Wednesday, June 05, 2013

[BB] New features in Blackboard upgrade

Dear Blackboard Users,

 

We will be upgrading to the latest version of Blackboard Learn™, Service Pack 12, on Friday, June 28th, which will provide a more user-friendly and modern experience for you as a daily user of the system. The system will be unavailable due to the upgrade staring on Friday, June 28th at 8 p.m. and will be available again at 1 p.m. on Sunday, June 30th (please note that no action will be required from you for this upgrade as it will be completed automatically). You should feel confident that the updates to Blackboard Learn were done with educators and students in mind as nearly 640 institutions, over 600 educators and almost 600 students contributed to the development of this latest release.

 

Many existing features have been improved and some exciting new features added to make your day more efficient. Here is an overview of tools that you can expect to be using soon:

 

  • New Content Editor: The new Content Editor vastly improves the user experience for formatting text, pasting content from Microsoft Word, and adding content to all areas of Learn. Blackboard has also replaced the old math editor with a new mathML equation editor.
  • Assessment Item Analysis: Now you can easily refine your assessments by evaluating the quality of each question and that question’s ability to discriminate between students who understand the material and those who do not. Ineffective questions can easily be identified and then quickly corrected with the Automatic Re-grade feature.
  • My Blackboard: This feature introduces a completely new, modern user experience in Blackboard Learn that consolidates critical information from all your Courses and Organizations as well as your school-wide academic network. The new tools in My Blackboard – Profile, Posts, Updates, My Grades, and People – were developed to meet the needs of today’s active learner and enhance student engagement. For educators like you, My Blackboard allows you to easily monitor activity across your courses and organizations and rest-assured that your students are up-to-date and engaged in the online learning experience.
  • New Global Navigation Menu: Always present in the top right corner, the new navigation menu is the entry point to My Blackboard and also provides one-click access to your Courses, Organizations, Settings, and Blackboard Help. Additionally, the new menu will tell you how many items in My Blackboard are new or need your attention, so you never miss a thing.

 

Here are a few valuable resources to familiarize yourself with the new Blackboard Learn features and be ready to integrate them in your instruction:

 

 

In addition, the Instructional Advancement Center (IAC) has scheduled workshops and online training classes. Please click here for more information: http://www.iacmiami.org/.

If you have questions or concerns about these upcoming changes, please contact the Blackboard team at: (305) 284-3949 or blackboardhelp@miami.edu.

 

Regards,

 

Your Blackboard Team

 

 

 

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