Release 9.1
School of Social Work
WHAT’S NEW IN RELEASE 9.1
Four Main Areas of Improvement
 Fostering Student Engagement
 Supporting Educator Efficiency
 Delivering Open and Extensible Learning
 New Tools for Student Instruction
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FOSTERING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Promote Active Collaboration
• Release 9.1 has wikis which promote
active collaboration
• Users collaborate on a document using
only a web browser
• Ability to assign group projects using a
wiki, dashboards to quickly evaluate
student contributions and a grading
workflow embedded directly into the wiki
itself.
• Instructors can see the process and
evolution of the work and even participate
Instructors can grade the complete group
experience and not just the final result
• Variety of third party wikis available
Capabilities:
• Rich editing / VTBE
• Page Versioning
• Multiple Pages
• Course & Group Wikis
• User Comments
• Integrated Grading
• Participation Summaries
Course Wikis
FOSTERING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Integrate Visually Engaging Content
• Easily integrate visually
engaging learning content using
Web 2.0 resources
•youtube.com,
•slideshare.com
•flickr.com
• Embed videos without going
out of Blackboard
•Built-in Youtube, Flickr and
Slideshare content
 Easily add Web 2.0 Content
from Edit menu
Partner APIs for continued new
content integration
Mash-Ups
FOSTERING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Provide Intuitive Online Structure
• Movable Table of contents :The
collapsible folder/file structure in the
Table of Contents allows a student to
quickly comprehend the
relationships that exist among course
content.
 Learning Modules offer a simple
and intuitive means to navigate
content in a logical, sequential way.
Forced or Step-by-Step Sequential
Navigation
 Display in-frame Content
 Built-in Navigation
Learning Modules
FOSTERING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Increase Accessibility
• Blackboard partnered with the
National Federation for the Blind to
make experience improvements for
blind or visually impaired users.
•The improvements to navigation
and form controls significant
advancement in access for blind
users.
• Blackboard is the only LMS that is
Gold Level Certified for Non-Visual
Accessibility by the National
Federation of the Blind.
Release 9.1 is Gold Level Certified for Non-Visual Accessibility by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB)
WHAT’S NEW IN RELEASE 9.1
Supporting Educator Efficiency

Manage Content at the Course Level

Grade in Context with More Options

Customize Your Grading View

Save Grading Preferences

Create Assessment in Less Time

Provide Intuitive Online Structure

Empower Your Educators to Communicate

Ease Management of Learning Content

Enable Flexible Course Roles
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SUPPORT EDUCATOR EFFICIENCY
Manage Content at the Course Level
• In-course file storage structure
• Easier to keep track of documents used
in your course,
• Course files eliminate redundancy and
simplifies the process of updating content
in a course.
• A new thumb nail view, drag and drop
upload applet makes it quick and easy to
get files into Blackboard and view the
image files.
• Integrated File Search
• Icon and File Views
• Select multiple files
• Access to shared content
Course Files
SUPPORT EDUCATOR EFFICIENCY
Grade in Context with Options
• Grading more flexible and consistent with
workflow, enabling grading to be in line with
the review process
• Now you can enter wiki, blog and journal
grades directly in the assignment, grade
question by question
• Anonymous Grading
• Grade by Question
• Grading Blogs, Journals, Wikis
• Smart Views & Filters
Grading Enhancements
SUPPORT EDUCATOR EFFICIENCY
Smart View in Grading
• Courses with large numbers of
students and many grade item
columns in the Grade Center
have a high volume of data and
information.
• Educators can use Smart View
to efficiently manage grading in
Blackboard without having to
scroll or multi-click.
• Any Smart View can be a
“Favorite” making it accessible
from the class front page.
Grading Enhancements
SUPPORT EDUCATOR EFFICIENCY
Customizing Grading Views
• The Grade Center includes a
dynamic filter that enables an
educator to instantly view grade
data by selecting a category and
status criteria.
• Using the filters, you can all tests
that need to be graded, for
example.
• With just a few clicks, you can
switch to a view of all complete
assignments.
•The filters are designed to
provide on the fly views that
enable an educator to instantly
view the Grade Center data they
need.
Grading Enhancements
SUPPORT EDUCATOR EFFICIENCY
Assessments
•Create assessments by collecting and
reusing questions
•Improved search which reduces the amount
of time needed to create assessments
•The new filtering and search capabilities,
multi-question selection and 'staging area' to
easily peruse what questions have already
been selected, streamline the assessment
creation process.
•Random blocks have been updated to
display all of the questions
•Question Pools
•Question Search
Assessment Manager
SUPPORT EDUCATOR EFFICIENCY
Provide Intuitive Online Structure
• Learning Modules organize and
structure hierarchical course content
• Students navigate through content
in a logical, sequential way
• Collapsible folder/file structure in
the Table of Contents shows student
to quickly comprehend the
relationships that exist among the
course content.
• Movable Table of Contents
• Forced or Step-by-Step Sequential
Navigation
• Display in-frame Content
• Built-in Navigation
Learning Modules
WHAT’S NEW IN RELEASE 9.1
Open and Extensible Learning
 Free access to partner technologies,
expanded content partnerships and
hundreds of Building Block™
extensions
 Blackboard offers free access to
partner technologies, expanded
content partnerships and hundreds
of Building Block extensions.
 Blackboard’s open platform is
designed to meet the learning needs
of an institution at enterprise scale
with an open architecture that
supports agility and extensibility.
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DELIVERING OPEN & EXTENSIBLE LEARNING
Ensure Academic Integrity
• Bb Learn for Course Delivery
supports basic student identity
verification though end user
authentication (unique usernames and
passwords)
• For preventing plagiarism Safe
Assign can be used to detect
unoriginal content in student papers
• For advanced student identity
verification mechanisms Acxiom to
offers Identify-X solution at no
additional charge for limited number of
licenses
• Identify-X allows colleges and
universities to confirm student identity
in advance of high-stakes and other
course assessments
Acxiom Identify-X
DELIVERING OPEN & EXTENSIBLE LEARNING
Lectures and Learning Materials
Echo lecture capture solution for Instructors to record and publish their
lectures right into their course
Instructors can also create learning modules, supplemental instruction
using Echo
Personal Lecture Capture from Echo360
DELIVERING OPEN & EXTENSIBLE LEARNING
Real Events into Course Instruction
12,000+ professionally created educational multimedia content
Search archives by subject area, related topic or keyword
Play videos at full-screen when used in the classroom
The archives contain news footage of historic, current events, critical
analysis, mini-documentaries from early American history to modern day
NBC News Archives on Demand
Wrap Up - Resources
RESOURCE
LINK
Faculty Support Page - for
documentation that is faculty-oriented
http://behind.blackboard.com/s/faculty/
Training page - for online and regional
training opportunities
http://www.blackboard.com/Services/
Training/index.Bb
Blackboard Connections – where the
user community goes to talk, join a user
group and ask questions
http://connections.blackboard.com
Ask Dr. C – question and answer forums
where client experts answer product
questions
http://discussions.blackboard.com
On Demand Learning Center – video
tutorials that can help supplement your
users get trained
http://ondemand.blackboard.com/
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