Wednesday, January 11, 2012

What's New in Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 7?

Check out the new features and enhancements in the latest upgrade of Blackboard!

  • Interactive Rubrics - These rubrics are included as an option in assessments. They allow instructors to provide students with clear expectations and evaluation criteria. Scores entered into a rubric that are associated with an assignment or gradable forum, wiki, blog, or journal are reflected in the Grade Center. The same rubric can be used for multiple assessments and exported and imported across courses.

    How to use Interactive Rubrics Tutorials
    How to Create a Grading Rubric
    How to Associate a Rubric with a Gradable Item
    How to Grade with Rubrics
  • Needs Grading Status - This feature has been significantly enhanced to allow instructors easier access to items that need grading. In addition, Gradable Discussion Boards can now be set to appear in the Needs Grading area of the Control Panel after a specific number of posts by a student.

    How to use the Needs Grading Status for Interactive Tools Tutorial
    Needs Grading Status for Interactive Tools

  • Auto-Submit Test Tool - This new capability provides instructors with an intuitive means of setting time limits on assessments and configuring the system to auto-submit the assessment at time expiration. Instructors may now choose to make the timed assessment auto-submit, or to allow the assessment to continue beyond the allotted time as in previous versions of Blackboard. Students are provided with visual cues to track their progress when taking and submitting timed assessments set to auto-submit. Attempt information for timed assessments includes details on how much time the student spent on the attempt versus how much time was allotted.

    How to Set Test Options including Auto-Submit Tutorial
  • Check Course Links Tool - This tool allows instructors to check the links of any items added through Browse Course option, including: links added in the Text Editor, Content Areas, Learning Modules, Folders, Announcements, Contacts, Tools, Discussion Boards, Blogs and Journals.

    Consider checking your course links on a periodic basis. It's easy!
    Through the Control Panel > Packages and Utilities > Check Course Links
    Click OK to check the operation > Review the results.
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