod-ca-central-1) - Thu 08 Sep 8am CET
- US (prod-us-east-1) - Thu 08 Sep 8am CET
For administrators: There are no configurations needed.
Richer Course and Content Design
Microsoft Immersive Reader for Anthology Ally for LMS – 3900.48
Blackboard Learn SaaS, Learn 9.1
Ultra Experience, Original Experience
Ultra Course View, Original Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Administrators, Course Builders
Many classrooms today, both physical and digital, include participants with diverse needs. To better support learning needs and preferences, alternative formats are key. Alternative formats let all participants access course content according to their preferences.
Anthology Ally for LMS now includes a new alternative format: Microsoft Immersive Reader. Microsoft Immersive Reader helps students improve their reading, comprehension, and grammar skills. All course participants are empowered by Anthology Ally with Microsoft Immersive Reader.
From the Ally Alternative Format menu, users may select the Immersive Reader option and select download.
Image 1: Select the Anthology Ally Icon
Image 2: Select Immersive Reader Alternative Format
Image 3: Immersive Reader View
This functionality will be released on August 31 independently from the 3900.48 release and as part of the Ally release.
Your institution will need to license Anthology Ally for LMS to use this functionality.
For administrators: There are no configurations needed.
Integration, Extension, and Management
Blackboard Home: Additional Site Health and Utilization Reports – 3900.48
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Original Experience
Impact: System administrators
Blackboard Home gives administrators insights into how their Learn site is being used. The previous release of Blackboard Home focused on storage usage metrics.
The September release has updates related to site health and utilization. It also helps administrators understand adoption of Ultra Course View.
As before, administrators can see metric changes over time. They can also use the time picker to look at specific timeframes. In this release, there are six new reports.
- Unique users. See the count of active unique users over time.
- Logins. See the count of user logins over time. Multiple logins by the same user are counted multiple times.
- Requests Per Minute. See the average requests per minute served by the Learn application. This reflects the traffic volume (throughput) of the site. Request volume includes traffic from web browsers, mobile apps, and integrated systems.
- Application Performance Index (Apdex). This is a measure of the timeliness of the user experience. It is impacted by both the application performance and users’ bandwidth. Apdex is on a scale from 0 to 1. A 0 is an unsatisfactory slow experience; 1 is very fast loading. The apdex measure is a standard managed by an open standards organization. It is meant to act as one indicator of a satisfactory user experience.
- Uptime. This report helps administrators identify outages where users were impacted. An outage for this report is defined in the Service Level Agreement.
- Ultra adoption. Administrators managing sites with instructor choice for Ultra course adoption need to track adoption and use trends. This report shows the share of active Original and Ultra courses.
Administrators can now switch between viewing different environments. This includes looking at test/stage environments separate from production. Each site will display its deployed version, URLs, deployment location, and information about direct database access (DDA) if enabled.
This functionality will be released in September independently from the 3900.48 release. Details will be shared later on this page.
For administrators: Blackboard Home is only available for Learn SaaS. There are no configurations needed if Blackboard Home was previously enabled. In some environments, it can be necessary to perform the following action to allow access. Go to Administrator Panel > LTI Tool Providers. Find “Blackboard Home” and edit it. Enable “Role in Course” to send role information to Blackboard Home and click submit. Only full system administrators can access Blackboard Home.
Image 1: Course count over time shows the share of courses that are Original, Ultra, Undecided, and in Ultra Preview.
Image 2: Site utilization visualizations include throughput and user count reports.
Image 3: Site health reports including uptime and Application Performance Index (Apdex).
Looking for older release notes?
Check out the Blackboard Learn Release Notes Archive for more information on past releases.
