Blackboard Learn upgrade scheduled for May 12

Blackboard Learn, Purdue’s course management system, will receive an upgrade on May 12 that will add new features, including changes to Grade Center and discussion boards.

The upgrade will require Blackboard to be unavailable from 4 p.m. to midnight on Saturday, May 12, during the break between the end of the spring semester and start of the summer session.

New features include:

• Grade Center cleanup: Allows for the bulk deletion and cleanup of columns in the Grade Center.
• Discussion board replies: Users can quickly see how many posts are new replies to their postings within a discussion forum.
• Course availability status: Instructors can quickly open their classes by clicking a lock icon on any content area page within their class.
• Rubric auto-save: When a rubric is used to grade an assignment, if the instructor exits the rubric, all performance and feedback is automatically saved. The instructor may save the grade as a draft, and then return to continue grading at a later time.

 Some notable issues also are corrected:

• When faculty now enter a zero for a grade, a negative notation no longer is added. 
• Students by default now only see two decimal places instead of five in My Grades.

ITaP’s Teaching and Learning Technologies team will host a series of faculty professional development workshops from May 1-4 designed to help instructors design their Blackboard courses, as well as to use Purdue’s grade submit tool and to finalize grades.  More information can be found on the ITaP Training calendar.

To learn more about the Blackboard upgrade, or to seek a one-on-one consultation, contact tlt@purdue.edu.

Writer: Dave Stephens, technology writer, Information Technology at Purdue, 765-496-7998, steph103@purdue.edu

Last updated: April 12, 2018