bbupdates

Accordion Example

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Generate Question Banks with the AI Design Assistant New
Instructors can generate question banks using the AI design assistant.
1. Click Manage banks in the right hand side under the details and actions.
2. Click a plus sign and select Auto generate.
3. Enter a description of the topic or your learning objectives. (Optional)
4. Choose course items.
5. Choose the question type, the level of complexity and the number of desired questions.
6. Select output language and then generate. You can choose which items you would like to add or regenerate if desired.
7. Select the desired questions and then add them to the question bank.
Receive Email Notifications for DiscussionsNew
New notification options allow users to manage their emails for discussions they follow. To help with consistency, these settings align with the user's settings for their activity stream.

To follow a discussion, just click on the “Follow” link that appears near the top of each discussion page, to the right of the Discussion Topic.

And to update your notification settings to receive email notifications when there is activity in followed discussions:
1. Make your way to your Notification Settings, accessible by going to the Profile section of the Base Navigation Menu and clicking on the link, in the “Global Notification Settings” section that reads “Email notifications”
2. In the resulting “Notification Settings” panel, check in the box for the option that reads “New discussion messages”
3. When you’re done, click on the “Save” button, near the bottom of the page.
Major changes to the Assignment Tool New

Blackboard has completely redesigned the assignment tool. Previously, the assignment and test tools were almost identical, but now significant changes have been implemented. The new assignment tool allows you to drag and drop files or use the text editor to add content such as directions, links, videos, images, or file attachments.

Adding questions is now exclusive to the test feature. Students can access assignment instructions and attached files without having to submit a blank attempt, offering more flexibility for instructors to make edits and providing students with clear instructions before they start their attempt.

The interface looks slightly different for students. When they open an assignment, they can view the instructions without starting an attempt, as long as they don’t add any content.
Auto-submitted Indicator in Attempt Logs New
Understanding the context of student submissions is helpful when grading or responding to student issues on assignments and tests. Now the Attempt Log indicates whether a submission is manual or automatic. Automatic submissions occur in one of two circumstances:
- The Due Date is set and Prohibit late submissions is selected. The submission is auto-submitted at the due date.
- A time limit is set and the setting to automatically save and submit work is selected. The submission is auto-submitted when the timer expires.
You can access the Attempt Log for a student from the ellipsis menu (...) on the submission page or on the Grades Tab of the Student Overview page.
Duplicate Questions in Assessments, Forms, and Question Banks New

Building questions is time consuming, so any way to streamline the process is valuable! This update allows you to duplicate an existing question to create a similar question more quickly. Once duplicated, you can edit the question text, answer options, and points.

To duplicate a question, click the ellipsis menu (...) next to the point value and select Duplicate.
Default Question Points Value Changed from 10 to 1 New

Manually adjusting the point value for questions can be time-consuming, irritating, and error prone. Based on feedback from faculty, Blackboard has changed the default point value for questions from 10 to 1, as institutions reported that it was much more common for a question to be worth 1 point than 10 points. Moving forward, any newly created questions will have a default point value of 1. Existing questions will not be changed.
Likert Answer Options Expanded to Include 4 and 6 Responses New

When Likert questions were added as a question type, they were initially restricted to 3, 5, or 7 options in the response range. This update allows for more flexibility by introducing 4 and 6 answer options, which allows you to prevent students from choosing a neutral option.
No Due Date Option for Tests and Assignments New

Due dates are important for helping students stay on track with their learning; in Blackboard, they also provide the foundation for feedback visibility, controlling access to an Assignment or Test, key notifications/reports, and (if enabled) for automatic zeroes. However, there may be scenarios in which you do not want to provide or enforce a due date.

Previously, you have been able to remove the due date by deleting the date from the Due Date field. It was not obvious that this was an option, however, so the new "No due date" checkbox will make it clear that you can remove the due date entirely from an assessment.

Note that you cannot select "No due date" and utilize other settings on the assessment, such as feedback visibility that is based on the due date.
Default Due Date Time Set to 11:59 PM New

When you create a new graded assessment, the due date field is pre-populated with a default date and time. Previously, this time would default to 12:00 AM, which is ambiguous. It is unclear whether 12:00 AM refers to the start or end of the date selected as the due date. As a result, many faculty change the time to 11:59 PM to reflect the end of the day.

To simplify this setting, the time will now default to 11:59 PM on the due date selected. This can be changed to the time of your choosing. For example, you may want to consider setting an earlier time for your due dates to promote healthier sleeping habits for your students or to ensure that they are submitting the assignment or test at a time when you are available to assist with last-minute questions or technical issues.

Existing due dates will not be affected by this change; it only applies to new due dates.
Release Conditions on Assessments No Longer Affect Grade Visibility

When release conditions are set, such as visibility dates and times, students cannot access the material until those conditions are met. However, this has the unintended consequence of also hiding assessments from them on the Gradebook tab. This is usually not the intended outcome, particularly when tests or assignments are hidden to prevent student confusion or access after the due date, and causes confusion for both faculty and students when students cannot view their grade or feedback.

Now, release conditions that affect the visibility of an assessment do not affect the visibility of the grade item on the Gradebook tab. Students will see the item but be unable to access it if the release conditions aren't met (i.e., it is before the "Show on" date or after the "Hide after" date).
Group Assessment Due Date Exceptions

There are times that you may need to set different due dates for each group working on a group assessment. In the past, there was no way to do so. With this update, you can now add a Due Date Exception for a group assessment using the same workflow that you would for an individual assessment.
SafeAssign Direct Submit New
Direct Submit allows you to submit items to SafeAssign for originality review yourself, instead of checking all of the student submissions to a particular Assignment, or to add files to the institutional database without checking for plagiarism. SafeAssign now appears as an instructor tool in Books & Tools, which you can access in the Details & Actions panel within any Ultra course.

There are two document submission methods:
- Upload File: Select this option to drag or upload files via a pop-up window. The standard SafeAssign document processing rules apply:
  - Maximum support file size is 10 MB
  - Supported file types: .zip, .doc, .docx, .docm, .ppt, .pptx, .odt, .txt, .pdf, .rtf, and .html.
- Copy/Paste Text: Select this option to enter a title for the submission and paste the text.
When uploading a file or copying and pasting text, be sure to select the settings to check for plagiarism and/or add to the institutional database. You can also choose to share the submission, which makes it available to other instructors in the course. If you do not check the Share box, you will be the only one who can access the SafeAssign report.

Submissions will take some time to process. Return to the Direct Submit page to view the matching score and the originality report for each submission.

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Knowledge Checks New
Knowledge checks test student comprehension of a document by asking a multiple choice or multiple answer question. Knowledge checks include:
- Feedback: You can pre-populate correct and incorrect answer feedback
- Student interaction: Students receive immediate feedback on whether their answer is correct or incorrect. Knowledge checks allow unlimited attempts.
- Metrics: You have access to detailed metrics about how students are engaging with the knowledge check.
New Ultra Document New

With this feature, you can create a document or content item out of a combination of visual or textual elements. A document can be as simple as a single line of text or a combination of elements. You can customize the layout of these documents using rows and columns so you can add content, HTML, upload files, or convert files from a variety of file types into the Ultra document format.

When selecting content, you will be presented with the familiar text editor that is found throughout Blackboard and these boxes can then be resized to fit any combination of these four columns and they can also be moved with this drag and drop feature additional content items can be added and can be resized and added to this row or can be used to create additional of content. The new Ultra documents will allow for more freedom and flexibility when creating documents. Watch the following video to learn more about this feature.
Multiple Rules for Release Conditions New

You can set multiple rules for release conditions. To use this feature, you can find a content item and select release conditions. You can set multiple rules. These can include date and time, or performance-based criteria and can be set for all members specific members or groups. Once you create it, you can click “add new rule” and then create additional release conditions.
AI Design Assistant - Context Picker for Test Question Generation
In March, the AI Design Assistant introduced the ability for you to select one or more course items and files to use as context for generating test questions. This release extends the context picker to other workflows, including:
1. Learning modules
2. Authentic Assignments
3. Authentic discussion prompts
4. Authentic journal prompts
For example, you might use the Course Syllabus as context when generating learning modules so that the AI Design Assistant can use your course objectives and schedule as inspiration for the module topics and descriptions.
AI Design Assistant

The AI Design Assistant uses a lot of information from the course as well as a description field to provide direction to the AI when generating content. This enhancement allows you to more precisely define the content that you want the AI Design Assistant to use when generating questions.

Begin generating questions within a test, then click the Select course items button.

You will be able to browse the course to select one or more items to use as context, including Ultra Documents and select file types.

As always, you will be able to review and decide whether to use the questions that the AI Design Asisstant has generated. You can also modify or delete the questions after you have added them a test.
Bridge to Quality Action Item
The "Add Image" button was introduced in November, 2023 as an easier way to add images within the text editor by uploading files or searching the Unsplash library. Initially, this was only available in Ultra Documents, Journal prompts, Discussions, and Messages.

With this update, the "Add Image" button is now also available in the text editor in the following tools:
1. Announcements
2. Assessment Questions
3. Student answers on questions (by uploading a local file only; no access to Unsplash)
4. Authentic journal prompts
5. Authentic journal prompts

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Award Course Badges with AchievementsNew
Achievements is a new capability for Ultra courses to help keep students motivated and congratulate them for their participation in a course.

To create course badges in any course in which you are an instructor:
1. Click on the link for “Achievements” in the horizontal navigation bar, along the top of the course page.
2. Near the top-right corner of the resulting page, click on the button that reads “+ New Course Badge”
3. On the next page, fill out the form to give your badge a name, a description, a badge image, and the conditions that students need to meet to earn the badge.
  
  These conditions will be based on your setting a minimum grade that must be earned, with the ability to set multiple such requirements.
4. If you’re done setting the options for this badge and want to make it so that students can earn it, click on “Publish” near the bottom-right of the page.
  
  Alternatively, you can click “Save Draft” if you just want to save your current progress but are not ready to make the badge available to students.
Announcement Indicators and Mark as Read/Unread New

Announcements are a critical communication channel, but they can be easily overlooked. This udpate adds a number next to the Announcements tab in the course to signal the number of unread announcements available.

In addition, you and students will be able to mark announcements as read from the pop-up notification that displays when you access a course. You can also mark announcements as unread from the Announcements page.
Individual Date Adjustments from Batch Edit New

Batch Edit has allowed you to take bulk actions to adjust your course dates, like moving them forward based on the course start date or adjusting them by a specified number of days. This update makes it easier for you to make adjustments to individual dates for any item by showing you all of the dates on a single page. This includes visibility dates for all content types (Show On and Hide After) as well as the Due Date for assessments.
Bulk Change Dates on the Batch Edit Page New

The Batch Edit page is used for taking bulk actions on content in your course, such as rolling dates forward based on the start of the semester or making several items visible or hidden. This new update allows you to change several dates in your course at once to a specific date and/or time. This includes dates and times for content availability (show and hide) and assessment due dates.

To use this new tool, simply select the items that you want to edit and click the Edit Dates button at the bottom of the page. Change the Edit Type menu to Change to specific date and/or time, then select which dates and times you want to change. You can choose to change both date and time or either date OR time.

For example, perhaps you want to change all of your assignment due dates from 6 PM to 8 PM. You can change those in a single operation without changing the dates those assignments are due.

Note that you can only change dates which already exist in the system. You cannot use this bulk operation to add dates to content or assessments.
Batch Edit Enhancement - Modify Content in Multiple Folders New

Batch Edit has allowed you to take bulk actions to adjust your course dates, like moving them forward based on the course start date or adjusting them by a specified number of days. This update makes it easier for you to make adjustments to individual dates for any item by showing you all of the dates on a single page. This includes visibility dates for all content types (Show On and Hide After) as well as the Due Date for assessments.
Forms - Collect Information from Students New

Revisit your course learning objectives to ensure they use action verbs that can be assessed. Since your learning objectives form the basis for the entire design of the course, it’s important to create measurable course learning objectives, or course/program competencies.
Likert Question Type for Forms New

With the release of Forms for the Ultra Course View, you will also be able ot use Likert questions to collect quantitative measures of opinions and attitudes. When creating a Likert question, you can select a range of 3, 5, or 7 response choices. You can also label the poles as desired (e.g., strongly agree/strongly disagree) and choose to include a "not applicable" option.
Persistent Navigation for Learning Modules New

When viewed by a student or in the Student Preview mode, Learning Modules feature a navigation bar at the top of the page that allows you navigate forward and backward between content items in the Learning Module. This update makes that navigation bar persistent, so that it is always visible at the top of the browser when you scroll vertically through content.
Self-Enrollment via URL New

Most courses have a defined enrollment managed by course registration in MyNIU. However, there are some use cases, particularly for Organizations, where you may want to provide the opportunity for someone to self-enroll in that space. For example, you could post a link to your website that would allow NIU students or employees to self-enroll for optional training or invite participants by emailing a link to them.

To enable this for your Organization, please reach out to us at maratoukh@wpunj.edu. There is some configuration that has to happen on the admin side of Blackboard for self-enrollment to be enabled.
Introduction of Group Spaces New

This release introduces the first step in a brand new feature to help students collaborate more effectively with one another: Group Spaces.

In this first version, clicking on the group name will take students to a list of all of the assessments assigned to that group. From here, clicking one of the assessments will open it.

Instructors can access Group Spaces from the Group Set page. Click the ellipsis (...) to access the group management options and select Enter group space from the menu.

This is only the beginning for Group Spaces! Future milestones will include additional tools to help students collaborate, including synchronous communication and project management features.

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Student Feedback Remains Visible to Students Regardless of Release Condition Settings New

Visibility of grades and feedback has been a confusing issue for most faculty and students. A recent update made the grade visible regardless of the availability dates set in the Release Conditions. This update extends that to any overall feedback provided on the assessment.

Now, both the grade and overall feedback will be visible to students even if the assessment is hidden due to a Hide After date.
Overall Grade Added to the Gradebook Download New

The download function in the Gradebook allows you to download grades to a spreadsheet to analyze in other applications, such as Microsoft Excel, or to use as an offline record for archival purposes. Now, when downloading the Gradebook, you can choose to include the Overall Grade as a column in the output.
Total and Weighted Calculations New

The Calculation item in the Gradebook lets you create custom formulas for calculating student grades. However, sometimes what you really need is an additional Total or Weighted calculation and not a custom formula. This update adds the ability to create new Total items that operate in the same way as the Overall Grade calculation.

You can add a Total calculation from either the Grid View or the List View by clicking the plus icon above, below, or between any existing graded items. The Total calculation can be based on points or a weighted calculation and can include calculation rules to drop scores from a category (which you cannot do currently with a custom Calculation).
Enhancements to the Gradebook Grid View New
Blackboard continues to focus on improving the usability of the Gradebook. To maximize screen real estate of the Gradebook Grid View, they have made the following enhancements:
- Displaying more rows
- Improved student identification
Category Information Added to the Gradebook List View New

To provide greater efficiency and clarity in the Gradebook List View, this update adds a new Category column. This column, along with the grading item icon, helps you mroe readily identify to which category the item belongs. You can also sort this column ascending or descending alphabetically.
Grid View Sorting Controls New
Sorting controls for columns have been added little by little throughout the Grid View of the Gradebook. This update adds sorting controls for all remaining columns:
- Calculations
- Discussions
- Group Assessments
- Journals
- Group Discussions
- LTI tools
Sorting Controls on Students Tab New
The Flexible Grading page has sorted students alphabetically by last name. This update allows you to sort students in various ways, including:
- Submission date of latest attempt (oldest - newest and newest - oldest)
- Last Name (A - Z and Z - A)
- First Name (A - Z and Z - A)
- Student ID (ascending and descending)
The sorting control is also "sticky", meaning that if you stop grading and resume later, the last sorting option you used will still be applied.
Copying Grading Schemas Between Courses New

You can now copy individual grading schemas from Ultra and Original courses to other Ultra courses. Previously, you had to copy all schemas from the Original course. From the new Grading Schemas folder on the Copy Items panel, you can select which schemas to copy.

Note that a course may contain up to 100 grading schemas. If copying the selected schemas would cause the course to exceed this limit, you will see a banner to alert you of this. The copy process will copy as many as possible until it reaches a total of 100.

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Quickly Access Items That Need Grade ReconciliationNew

With parallel grading, multiple people can share grading responsibilities for a course. For example, an instructor can divide up the grading tasks among teaching assistants and other graders. The designated reconciler reviews all grades and feedback to determine the final grade.

A Needs reconciling section now appears on the gradebook Overview tab. In this section, reconcilers can easily access all items ready for reconciliation.

Graders can select Reconcile now to open the Submissions tab for the item. They can review grades and feedback from others before determining the final grade.
Add Per-Question Feedback when Grading by Student New

Detailed feedback on assessments is critical for students to understand their progress and achievement. In addition to overall feedback on the assessment, you can now provide question-level feedback to provide more direct and individualized feedback.

Click the conversation bubble next to the grade pill to open the question feedback editor. When saved, the bubble is purple to indicate that feedback is present.

In this first release, you can provide question-level feedback when grading by student (i.e., when you can see all of one student's responses at a time). Providing question-level feedback when grading by question is planned for a future release.
Usability Improvements for Flexible Grading New

Flexible grading continues to improve to make grading easier and more efficient. In response to instructor feedback, this update moves the attempt selector closer to the grade pill to improve visibility and make it easier to switch between submissions by a single student.

This update also eliminates the second grade pill for the final grade to reduce confusion. You can still override a grade by using the ellipsis menu (...), but this change prevents accidental grade overrides.
Feedback on Override and Automatic Zero Grades for Tests and Assignments New

Feedback is crucial for students as it supports and shapes their learning journey. Now, you can give feedback for overridden tests, assignment grades, and automatic zeros. This option appears in the Gradebook grid view, and the Submissions list after the override or automatic zero is entered.

You can also add feedback when working offline with the Gradebook. Download a single column to include the feedback column, enter the grades and feedback, then upload the file again.
Attempt Logs for Assignments and Tests New
The Ultra Course View currently provides you with informtaion on when a student opened and submitted an assessment, but there is no way to know what happens in between. The new Attempt Log provides you with valuable insights into students' progress through the assessment and can help to validate issues students may encounter during an assessment.

For tests, the logs provide the following:
- Detailed information, including the date and time fo the start and when the answer to each question was saved
- Question-specific details, such as question number, a preview of the question, and estimated time spent on each question
- Submission receipt number, final grade, and attempt grade
- Easy toggling between all in-progress and submitted attempts for comprehensive assessment tracking
Auto-captioning for Audio and Video Grading Feedback New

Recording audio and video feedback can help students to better understand your feedback to them and can support a stronger sense of connection with you as the faculty member, but it is not accessible to all students without captions. This update adds automatic captioning for any audio and video content recorded in assessment feedback.