ITS is pleased to announce the scheduled availability of Blackboard 7.3 for Summer 2008 classes.
Here are some highlights of the many improvements and enhancements:
Assessments
· Assessments may now be set to allow unlimited attempts or a specific number of attempts. The Gradebook displays all of the attempts. The Gradebook item is scored based on grading option: last attempt, first attempt, highest score, lowest score, or average of scores. Additionally, an Override field has been included so that the instructor can override the score independent of any attempts.
· The deployment of tests has been enhanced to permit Self-Assessment in two forms: allow the instructor and student to view the grade, or only allow the student to view the grade. In each case, the grade is not included in the final score for the student.
· The Test and Survey Managers have been enhanced to allow for importing and exporting, much like the Pool Manager in Release 6.
· When creating a test, questions may now be marked as extra credit only.
Gradebook
· A new setting on the Gradebook Settings page allows for the suppression of the class average to students.
· Instructors can now add and store optional notes or explanations with each grade that is visible to students.
· In the Gradebook, the existing Date field will be relabeled Due Date and will no longer be required. The Creation Date of the Item is now exposed as a read-only field.
Discussion boards
· Instructors can copy Discussion Board forums to the same Discussion Board or to another Discussion
Board in the course
· Users can save posts as drafts, allowing them to work on a post over more than one Blackboard
session until the post is ready for publishing.
· Instructors now have an availability option for all forums on the Add/Modify Forum page. The availability
option replaces the functionality of archiving forums. Forums that were archived prior to the upgrade will become Unavailable.
· Searches can be limited or expanded to include current forum, current thread, or all forums in the
course.
· Users can group posts into Collections. Collections can be sorted and filtered to customize the
Collection for easy viewing and printing.
· Instructors can now "lock" a forum to prevent additional posts, but allow users to read existing threads.
This feature replaces "archive" forum
· If enabled by the instructor for a forum, the Subscribe to Thread option notifies users each time a new post is added to the thread. The notification is enabled by the user and sent to the email address stored in the user's Personal Information.
Other changes
· All Instructors will now be able to deliver information to students by generating a broadcast email when creating or modifying a course announcement.
· The Visual Text Box Editor is now available to users running any supported browser, and the WebEQ and MathML tools on the Visual Text Box Editor have been enhanced.
We plan to make Blackboard 7.3 available for faculty use on March 14th, using a snapshot of course and enrollment data from March 12th. There are no plans to resynchronize Blackboard 7 with Blackboard 6 after March 12th, so Spring 2008 courses will not be available after we decommission the Blackboard 6 server at the end of Summer 2008.
Summer 2008 courses will not be created on the Blackboard 6.3 server; they will only be available on the Blackboard 7 server.
Blackboard 7 Deployment Timeline
March 14th
· Blackboard 7 becomes available via the URL http://blackboard7.noctrl.edu
· Blackboard 6 continues to be available at the standard URL http://blackboard.noctrl.edu
June 7th
· Blackboard 7 moves to the standard URL http://blackboard.noctrl.edu, but will still be accessible via http://blackboard7.noctrl.edu
· Blackboard 6 moves to http://blackboard6.noctrl.edu.
August 11th
Blackboard 6 is no longer available after this date.
The links listed below will provide the documentation for Blackboard:
Blackboard page: http://its.noctrl.edu/help/blackboard/index.shtml
Individual PDF urls:
7.2 Faculty Release Notes:
http://its.noctrl.edu/help/blackboard/Blackboard_Academic_Suite_Faculty_Release_Notes_for_7.2.pdf
7.3 Faculty Release Notes:
http://its.noctrl.edu/help/blackboard/Blackboard_Academic_Suite_Faculty_Release_Notes_for_7.3.pdf
7.3 What's New in the Discussion Board:
http://its.noctrl.edu/help/blackboard/Whats_New_in_the_Discussion_Board_v7.3.pdf
7.3 Instructor Manual:
http://its.noctrl.edu/help/blackboard/Blackboard_Academic_Suite_Instructor_Manual_for_Release_7.3.pdf
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.
