Learn about CSM's Upgrade to Blackboard SP13On Thursday, May 15, 2014 the Distance Learning and Faculty Development Division will upgrade from Blackboard Learn Service Pack 9 to Service Pack SP13, which will provide you with a more user friendly experience and up-to-date features. All Exports/Imports of course material from spring to summer will not be affected. If you are teaching Summer I you should plan to accomplish these tasks before the May 15 & 16 timeframe to avoid not being prepared on the first day of summer I Monday, May 19.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfQ4uFeJRDs&list=TLncefIXt1pejwWXzuSu6CeHaiR3bhgBJf

What does this upgrade mean for Faculty?Faculty will benefit from the enhanced workflows and more effective user interface and an extended tool set of capabilities to improve their teaching with Blackboard.

What does this upgrade mean for Students?Other than adjusting to minor cosmetic changes, students should be able to seamlessly move from version 9.1 SP9 to 9.1 SP14 without any significant additional training.

New EnhancementsThis upgrade will not impact the way you currently teach your course unless you decided to implement one or several of these enhancements. There will be changes in the look and feel of the system but the changes are intuitive and should not cause confusion for you or your students.

Global Navigation Menu

My Blackboard consolidates all the critical information students and educators need to know across all their Courses and Organizations in Blackboard Learn.

The entry point to My Blackboard is a new Global Navigation Menu. This new menu is available all the time in the top right corner of the Learn interface and provides one-click access to your Courses, Organizations, Settings, Blackboard Help, and the new My Blackboard tools.

You can see the new My Blackboard tools going down the left-hand side of the menu in the screenshot to the right. The numbers in red tell you if there’s something that’s new or needs your attention – so you never have to worry about missing anything.

With this new Global Navigation menu, you can access everything you need quickly and easily, from wherever you are in the Blackboard Learn platform.

http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r91/movies/bb91_myblackboard_profiles.htm

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New Content Editor

The new and improved Content Editor enables simple content creation though an easy to use interface. The editor reads, writes and renders modern HTML. Content can be created in MS Word and will copy with a degree of accuracy.

Full frame editing Resize images New Math Editor Video Everywhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMB365sPIEA

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Discussion Board Updates

The newly updated Discussion Board has been thoroughly redesigned while maintaining all its current functionality.

Updates Include:

Post First - Using the "Participants must create a thread in order to view other threads in this forum" setting, instructors can require students to first post to a forum before they can see other students' posts.

One Page - All posts appear on one page. Instructor Highlighting - Posts made by forum managers and moderators now contain the

user's course role and forum role. Inline Replies - When replying to a post, the content editor used to write a response

appears on the same page, in the context of the discussion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObKS6_DB_nI&list=PLontYaReEU1uivbr7MFnCcdSgLgELAkRP

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Video Everywhere

Record a using a webcam and have it seamlessly embedded in course materials, interactions, and feedback through the Content Editor. This video gets automatically uploaded to a personal YouTube account as an unlisted video.http://youtu.be/RPBmqKcCPhQ

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Item Analysis

 Item Analysis New Feature for Educators The new Item Analysis feature helps you easily refine your tests and quizzes by evaluating the quality and validity of each question and that question’s ability to discriminate between students who understand the material and those who do not.  Ineffective questions can be easily identified and then you can quickly correct them with the Automatic Regrade feature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz2bmukmcSU

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Retention Center

Retention Center New Feature for EducatorsThe Retention Center is a new feature for educators who use Blackboard Learn.  The Retention Center highlights retention factors and student engagement, quickly alerting educators to potential risk and allowing them to take immediate action. Easy-to-understand views and pre-configured rules make it simple to identify at-risk students within a course, and it requires no set up  on the part of the instructor or administrator. However, instructors can also modify these rules to suit their individual teaching methodologies and approaches. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bnSHI3qLik

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Inline Assignment Grading

Inline Assignment Grading New Enhancement for Educators Inline Assignment Grading is an improvement to the workflow for grading Assignments in Blackboard Learn. Instead of requiring instructors to download student-submitted files to view or edit those submissions, instructors will now be able to view student-submitted files “inline,” i.e. in the web browser, without requiring any plug-ins, applets, or additional applications. Supported document types that can be converted are Word (.doc, .docx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Excel (.xls,.xlsx), and PDF (.pdf).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X9Rerz0VX0

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New Test Options

Test Enhancements A new rule-based method for adding availability “exceptions” to tests has been added to the Test Options page.  Using this new capability, instructors may select one or more groups or users, and make a number of exceptions to the already established delivery settings for other students. Specifically, the exceptions that can be made for users or groups are: Number of attempts, Time of test, Auto submit on/off, Availability start & end date and Force completion on/off.

We’ve implemented a new event-based method for releasing test feedback.  Events can be specified to trigger specific feedback settings.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36TBDFwYbZs

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Test Access Log

Test Access LogA source of frustration for students, instructors, and test proctors is the inability to confirm whether students began a test or ran into problems during a test. SP 13 addresses this issue by providing detailed information on student test attempt interactions. The access log shows a detailed list of every interaction that students engage in when taking a test. If a student claims to have started a test the log will show the time the test was started. If a network or internet disruption occurred during the test for example, the log would show an unusual gap in the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s9bFVlOuTU

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Calendar Enhancements

Calendar New & Improved Feature for All Users The calendar has been completely rebuilt. This new version allows personalization and customization. Users can select views (month, week, day) and color-code the events to differentiate courses and personal items.

Items with due dates automatically appear on the new Blackboard Learn calendar.  If an instructor changes a due date, the calendar gets updated as well. On the flip side, moving a calendar item (by clicking on the item or drag and drop) simultaneously changes a due date for an instructor.  Users can also create recurring events by selecting the “repeat” checkbox. 

These calendar items can also be exported via an iCal feed to Outlook, Google or other 3rd party calendars.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaZBBDKvSMc

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Other Enhancements

Exporting Test QuestionsAll questions are now retained in exported and imported tests, including questions that originate outside the exported test, such as Question Sets, Random Blocks, and Question Links. When the user exports a test and imports it back into a different course, all questions are now imported irrespective of their origin.

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File Picker Enhancement for All UsersWe are introducing a new and improved File Picker that will be available everywhere you attach files.  The goal with Service Pack 10 was to de-clutter the page, remove unnecessary functionality and make the primary action of choosing a file as easy and simple as possible. The new File Picker will be available for both direct file attaching, as in Assignments, or attaching files via the Content Editor.

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