1. Align Goals to Questions in Question Pools - Now, instructors can align goals to questions within a question pool. Question-level goal alignment ensures that assessment items measure the desired learning outcomes. This helps to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of evaluation and feedback practices.

2. Multiple Performance Criteria in Release Conditions - Release conditions determine when students can view course content. Release conditions are on the content's visibility setting on the course content page. Currently, you can set:  

• Which course members or groups have access;

• When the course content is accessible, visible, and hidden;

• When student performance is necessary for completing an assignment or scoring.

Instructors can now set more than one performance criteria per content item.

3. Reuse Questions in Forms - Reusing questions streamlines the Form creation process and saves users time and effort.  Instructors can now select Reuse questions when editing or creating a Form. 

4. Multiple Attempts for Forms Assigned to Groups - Instructors can now assign a Form to a group and allow multiple attempts. When assigning forms to groups, enabling multiple attempts promotes dynamic, iterative learning experiences. Groups can now submit the Form, receive feedback, and submit another response. 

5. Add Question Feedback when Grading a Test by Question - When grading by student or by question, instructors can provide contextual feedback. Instructors can add feedback to all question types. Question level feedback promotes deeper understanding and personal growth among students. Question level feedback enhances overall submission feedback and automated feedback for auto-graded questions.

6. Improved Gradebook Navigation - To create a more intuitive navigation, we replaced the grid and list view buttons with text links. The options are now:  

• Gradable Items

• Grades (grid view)

• Students

The Gradebook will remember the last view you used in each course.

7. Weighted Calculation Improvements - Instructors have diverse grade calculation needs. Some instructors use weighted calculations to help with aggregating calculations like midterm or final grades.

Now instructors can assign equal weights to items in the same categories. The chosen calculation method, whether proportional or equal, applies to all categories. In the past, weighted items in the same category had proportional weights. These weighted items were based on the possible points of each item. 

To better understand student performance, some instructors use drop rules to remove outliers. Because it’s important to know the weighting method when managing these settings, we now display the instructor's chosen weighting option in the calculation rules panel.

8. Landing Page Enhancements for Blackboard Learn Mobile App - The landing pages (Grades, Messages, Courses, Organization) are now designed in a card layout. For the Courses and Organization pages, the course status indicator previously located in the course image has been moved below the course or organization title. The current functionality remains the same. These design changes align the landing pages with the design principles and language of the Blackboard Mobile App.

These enhancements are a part of a larger redesign of the Blackboard Learn mobile app landing pages to ensure uniform design, optimized user experience, and natural user flow across various devices and screen sizes.

End of May 2024 Updates

1. AI Context Picker - Context selection is key for tailoring course content generated with the AI Design Assistant. The context picker also helps to ground generated content in an appropriate context.

File types supported by the context picker include PDF, Word, PowerPoint, text, RTF, and HTML.

We are extending the context picker for test questions to other generation workflows: 

• Learning modules 

• Authentic assignments 

• Authentic discussions 

• Authentic journals

When Ultra documents are selected as context, file attachments on the Ultra document will also be included as context for all context pickers.

2. Persistent Navigation Bar for Learning Modules - When in modules instructors and students have maintained access to the navigation bar. Now the navigation bar is sticky and remains visible as students vertically scroll through content. Students no longer need to scroll back up to the top of content to access the navigation tools. 

3. Student Feedback Visible in Release Condition - Instructors may want to control access to course content using release conditions. This is helpful for providing custom learning paths through course content. The release conditions include an option to show or hide content to/from students before they meet release conditions. We've modified how these settings impact the students' view of feedback from instructors. Now instructors can set release conditions without any impact to feedback to students.  

In the past, when an instructor selected the option to hide content, students could view associated grades but not the feedback. We have corrected this to ensure that students can always review feedback.  

4. Default question points value changed from 10 to 1 - manually adjusting the point value for questions can be time-consuming and error prone. Based on valuable client feedback, we are changing the default point value from 10 to 1. Moving forward, any newly created questions will have a default point value of 1. This change helps reduce the need for manual adjustments.

Questions copied from another assessment retain the designated point value.

5. Duplicate Questions - Sometimes an instructor may want to have a question repeated with the same answer options but a different question. Instructors can now select Duplicate to quickly copy an existing question within the same assessment (test, assignment, form) or in a question bank. This feature eliminates the need for manual duplication and simplifies the process of creating multiple questions with the same answer options.

6. Likert Answers Options - Instructors can now create Likert scale questions with 4 or 6 answer options. This allows for greater granularity in student responses. An even number of answer options also supports the creation of questions where students cannot select a neutral option. This enhancement is in response to valuable user feedback.

7. Auto-submitted Indicator in Attempt Logs - Understanding the context of student submissions is helpful to instructors. Now the Attempt Log indicates whether a submission is manual or automatic. This indicator provides instructors with deeper insights into student behaviors. This addition also allows instructors to better track their student progress. 

8. Anonymous Discussion Post - Students need to feel free to express their ideas and opinions without fear of judgement. To support this, we've added an option for instructors to allow anonymous posts in ungraded discussions. This feature provides flexibility for instructors. They can toggle anonymity on or off as the discussion progresses. Any existing anonymous posts keep their anonymity. 

9. Self-Enrollments Groups Improvements - Self-enrollment groups provide an important part of student autonomy throughout the learning experience. To support more use cases for self-enrollment groups and based on client feedback, we are reducing the maximum members per group from 2 to 1. This will cover use cases such as sign-up sheets and booking 1:1 slots with students.

10. Reply All in Messages - Responding to messages is an important part of course communication. The "Reply all" option in the Original Course View is limited to messages with up to 100 recipients. With this release, we have raised limits to 1000 recipients. This is to help with wider course communication and based on client feedback. When using the "Reply all" feature, it will respond to all users on the original message. If you wish to select which users to reply to, the "Reply" option allows you to desired select users.

11. Usability improvements for Flexible Grading - the attempt selector is relocated to improve visibility and efficiency. It is now nearer to the attempt grade pill. This allows instructors to switch between a student's attempts during grading.  

The grading interface now displays a single grade pill. This provides a more intuitive grading workflow. The single grade pill also prevents accidental grade overrides.

Overriding the final grade is now an explicit grading option. The three-dot menu next to the attempt grade pill now includes an Override Final Grade option. When selected, an Override label appears above the grade pill. Here the instructor can adjust the final grade for the submission. 

12. Add question feedback when grading by student - Instructors can now provide contextual feedback by student on all question types. Question level feedback promotes deeper understanding and personal growth among students. Question level feedback complements the existing capabilities of overall submission feedback and automated feedback for auto-graded questions.

Once students have submitted their tests and scores are posted, students can access the feedback. Students can access both overall feedback and question-specific feedback.

13. Calculations changed from using BigDecimal to BigFraction - Instructors need a gradebook that supports diverse grading scenarios. Anthology Blackboard is changing the software library used to perform calculations in calculated columns and the overall course grade.

Example: A course contains 3 assignments worth 22 points each. The student scores 13/22 on the first assignment, 14/22 on the second assignment, and 15/22 on the third assignment. An instructor creates a calculated column to calculate the average of these assignments.  

Using the new software library, BigFraction, the average will calculate as 14/22.

With the former software library, BigDecimal, the average would incorrectly calculate to 13.99/22. The new software library ensures calculations compute as expected.

14. Overall Grade added to the Gradebook Download - Some instructors download grades from the gradebook to analyze in other applications, such as Microsoft Excel.

Now, instructors can choose to include the Overall Grade for students in the downloaded gradebook. This additional data point helps provide a comprehensive view of student performance.

15. Edit Gradebook category for Partner Cloud content - Some instructors want to change the gradebook category for third-party content and tools (e.g., Cengage). Now instructors can edit the category information from the gradebook.

16. Long name Visibility on Small Screens in Student Activity Report - Depending on the culture, personal name lengths vary. To continue demonstrating our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we adjusted long names in the Student Activity report for assessments. This change ensures that names are visible on a variety of devices. This helps instructors avoid confusion when viewing students with similar names. 

Also, instructors can now sort the student list by last name in small devices so they can organize the list easily. 

17. Individual date adjustments from Batch Edit - Updating availability and due dates after a course copy, import, or a conversion can take time. We're making it easier for instructors to make date adjustments for any item on the Batch Edit page. Instructors now have the option to change the due date and availability (Show On and Hide After) for any item. 

End of April 2024 Updates

1. AI Design Assistant - Context picker for test question generation - The context picker does not draw context from items that are attached to an Ultra document. Only items that appear on the context picker’s menu are used by the context picker. In future releases, attached files will be included in the context picker.

2. Journals - instructors can now align goals with Journals to ensure that the activity measures the desired learning outcomes. This helps to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of evaluation and feedback practices.

Instructors can also align goals to the following course items:

• Assignments

• Tests, including individual questions

• Questions in banks

• Discussions

• Rubrics criterion

• Files

• Web links

• Teaching tools with LTI connection

• Documents

3. No Due Date Option - Due dates are an important aspect of the teaching and learning process. In some scenarios, such as self-paced learning, an instructor may not want to apply a due date. To make the option for not having a due date more evident, we've added a "No due date" option for Tests and Assignments.

There may be cases when the “No due date” selection conflicts with the Assessment Results settings. When this occurs, the instructor is prompted to review the settings.

4. Announcement indicators mark as read/unread - Instructors, please note that unread announcements are visible to students on the Content page and via pop-up announcements (when students are first engaging with the course on Blackboard). Announcements when clicked, present a list of messages that match the unread numeric indicator on the Content page.

The Message icon also present similar features as the Announcement as noted in the image below.

5. Messages Sent from Student Activity Report on Small Screens - additionally, instructors can now send messages to students from the Student Activity report for assessments while on-the-go. Small screens such as those for smartphones are now supported. The message option is in the ellipsis menu for each student.

6. Flexible Grading with Left and Right Panels - in flexible grading, instructors can collapse or expand the left panel (student cards) and right panel (feedback and rubrics). To provide a better user experience, the last used state is now preserved in the browser. Now,  navigating between student attempts and across sessions provides a more efficient experience.

7. Gradebook Item Statistics from Grid View - Item statistics give insight to course members' overall performance on a graded content. Now, instructors can select a column in the gradebook to access summary statistics for any graded item. The statistics page displays key metrics such as:

• Minimum and maximum value

• Range

• Average

• Median

• Standard deviation

• Variance

The number of submissions requiring grading and the distribution of grades also displays.

End of March 2024 Updates

1. Rubrics - performance level descriptions or the grading rubric is visible whilst grading each submission.

2. Communications - instructors can now send reminders to students. Reminders can only be sent to students who did not submit work, have not received an automatic zero, don’t have a posted score that was manually overridden, and is enrolled in the course.

3. Flexible Grading - instructors can now do a video record, thus providing learners with an audio feedback. There is an audio only option if visuals are not desirable.

4. Gradebook - feedback is now available for overridden tests, assignment grades, and automatic zeros. This option is available in the Gradebook view, and the Submissions list AFTER the override or automatic zero is entered.

5. Missed Due Dates - instructors can now customized the missed due dates alert in the Alert Settings. This allows instructors to better identify at risk students in the Course Activity Report. Instructors must set up Alert Settings since this is not a default feature.

Students who trigger the missed due dates alert will appear in the Course Activity report table, chart and in the downloaded report.

Instructors with this settings will note alert activities on their Activity Stream.

The missed due date alert applies when a student doesn’t submit before the due date in the following:

• Assessments, including group and formative

• Assessments with the “collect submissions offline” option selected - when an instructor creates an attempt and enters the submission date/time after the due date

• Assessments with the “hide student names” option selected - alerts only after all student submissions are graded and student names are exposed

• Discussions and journals marked for a grade

• SCORM packages when the “Grade individual SCOs” option is selected in SCORM settings

• Other 3rd party activities, such as LTI and Respondus.

Special considerations:

• Students with a due date accommodation never have their work marked late. A student with due date accommodation won't have any missed due date alerts.

• Students with a due date exception will have a missed due date alert if the excepted due date passes and there is no submission.

• Students with an exemption never have their work marked late. A student with an exemption won't have any missed due date alerts.

• Hidden content with a due date or content with date/time and performance release conditions are included in missed due date alerts.

• Content with a due date and release conditions for individual course members or groups will alert only those students/groups included in the condition who miss the due date.

• New items added to the gradebook with a due date are not included in the missed due date alerts.

Better Control over Student Alert Notifications - instructors now have access to more options for student alert notifications. Instructors can now choose amongst:

• Student Last Access Alert

• Student Low Overall Grade Alert

• Students Missed Due Dates Alert

6. Forms - forms can support: essay question, Likert question, multiple choice question, true/false question, text, local file, file from cloud storage, and page break. By default, a Form is not graded.

Grades must be manually entered on a Form via Form Submission. Instructors can view participation by Students or Question in the new grading view seen in the image below:

Form results from the Submissions and Gradebook pages are downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file as seen below:

Likert Availability in Form - instructors now have access to this popular scale measurement in Forms. In Forms, instructors may select a range of 3, 5, or 7 and label the poles as desired. Instructors may also choose to include a "not applicable" option.

Note: A Likert question in a Survey created in the Original course view converts/copies to a Form in the Ultra course view. The scale range default is 3.

End of February 2024 Updates