Blackboard Downtime and Update, June 6-7
On June 6-7, Blackboard will be updated to a more recent version of the system. This update will provide several feature enhancements, but the user interface will be largely unchanged. We are updating from the October 2012 Blackboard release to the April 2014 release. See below for a list of new and enhanced features.
Please note that Blackboard will be unavailable between 10pm on Saturday, June 6th, and 10am on Sunday, June 7th, while the update is applied. Instructors teaching in June are advised to bear this in mind when setting course schedules and assignment deadlines.
If you have questions about the update or any Blackboard support needs, please contact the Blackboard support team at blackboard@vanderbilt.edu.
Major Changes
Student Preview – This frequently requested tool allows instructors to view their courses as their students see them. To access the preview mode, click on the “Enter Student Preview” icon (
) in the top-right corner of your courses page, near the edit mode toggle. More information.
SafeAssign – The SafeAssign tool is now more fully integrated into Blackboard. Now during assignment creation, you can set the submission details to include plagiarism detection through SafeAssign. More information.
Listen to Episode 3 of the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching podcast for an interview with Michele Sulikowski, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, about how she uses SafeAssign to teach students about working with sources.
Course Structures – Blackboard now offers more than 30 course structures that make it easy to set up a new course with default menu items that fit a particular teaching approach. To see and use the course structures now available, click on Control Panel, then Customization, then Teaching Style. More information.
Rubrics – We rolled out the Blackboard rubrics tool at the start of May, so it’s a new tool for the Vanderbilt teaching community. With the June update, rubrics are more tightly integrated with various assignment types in Blackboard. More information.
See the blog post announcing the new rubric tool for an introduction to using rubrics to evaluate assignments and provide students feedback on their work.
Feature Enhancements
Test Options – Instructors now have more flexibility in granting individual students exceptions in the testing tool. For instance, one can now allow a single student another attempt at a test, or give an individual student extra time to take a test. Instructors also have more options for providing feedback to students on test items. See Blackboard’s page on test and survey options for details.
Additionally, it’s now possible to export an entire test, regardless of the origin of the questions contained in the test, and the test access log now includes more detailed information, including when a test was started by a student and when individual questions on a test were saved by students.
Grading Options – Blackboard now provides options for anonymous grading, in which student work is de-identified during grading for greater objectivity, and delegated grading, for improved workflow around assigning student work to teaching assistants or graders.
Image: “Patient,” Robert S. Donovan, Flickr (CC-BY-NC)