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Listed below is an overview of the primary new features that faculty and TAs will find in Blackboard version 8.0. Information concerning the new features and tools in Blackboard 8.0 is also available in the form of this 24 minute multimedia presentation and accompanying handout (pdf). A list of other helpful links is also available by visiting Additional Resources and clicking Links page (Links to Additional Blackboard Resources).
The written documentation on this page comes from the Blackboard Academic Suite 8.0 Release Notes, the Blackboard Content System User Manual for Release 8.0, and the Blackboard Academic Suite User Manual for Release 8.0.
Amost entirely redesigned, and newly named, the Grade Center exhibits new capabilities and vast improvements over the previous Gradebook. Some of the new features or improvement include the following:
Action links allow to view the contextual menu for a grade and perform selected action.
Icon Legend provides convenient definitions of the icons used in the Grade Center.
Interactive / Non-Interactive Views button allows to toggle between two display views. The Interactive view is the default view that allows inline editing of entries and freezing/unfreezing of columns. The Non-Interactive view displays the data in a simplified grid with no inline editing and no freezing/unfreezing of columns. This view is designed for accessibility: it is easy to navigate using only the keyboard and is accessible by screen readers.
Grade Information Bar displays cell-specific information outside of the table, including Grade Type, Points Possible, and Grade Format.
Inline editing allows to enter student grades right into the spreadsheet.
To facilitate seeing Grade Center data in different ways, faculty may sort all columns in the Grade Center based on the following criteria: categories, due date, creation date, points possible, and display name. Sorting results based on these criteria are not saved. Once the browser is closed, the view will switch back to its default view.
Add Calculated Column allows to calculate grades by combining multiple columns. Faculty can choose to have these columns displayed to the students or hidden from their view. Columns can be calculated based on the Weighted Grade, Avarage of Grades, Total, or Minimum/Maximum. A Weighted Grade is a Calculated Column that displays the calculated result of quantities and their respective percentages. A Minimum or Maximum Grade column displays either the minimum or maximum grade for a selection of columns. An Average Grade column diplays the average for any number of quantities. Faculty can choose to display average of all grade columns, average of columns in a graded period, or average of selected columns or categories.
Smart Views are views of the Grade Center based on a variety of student criteria. Views can be created based on performance criteria for gradable items such as Assessments or Assignments. There are four different types of smart views that specify the student information.
The Group view allows faculty to select a group which was created in the course. The Benchmark view allows faculty to select students based on performance on a single gradable item such as a mid-term. The Focus view enables to select individual students. Investigate is a combination of the other three views. It allows to select from a full list of student attributes and specify multiple search criteria. Smart Views give faculty a comparison of grades for majors, non-majors, or at risk students. Here's an example of a group view:
The Organize Grade Center page aids in configuring the Grade Center display. The Grade Center display can be customized to free or unfreeze columns. If a column is frozen, when scrolling through the Grade Center view, that column will remain stationary. The columns containing students' first and last names are frozen by default. Frozen columns remain in position on the left side of the Grade Center while the rest of the columns can be srolled through. This feature can be used, for example, to easily match up individual students with their date across the length of the Grade Center. Faculty can freeze and unfreeze any of the columns.
Grading periods are time segments which can be created by faculty to help manage the Grade Center. Grading periods can be defined as Terms, Semesters, Quarters, Years, and so on, and can have date ranges that further define them. Grading perionds are not created by default; they must be defined by faculty.
Defining Grading Periods and associating Grade Center columns to a Grading Period allows faculty to effectively organize and report the Grade Center date. Grade Center can be filtered by Grading Periods to display only columns in the segment, for example the first half of the semester.
Grading periods can also be used to view the performance of students in a certain Grading period, create a report that displays the performance for a grading period, calculate a grade column for a grading period. Grade Center items cannot be associated with more than one grading period.
Users can be hidden from the Grade Center view, reducing the number of rows in the grid. Hidden users are not removed from the Grade Center and can be revealed at any time. Users that are hidden will appear grayed out on the Users page and will not appear in the Grade Center view.
Additionally, individual columns can be hidden from the view in the Grade Center. If an assessment column is hidden from the Grade Center view, students can still view their grades for that assessment.
Faculty can create printable Reports for the courses they teach. A report can function as a progress report for students. It can be customized to contain grades from a certain grading period or grades for a specific group of students. Additionally, reports can display select columns, calculated columns or all columns in the Grade Center. Reports can be customized to include a header and a footer, a signature line, date, and Course Information. Reports display data for one student per page.
Faculty can communicate using Email with students directly from the Grade Center. This form of direct contact allows instructors to actively communicate with relevant parties while engaged in grading in the Grade Center. Such immediate feedback can quickly lead to intervention, if required, promoting positive outcomes for students.
Adding comments to a grade provides a way that faculty can give additional feedback to students on their performance. It is also a way to expand on grading decisions or take notes for future reference or to share with other faculty or TAs.
Students can be exempted from a grade from the Grade Center page or the Grade Details page. When a grade has been exempted, it will display an exempted icon in the cell of the exempted grade. Comments can be added to any exempted grade. Faculty can drop students' lowest grade by selecting that grade to be exempted.
Grades that have been overriden can be reverted to clear a previously entered override and then display the appropriate attempt if one exists.
The Grade History page in the Grade Center acts like a log file that records all of the changes that occur to grades within a course. The Grade History page displays all the data for grade submissions within a set date range. It is possible to manipulate the view and export the information.
A search function now appears as a magnifying glass icon at the top of the page throughout the Discussion Board. Click this icon to show or hide the search fields, thus conserving screen space in the Discussion Board.
Faculty can now tag posts with any text labels they wish, for ease of sorting and filtering posts for all users. Other Discussion Board users can read, filter, and search messages using these tags, but cannot create new ones. Tags allow arbitrary message grouping independent of thread or thread status.
Another new feature in the Discussion Board is to allow users to reply with a quoate. Reply functionality has been enhanced to allow optional quoting from the previous post. When the quote option is selected, the text of the current post is inserted into a reply.
Faculty can choose from the following subscription options for a forum: no subscriptions, subcriptions at the thread level, or subscritions at the forum level. If subscription is enabled, then faculty can choose to have subscription messages contain the message contents, or a link to the message.
Any forum can now be viewed in one of two contexts: Tree View or List View. The Tree View presents the thread starter messages and their child messages. The child messages can be expanded and collapsed by using the plus/minus icon next to each message. The List View presents the list of threads in a tabular format.
The Early Warning System is a tool used to communicate warnings to students that a performance problem is beginning to appear or has become more serious. Warnings can be generated based on graded performance, late or missing course work, or attendance within the online course. Faculty can choose to communicate a particular warning to the student. In addition, faculty have control over the message each time a warning is communicated. Faculty can use the default message generated by Blackboard or they can modify the message to more accurately communicate the seriousness of the situation.
The Early Warning System does not continuously monitor the course. Faculty must check the Early Warning System periodically and click Refresh to discover incidents of student performance that trigger an alert. The Early Warning System consolidates these incidents and allows faculty to easily report problems. The Early Warning System does not automatically detect problems and notify Students and Observers. Remember to refresh rules manually on a regular basis. The Early Warning System keeps a log of alerts sent to users. The log is searchable and can be used to verify that a student was alerted to a problem.
New to the Blackboard Content System is the Collaboration page. Through this page it is possible to create, initiate, and manage Workflows. A Workflow is a chronological collection of tasks that comprise a business process, an Assignment, or a collaboration project. Now, all faculty can create multi-stage Workflows, thereby creating tasks, defining task order, and managing the Workflow.
Portfolios are an invaluable tool in academic and professional development, providing a powerful medium for users to efficiently collect and organize artifacts representative of work completed over time. Portfolios offer a means to demostrate formative and/or summative progress and achievement. The new features in Blackboard 8.0 Content Collection allow faculty to create their personal portfolios, organize artifacts, and also view portfolios that have been shared by others.
A Permanet URL is a web link for a file that includes the unique, immutable identifier for the file but not its location path. These persistent identifiers mean that links to the Blackboard Content Collection items no longer break if files are later moved to a different location within the Content Collection.
Users can subsribe to a directory to receive notification that items were added or that certain items were modified (such as permission or metadata changes). Users must have Manage permissions on the item to subscribe.
The Copy Files to Collection tool enables faculty to copy content from their courses in the Blackboard Learning System to a folder in the Content Collection. This is very helpful for faculty who have attached files that exist outside of the Content Collection to course Content Areas. Items that are added through the Content Collection may be used in new Courses, shared with other users, and added to Portfolios.
This tools is meant for adding new content to the Content Collection; it does not detect Content Collection items that have been added to a course or make changes to the course itself.
The Course Link Checker allows faculty to check the links to Content Collection items that have been added to a course. For example, if an item in the Content Collection is removed after a link has been created to the item in a course, the Course Link Checker will detect this and make faculty aware of the broken link. Depending on the situation, some broken links may be repaired while others may not.
The Course Link Checker will detect any broken links added to the following areas through the Text Box Editor: Content Areas (Course Documents, Course Information, Assignments), Announcements, Calendear Events, Tasks, Learning Units, Discussion Board.
One of the key skills that educational institutions want their students to develop is the ability to assess their own work and that of their colleagues. The Self and Peer Assessment tool allows faculty to create an exercise, composed of one or more questions, each with one or more criteria to be presented to the students for completion and assessment.
The Self and Peer Assessment Tool is designed to enhance the reflective learning skills of students. Reviewing the work of colleagues through criterion-based reference evaluation promotes constructive feedback. The constructive feedback that students receive from their peers can provide valuable insights into their own effors.
Assessments can be precisely scheduled to allow the proper time for the submission and evaluation process to be completed; including the time to access any content items associated with the assessment. Faculty have the option of using Self and Anonymous evaluations. These optons may provide a comfort level that can result in more candid assessments and evaluations. They may also impact the integrity of the assessment process; care must be exercised in their use.
If faculty set the time restriction for a test, students track time spent on a test by keeping an eye on the test timer when they take the test. The timer will appear at the top of the page on the right hand side. A one-minute warning will be displayed as students approach the time limit.
When an announcement is added to the course, it can now be optionally sent to students by email as well. This way, students don't need to log in to Blackboard to see the text of the annoucement -- it will be included in the email message.
The written documentation on this page comes from the Blackboard Academic Suite 8.0 Release Notes, the Blackboard Content System User Manual for Release 8.0, and the Blackboard Academic Suite User Manual for Release 8.0.
Last Updated: 04/29/2008