09/19/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 09/19/2024 07:23
We're excited to share the newest updates and releases to Anthology®Blackboard! The Blackboard 3900.102 release, out in October, has updates in the areas of Instructional Design, Mastery Learning and Learner Pathways, Test and Assignments, Flexible Grading, Integrations, and more. These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Keep reading to check out the highlights from the upcoming Blackboard release!
Note: The below updates pertain to customers using Ultra course view. For complete release notes, visit the Blackboard help site.
Creating questions can be time consuming. However, instructors now have the option to generate questions in a question bank. Generating questions and question banks directly from course materials provides inspiration and saves time.
To generate a question bank, select the Auto-generate option from the + menu on the Question Banks page.
Image 1. Auto-generate a question bank
From the menu, instructors can select content items. These content items provide context for the questions. Instructors can further refine the questions they ask by entering a description of the learning objectives or topic.
Image 2. The context picker for creating new questions
Instructors can select the type of question they wish to generate, such as multiple choice or fill in the blank. The complexity of the questions can also be adjusted. Instructors choose which questions to include in the question bank.
Image 3. The Auto-Generate Question Bank page
For administrators: The option to generate questions only appears for instructors when the tool is on. Select Building Blocks from the Administrator Panel, then select Installed Tools . Locate "AI Design Assistant and Unsplash" and select Settings from the dropdown. The default state is off. You must also activate privileges. Assign the "Use AI Design Assistant" privilege for the appropriate Course Roles (for example, Instructor).
Achievements is a new capability for Ultra courses to help keep students motivated and congratulate them for their participation in a course. With Achievements:
Achievements support learning in many ways:
Course badges that define the skills and competencies in a course can help students:
With this release, there are two Achievement types: course badges and Open Badges.
Create course badges
Users with privileges to manage Achievements can:
Image 1. Instructor view of the Achievements tab with saved course badges and the New Course Badge button
Image 2. Instructor view of the new course badge screen where you can set the title, description, badge image, and earning requirements
View recipients of Achievements
On the Achievements tab, instructors can view the recipient count for each course badge. Select an Achievement to review details about the recipients, including the date and time they earned the course badge. To review the settings for the badge, select Badge Settings.
Image 3. Instructor view of the Recipients tab displays course badge earners
Review Achievements as a student
On the Achievements tab, students can review the details of badges and the requirements to earn them. They can also determine which badges they've earned, and which remain unearned. When a student earns a badge, the badge displays the date and time the badge was earned.
Image 4. Student view of the Achievements tab with details of earned and unearned course badges
Notes:
Considerations for early adoption:
For administrators: This feature is opt-in using the administrator toggle Achievements in Ultra. Enable it in the Ultra configuration page of the administration panel.
Achievements in Blackboard can be linked to Open Badges in Anthology Milestone. When linked, earned Open Badges are issued automatically to the student's profile in Blackboard.
Anthology Milestone is a solution for managing institutional micro-credentials and badges. It can issue transferable Open Badges that offer several benefits for education, professional development, and career advancement:
Set up Open Badges with Achievements
An administrator must first set up the Anthology Milestone integration.
Once enabled, users with privileges to manage Achievements in Blackboard can:
Add an Open Badge
On the Achievements tab, select Use Open Badge. Search for and select an Open Badge from Milestone. Then work with the badge like any other. For more information, see Achievements.
Image 1. Instructor view of the Achievements tab with Milestone integration enabled; the Use Open Badge button appears on the tab
Image 2. Instructor view of the Select an Open Badge screen; it displays a list of Open Badges from Milestone
Set performance criteria and preview the badge
After you select an open badge, you can set performance criteria for one or more assessments in the course. With multiple performance criterion, students must meet all requirements to earn the Open Badge.
In the Summary section, you can preview how the Open Badge will appear to students in Blackboard.
Image 3. Instructor view of Earning Requirements where you can set the performance criteria required to earn the Open Badge and preview how the badge appears for students
Students earning Open Badges
When students earn an Open Badge, they receive an email at the address associated with their Blackboard profile. Students can manage their earned Open Badges using an Achievement Studio account. To manage their Open Badge, the Achievement Studio account profile should include the same email address.
From Achievement Studio, students can:
For more information about student tasks in Achievement Studio, see Badges Overview.
Image 4. Student view of an Open Badge in Achievement Studio
Notes:
For administrators: This feature requires licensing Anthology Milestone. The integration is configured as an LTI tool. A new LTI placement type adds appropriate Open Badge tools into the Achievements tool. This placement type should not be used for other LTI tools. The LTI tool configuration instructions will be published in Milestone documentation in September.
You can manage the Achievements privileges in Course Role and System Role configurations. In this release, there aren't separate privileges for users who can set up Open Badges versus course badges using Achievements. You may want to consider a limited rollout of Achievements until we address this with separate privileges in an upcoming release.
The new Mastery tab in the Gradebook allows instructors and students to see how their activities align with institutional goals. Based on the goal performance scale set by your institution, the tab displays the mastery of each alignment.
The Mastery tab enables instructors to:
Image 1. The instructor view of the Mastery tab
The Mastery tab enables students to:
Image 2. Instructor view of a student's mastery of goals
The color schema used in the Goal Performance Scale (shown in Image 5) indicates levels of mastery.
Instructors can select View Scale to view the Goal Performance Scale from the Mastery tab.
Image 3. Instructor view of the Mastery tab with View Scale selected
Goals tab
Students can drill down on the Goals tab to individual content items to see how goals align with their mastery progress.
Image 4. Student view of details of mastery on the Goals tab
Configuring the Performance Scale (Administrators)
The performance scale is an institutional configuration. This allows for consistent aggregation across courses. It also creates consistency for students in mastery-based programs.
Administrators can configure the number of levels as well as the labels and colors for each.
Image 5. Goal Performance Scale (Administrator only)
Notes:
For administrators: A new configuration option is on the Ultra configuration page in the Administrator Panel: "Enable support for customizing Ultra document layouts." The default state is on. Note that students will see the Goals tab even when goals are not aligned to content items. In addition, all instructors will see the Mastery tab. The ability to control this feature at the course level will be available in a future release.
Video Studio gives instructors the ability to easily upload or record audio and video within Documents, creating a more engaging learning experience. We have enhanced the capabilities of Video Studio to help create a more accessible learning environment. As such, Video Studio now auto-generates captions for all file types.
Video Studio is a premium solution. We are offering customers a free trial until June 30, 2025. This will provide access to the full version of Video Studio as a feature flag. Video Studio is set to OFF as a default in test/stage environments. If you want to enable it in your institution's production environment, you can do that for free until the end of June 2025. Customers will have to purchase Video Studio to continue to use it beyond this date.
For administrators: For configuration and settings, see the Administrator page for Video Studio.
Explore these updates and more in the full Blackboard 3900.102 release notes.