Version 6.3 Improvements
blackboard > about blackboard > version 6.3 improvements
What's New on Blackboard, January 2006
Multi-Language Support by Institution, Course and User
Institutions can run multiple languages (or locales) on the same system. Institutions can offer the Blackboard Academic Suite in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, and Portuguese. The entire system is set in English, but a language may be offered as a preference for users in individual courses. To support cross-border education, as well as foreign language courses, instructors can set the language of the course independently from the language setting of the overall system.
Adaptive Release
Course content does not always apply to all users in the course. Using Adaptive Release, instructors can display content to certain users for a limited period of time, or only after users meet (or fail to meet) predetermined requirements. Some content might be applicable to all users in the course, while other content should be audience-specific.
Adaptive Release allows an instructor to create custom learning paths through course content and activities. Content items, discussions, assessments, assignments, or other activities can be released to students based on a set of criteria including: date and time, specific users, group membership, grades or attempts on a particular test or assignment, or Review Status of another item in the course.
Instructors create and modify Adaptive Release rules from the new Manage page available on all content items.
Default Availability: This collection of features is enabled by default in the Blackboard Learning System.
Review Status
Outcomes-based tracking is an important feature to most Blackboard clients. Today, instructors can track item hits on a user-by-user basis, but students have no automated way of explicitly notifying instructors when they review an item.
If Review is enabled for a content item, users see a Mark Reviewed icon from the course view. When users have completed their review of the item, they click the Mark Reviewed button. The item then displays a Reviewed icon. The instructor can view progress from the Performance Dashboard or the User Progress page in the Control Panel.
Instructors enable and disable Review from the new Manage page available on all content items.
Default Availability: This feature is enabled by default in both courses and organizations.
Performance Dashboard
The Performance Dashboard is a course tool that allows instructors to see key information and outcomes for all course users. It displays the last time users logged in, their course role, content availability by user based on Adaptive Release criteria, Review Status for content items, and a direct link to the Gradebook: User Grade List page for individual users.
Default Availability: This feature is enabled by default in both courses and organizations.
Performance Dashboard tutorial
Advanced Assessment Questions
When creating Assessments in the Blackboard Learning System, Instructors may choose from ten additional question types, including: Calculated Questions, Numeric Response Questions, File Response Questions, Hot Spot Questions, Multiple Fill-in-the-Blank Questions, Jumbled Sentence Questions, Opinion Scale Questions, Short Response Questions, Either / Or Questions, and Quiz Bowl Questions.
Default Availability: All new question types are automatically enabled for use in assessments. They cannot be disabled.
Advanced Assessment Questions tutorial
Gradebook Null Option
Current Gradebook calculations for Total and Weighted Total include items that have not been taken or graded. A new option to exclude untaken or ungraded items when calculating the Total and Weighted Total appears in Application Pack 3. The Running Total and Running Weighted Total columns display student performance only on completed items.
Default Availability: The Total and Weighted Total columns in existing courses are not changed by default.
Download Assessment Attempts that Include All Questions
Instructors can download Survey or Test attempts as a .CSV file. Most often, this feature is used to perform statistical analysis in a spreadsheet application, such as Microsoft Excel. Downloaded Assessment attempts now include all questions in the Assessment. In earlier versions, only certain question types, such as Multiple Choice, were included in the downloaded attempt.
Assessment Question Completion Status
Students may skip questions that they may wish to come back to in a question-by-question assessment. This feature allows students to clearly identify which questions they have actually completed from the ones that they have skipped as they progress through the assessment.
Default Availability: This feature is automatically enabled.
Assessment Question Completion Status tutorial
Randomize Multiple Choice Answers
Instructors have the option to randomize the answers in multiple choice questions. The answers are randomized for each assessment attempt, which helps prevent student cheating.
Default Availability: This feature is automatically available to Instructors to choose when deploying an Assessment.
Randomize Multiple Choice Answers tutorial
Advanced Course Menu and New Course Map
Two views of the Course Menu are now available to users; the Quick View (the original menu design) and the Detail View. The Detail View is the full Course Map, letting users expand and collapse the Course Menu, and displays a clickable link to each item in the course. If allowed by the instructor, users may toggle between these two views.
In addition, commonly used tools are separated from the Course Menu to make them easier to find and use.
To support the advanced Course Menu, the Course Map has been completely redesigned for Application Pack 3. It displays new icons based on the item or tool, shows only the content available to the current user (based on Adaptive Release critieria), and loads very quickly even in large, content-rich courses. The map is cached for even faster rendering in subsequent views and has a 20 minute automatic refresh.
Default Availability: By default the administrator setting is Quick View, with Detail View available. This setting will be applied to courses and organizations upon first access of the Course Menu by any user in the course or automatically when any new courses or organizations are created.
If both views are made available by the administrator, the instructor may select a preference in a course or leave both available to users. Any administrator changes to these settings impact only new courses.
Quick Tool Linking
Tool Linking allows tools to be placed anywhere in a course that content can. For example, Discussion Board forums and Virtual Classroom sessions can exist in the same Content Area as content such as Learning Unit slideshows, files, and Assessments.
Course Menu Changes During a Copy Into Operation
When copying a course into an existing course, all Course Menu items that do not exist in the target course will be added to the bottom of the Course Menu in the order they appear in the source course.
Assessment User Interface Changes
In Assessments, the following changes appear:
- Partial credit can now be assigned to any question, not just ordering and multiple answer questions.
- Question types are listed in alphabetical order in drop-down lists. For example, when creating a question, the list to select the question type is in alphabetical order.
- The Question Type no longer appears when a user attempts an Assessment or when grading an Assessment.
- Individual feedback for Essay questions can be provided through the View/Grade Assessment page.
Course Design
Course Design features are now accessible directly from the Course Control Panel instead of appearing under Settings.
The full release notes for Application Pack 3 can be found here.
comments about the site to: Malaika Boyd: mboyd@mail.utexas.edu.
