What's New on Blackboard, Summer 2006

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Blackboard was upgraded May 25, 2006 to version 6.3.1.593-ServicePack2. Along with the new functionality from the upgrade, we've taken this opportunity to add new Building Blocks. Here is a list of the new tools available beginning this summer.

What's New Tab

The What's New tab, located next to the My Blackboard tab, lists any new content items, discussion board posts, grades, etc. that have been added to all the users courses since they last logged in.

MERLOT

MERLOT -- a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. It links to online learning materials along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments. The Merlot building block allows instructors to seamlessly search and attach this content within a Blackboard course site.

Power User Enrollment

Florida State University has developed this course tool that appears in the instructors control panel and provides an alternative to the Blackboard built in user enrollment and role assignment. It provides the following features: (1) Enroll users and assign roles (e.g. instructor, TA) in a single step; (2) Search for multiple users to add by a comma separated list of keywords searching by last name, username or email; (3) Control paging, the number of users to display per page of search results; (4) Select all functions for both the list of displayed users and role assignments.

User Participation Portal Module

This Portal Module Building Block was developed by University of South Florida. It gives an instructor information about when the student last accessed a particular course. In doing so it helps instructors identify users who do not access their course(s) and/or organization(s) and facilitates communication between the instructor/manager and the student. It lets the instructor send e-mail to individual students alerting them of their participation.

User Performance Portal Module

This Portal Module Building Block was developed by University of South Florida. It assists Instructors in identifying students-at-risk based on grade performance and facilitates sending them e-mail.

Browser Tester

This browser tester, developed by Durham University, uses a portal module that runs a JavaScript tests on the user's browser to see if it is correctly configured for Blackboard. It also contains a pop-up tester and sample files in commonly used formats. It was designed to help ITS Helpdesk staff diagnose end-user problems.

DIIA Scanned Results Import Tool

(Pilot Testing Summer 2006)

The University of Texas at Austin has developed a tool that imports the DIIA scanned score results (scantron grades) into Blackboard's gradebook.

Interface Changes

We've moved the Communication and Tools link from the list of links to the Tools box area located underneath the menu.