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The Blackboard 7 Learning System includes a number of new tools and features. This document is only a brief outline of what's new and different. In depth information is contained in product documentation.
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Instructors are now able to make individual forums available or unavailable at specific dates and times.
Instructors are now able to assign grades to forum discussions and/or individual posts. When an instructor designates a grading option for a forum, a column is automatically created in the gradebook for that forum. Then when an instructor enters grades for posts or discussions, the grade is automatically added to the correct gradebook column.
Instructors can allow peer ratings of posts.
Instructors can now " lock" and "hide"a forum to prevent additional posts, but allow users to read existing threads. This feature replaces "archive" forum.
Users can group posts into Collections. Collections can be sorted and filtered by author, date, thread, or subject to customize the Collection for easy viewing and printing.
Users can subscribe to forums (if the instructor has enabled this feature), so that they will receive email notifications of forum updates.
Instructors can create moderated forums, requiring that every post be viewed and accepted by a moderator before being posted for the class.
The interface for viewing, creating, and replying to posts is different, providing users more information about posted threads and more options for managing their view.
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.
Searches can be limited or expanded to include current forum, current thread, or all forums in the course.
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The Blackboard Content System is a feature-rich, fully integrated system for storing, sharing, and publishing learning content, digital assets, and ePortfolios. It allows users to store, share, and publish content within personal user folders, course folders and institution folders.
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Portfolios are collections of content organized into customized Web pages. They provide a means of presenting a collection of work, and sharing that collection with others. Portfolios are used for many purposes in learning and assessment such as displaying achievements and progress, showcasing experiences and collections of work, or collecting self-reflection. Electronic Portfolios (e-Portfolios) make it easy to share the presentation, and to receive feedback from friends, coworkers, educators, and peers.
The Content Collection provides a seamless way of linking
Portfolios to content stored in the system. The Content Collection Portfolio tool allows users to include existing Content Collection content (items and/or folders), external links, free-form items, and template based items. These Portfolios can be private, shared within the system, and shared to external users.
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Multi-Language Support by Institution, Course and User
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Institutions can run multiple languages (or locales) on the same system. Institutions can offer the Blackboard Academic Suite in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, and Portuguese. The entire system can be set in a specific language, or a language may be offered as a preference for users. To support cross-border education, as well as foreign language courses, Instructors can set the language of the course independently from the language setting of the overall system.
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Course content does not always apply to all users in the course. Using Adaptive Release, Instructors can display content to certain users for a limited period of time, or only after users meet (or fail to meet) predetermined requirements. Some content might be applicable to all users in the course, while other content should be audience-specific.
Adaptive Release allows an Instructor to create custom learning paths through course content and activities. Content items, discussions, assessments, assignments, or other activities can be released to Students based on a set of criteria including: date and time, specific users, group membership, grades or attempts on a particular test or assignment, or Review Status of another item in the course. Instructors create and modify Adaptive Release rules from the new Manage page available on all content items.
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Outcomes-based tracking is an important feature to most Blackboard clients. Today, Instructors can track item hits on a user-by-user basis, but Students have no automated way of explicitly notifying Instructors when they review an item. If Review is enabled for a content item, users see a Mark Reviewed icon from the course view. When users
have completed their review of the item, they click the Mark Reviewed button. The item then displays a Reviewed icon. The Instructor can view progress from the Performance Dashboard or the User Progress page in the Control Panel. Instructors enable and disable review from the new Manage page available on all content items.
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The Syllabus Builder is an easy-to-use content item that makes Syllabus creation—the most basic element of any course—simple for Instructors of all levels, with a feature that allows them to easily apply designs to their work. Syllabi can contain general class information such as dates and times as well as an overview of each lesson.
Instructors create a syllabus by selecting Syllabus from the action bar dropdown menu on a Content Area page.
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The Performance Dashboard is a course tool that allows Instructors to see key information and outcomes for all course users. It displays the last time users logged in, their course role, content availability by user based on Adaptive Release criteria, Review Status for content items, and a direct link to the Gradebook: User Grade List page for individual users.
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Advanced Assessment Questions
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When creating Assessments in the Blackboard Learning System, Instructors may choose from ten additional question types, including: Calculated Questions, Numeric Response Questions, File Response Questions, Hot Spot Questions, Multiple Fill-in-the-Blank Questions, Jumbled Sentence Questions, Opinion Scale Questions, Short Response Questions, Either / Or Questions, and Quiz Bowl Questions.
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Current Gradebook calculations for Total and Weighted Total include items that have not been taken or graded. A new option to exclude untaken or ungraded items when calculating the Total and Weighted Total appears in Application Pack 3. The Running Total and Running Weighted Total columns display Student performance only on completed items.
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Download Assessment Attempts that Include All Questions
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Instructors can download Survey or Test attempts as a .CSV file. Most often, this feature is used to perform statistical analysis in a spreadsheet application, such as Microsoft Excel. Downloaded Assessment attempts now include all questions in the Assessment. In earlier versions, only certain question types, such as Multiple Choice, were included in the downloaded attempt.
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Randomize Multiple Choice Answers
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Instructors have the option to randomize the answers in multiple choice questions. The answers are randomized for each assessment attempt, which helps prevent Student cheating.
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Advanced Course Menu and New Course Map
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Two views of the Course Menu are now available to users; the Quick View (the original menu design) and the Detail View. The Detail View is the full Course Map, letting users expand and collapse the Course Menu, and displays a clickable link to each item in the course. If allowed by the Instructor, users may toggle between these two views.
In addition, commonly used tools are separated from the Course Menu to make them easier to find and use. To support the advanced Course Menu, the Course Map has been completely redesigned for Application Pack 3. It displays new icons based on the item or tool, shows only the content available to the current user (based on Adaptive Release criteria), and loads very quickly even in large, content-rich courses. The map is
cached for even faster rendering in subsequent views and has a 20 minute automatic refresh.
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Changes to Import, Export, Archive and Restore
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In Blackboard Academic Suite (Release 7) the import, export, archive and restore processes are asynchronous. This means that users do not have to wait in the browser window while the operation takes place. This is more efficient for users because the operations are queued and managed in the background. When one of these tasks is executed, the system completes it in the background and sends the user an email upon completion. The new process for Export and Archive matches the process for Course Copy. The new Export / Archive Manager, available on both the Administrator Panel and the Control Panel for individual courses and organizations, makes it easier for users to manage these operations. This page lists all of the packages that have been created for the course, including detailed logs for the package processes. The user can export and archive the course multiple times and keep multiple backups of the course. The user may also remove packages that are no longer needed.
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Course Copy changes for Course Cartridges
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The Copy Course Materials into a New Course and Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course features now include an option to include protected Course Cartridge content. Instructors and Administrators can choose whether or not they would like to include cartridge content in the copy operation. If this option is selected, the content may be accessed in the copied course by users with a valid Student Access Key. When copying course materials into an existing course, the system will check to confirm that both courses contain the same Course Cartridge. If they do, the selected course sections will be copied including any protected Course Cartridge content. If the courses contain different Course Cartridges, only non-Cartridge materials will be copied and the user will be given a message stating there was a Course Cartridge conflict.
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Instructors may add a number of different kinds of content to course Content Areas; these are referred to as Content Types. Additional Content Types (i.e. Discussion Board, Groups, Tools) have been added to the drop-down list of a Content Area page in Bb 7.
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This is the blackboard website that provides links to these tutorials as well as additional ones.
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