Take attendance using Blackboard Collaborate

Let Collaborate take attendance for you. In this release, Blackboard Learn instructors can host a Collaborate session without tracking attendance manually. Based on criteria you set, Collaborate tracks if a student is present, late, or absent from a session. Collaborate then sends that information directly to the Attendance page in your Blackboard Learn course.

Students: Attendance | Instructors: Collaborate attendance reporting | Administrators: Attendance reporting


New SafeAssign Originality Report

We've updated the design of the SafeAssign Originality Report in Blackboard Learn 9.1 environments. The new Originality Report uses Blackboard's Ultra design philosophy and includes some new information about a submission's overall risk for being copied from another source. This new report interface is also more responsive for mobile devices and more accessible to screen readers than the old design.

Students: New report layout | Instructors: New report layout | Administrators: New report layout


Course role for facilitators

For institutions that centrally manage course development and settings as distinct responsibilities from day-to-day teaching tasks, the course role permissions are more granular in this release. The privileges enable roles that can teach, engage, and grade, but not to modify materials or settings. There is also a new default course role called Facilitator. As with other default course roles, the specific permissions can be edited.

This course role contains a set of default privileges regarding course calendar, discussions, gradebook, announcements, materials, and groups. Course members can be granted this role to help maintain the pace of the course throughout the term or as needed.

Administrators: Facilitator Role and Privileges


Integrate tools using LTI Advantage

We're excited to share that Blackboard Learn is the first major LMS to be LTI Advantage certified and make LTI Advantage available in Production. LTI Advantage is the latest in interoperability standards for integrating tools into a learning environment. The capabilities of LTI Advantage are broader and allow for deeper and more secure integrations than with the previous versions of LTI.

Instructors: Content Market | Administrators: Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)


Support for QTI specification

Instructors and instructional designers use various technologies to develop assessments and need to be able to move assessment items such as questions from one system to another easily. To ensure compatibility and easy re-use, IMS Global developed the Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) standard so questions can be shared between learning management and assessment systems. In this release, instructors and course builders can add QTI packages to Blackboard Learn courses.

Instructors: About QTI packages


Blackboard SOAP Web Services deprecation

With the release of Blackboard Learn Q2 2019, Blackboard is deprecating our SOAP APIs. We recommend that if you use Blackboard's SOAP APIs as an external application or as part of a Building Block, you should immediately refactor your integration using our Blackboard REST APIs.

Blackboard SOAP APIs will become unavailable with the release of Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q2 2020.

Administrators: SOAP web service deprecation on Behind the Blackboard