What’s New in Blackboard – September 2024
The Blackboard team at Anthology has even more new features and updates coming your way! The Blackboard 3900.100 release, out in September, has exciting updates in the areas of Instructional Design, Flexible Grading, Learner Progression and Personalized Experience, Test and Assignments, Gradebook, and more. These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Keep reading to learn more about the highlights from the upcoming Blackboard release!
Note: The below updates pertain to customers using the Ultra interface. For complete release notes, visit the Blackboard help site.
1. Instructional Design - Content Designer: Knowledge Check in Documents
The Content Designer for Documents now includes a Knowledge Check block, which will enhance the overall learning experience. Knowledge Checks allow students to engage with content and receive immediate feedback, and instructors are empowered with valuable insights to tailor their teaching strategies as a result.
Key Features:
Question Types: Multiple-choice and multiple-answer questions
Feedback: Pre-populated correct and incorrect answer feedback, which instructors can edit
Student Interaction: Students can select an answer, submit it, and receive immediate feedback on whether their
answer is correct or incorrect, with Knowledge Checks allowing unlimited attempts
Metrics: Instructors can access detailed metrics including:
- Number of students participating
- Total number of attempts
- Average number of attempts to reach the correct answer
- Maximum number of attempts to reach the correct answer
- Level of difficulty metric
- Percentage of students selecting each answer option
Image 1. Instructor view - Knowledge Check creation
After saving the Knowledge Check, instructors may resize and move it as desired within the document.
Image 2. Animation of student experience interacting with Knowledge Check
Image 3. Instructor view of Knowledge Check metrics
Grading for Knowledge Checks isn't supported at this time. There are also no notifications specific to Knowledge Checks.
2. Instructional Design - AI Conversation
It's tough to have a one-on-one conversation with every student, especially in large courses. Some instructors are asking students to use AI services for topic-related activities to help. But with many such services and limited instructor visibility, results can vary.
To better serve instructors who want to use AI with students, we're launching a new activity called AI Conversation. This is a Socratic questioning exercise guided by AI. AI Conversation lets students explore their thoughts on a topic.
There are two elements to the activity:
AI Conversation
- This lets students think critically about the topic that the instructor designs.
Reflection question
- This asks the student to share their thoughts on the activity. The reflection question also lets the student flag any
bias or errors from the AI as part of our Trustworthy AI Approach. Reflection helps students understand the
responsible use of AI services.
Instructors have the following configuration options:
- A topic for the AI Conversation
- An AI persona including a name, avatar (can be uploaded or generated), and personality trait
- Complexity level of responses
- Ability to edit the reflection question, guiding the student on how best to reflect on this activity
On submission, the instructor can review the AI conversation transcript and the student's reflection. The AI
Conversation is a formative assessment by default, but you’re not restricted to this option.
Image 1. Instructor setting up a topic, AI Persona, and Reflection question
Image 2. Instructor previewing the AI Conversation before making it visible to students
Image 3. A student participating in the AI Conversation
Image 4. Instructor view of a submitted AI Conversation and reflection question
3. Instructional Design - Course Content Page Enhancements
User experience (UX) plays a vital role in student engagement and learning. We're committed to continuous improvement of the Ultra course view. It's important to us that we meet the needs of our users—both educators and students. We're excited to deliver several changes to improve the Course Content page. Customer feedback is at the center of the changes we’ve made.
The improvements include:
- Greater visual depth
- Improved page structure
- Differentiation among course elements
- An enhanced presentation of top-level and nested content
Greater Visual Depth and Content Page Structure
Creating a more appealing and engaging interface has been a key theme in customer feedback. To support this, we’ve created greater visual depth for the Course Content page. This provides a more enjoyable and inviting experience for end users.
The new design incorporates:
- Subtle gradients and softer edges
- A more cohesive color palette with inviting, warmer tones
- More intuitive navigation, which reduces cognitive load and increases focus on the content
Image 1. Instructor view: Course Content page visual depth improvements
Image 2. Student view: Course Content page visual depth improvements
Content Presentation Enhancements
We've improved the differentiation among Learning Modules, Folders, and Content Items. Currently, users sometimes find it challenging to distinguish among these elements. This can lead to confusion and inefficiency in navigating course materials.
Image 3. Instructor view: Content Item presentation for a Learning Module
Image 4. Instructor view: Content item presentation for a Folder
Image 5. Student view: Content item presentation for a Learning Module
Image 6. Student view: Content item presentation for a Folder
These improvements create a more organized and improved user experience.
4. Flexible Grading - View Items that Need Grading and Posting in the New Overview Tab
To help instructors stay on top of their grading workload, we added an indicator to the Gradebook tab to let you know when there are new submissions to grade. The indicator displays the number that needs grading. If the count goes higher than 99, it displays as 99+.
We also added a new Gradebook Overview tab to improve task orientation and grading efficiency. This tab contains two sections: Needs Grading and Needs Posting.
Needs Grading Section
If you face a substantial grading workload, the Needs Grading section is a useful tool for prioritizing your tasks. It allows you to see all items ready for grading and a count of the total number of outstanding grading tasks in your course.
This section displays up to five items at a time, ordered by the oldest ungraded submission. For an item, select Grade now to quickly access the submissions you need to grade. If your course has more than five items that need grading, you can use the buttons at the bottom of the section to navigate through all pending tasks.
Needs Posting Section
The Needs Posting section increases accessibility of assessments with grades that need posting. For an item, select Post now to post its grade. If there are more than five items that need posting, you can use the buttons at the bottom of the section to navigate through the pending tasks.
Image 1. Instructor view of the new Needs Grading count on the Gradebook tab and the Needs Grading section on the new Overview page
Image 2. Instructor view of the new gradebook Overview page where the Needs grading and Needs posting sections appear
5. Learner Progression and Personalized Experience - Student Activity Log
Instructors often need to review student activity. Student activity helps inform decisions in academic disputes and aids in troubleshooting. You can also analyze the course participation of students at risk.
Instructors can also use student participation to support financial aid decisions; for example, requests for tuition fee reimbursements if a student hasn't participated in a course. Course participation records can also help with awarding scholarships.
Now the Student Overview page has a Student Activity Log. Instructors and other higher roles can use the report to check what a particular student did in a course.
Image 1. Student Activity Log report located in the Student Overview page
The Activity log can be filtered by event type and can retrieve activity from the past 140 days. Any information older than that won’t be stored in this report. The following events can be found in the report:
- Course Access
- Assessment Started
- Assessment Draft saved
- Assessment Submitted
- Assessment Auto-submitted
- Discussion Access
- Discussion Draft saved
- Discussion Edit
- Discussion Reply
- Discussion Response
- Document Access
- Journal Access
- LTI Item Access
- SCORM item Access