Dear Blackboard Users,
We will be upgrading to the latest version of Blackboard Learn™, Service Pack 14, on Wednesday December 25th 2013 starting at 2:30 p.m. The system will be unavailable due to the upgrade and will be available again at noon on Thursday December 26th 2013 (please note that no action will be required from you for this upgrade as it will be completed automatically).
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:
- Achievements: The Achievements tool allows instructors and course designers to designate criteria for issuing rewards to students in the form of both Badges and Certificates.
- Course Messages Notifications: Course messages are private and secure text-based communication that occurs within a course and among course members. Although similar to email, you must be logged into a course to read and send course messages.
- Date Management: After instructors have copied a course, they can speed up the transition of old dates to new ones relevant for the new course using Date Management. From Date Management, instructors can adjust all availability dates, due dates, and adaptive release dates.
- Grade Center Improvements: Blackboard has made several improvements to grading and Grade Center in Service Pack 14.
- Groups Management: Blackboard has improved the management of groups within the course site.
- Inline Grading: Instructors have a consistent grading sidebar within assignments, blogs, discussions, journals, and wikis. This grading sidebar allows them to grade a submission, post, and entry without leaving the page.
- Test IP Address Filtering: As a way to prevent cheating and secure high stakes tests, Blackboard Learn Service Pack 14 is introducing Test IP address filtering to enforce location restrictions specified by administrators to correspond to specified IP addresses or IP ranges. This can limit the computers that have access to certain tests to a testing lab for example or other location that can be monitored or proctored.
Here are a few valuable resources to familiarize yourself with the new Blackboard Learn features and be ready to integrate them in your instruction:
- On-Demand Learning Center: free access to video tutorials and getting started guides
- Feature Showcase: review all of the new features
- Help.Blackboard.com: assistance using the new Blackboard Learn platform, organized by role
- Educator Cohort: series of online meetings to familiarize educators with new features
In addition, the Learning Platforms Team 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
(P): 305-284-3949
