What’s New in Blackboard – December 2024

November 21, 2024

The Blackboard team at Anthology has a brand new collection of features and enhancements coming next month! The Blackboard 3900.106 release, out in December, has exciting updates in the areas of Instructional Design, Communication and Collaboration, Flexible Grading, Gradebook, and more. These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Keep reading to find out more about the upcoming Blackboard release!

Note: The below updates pertain to customers using the Ultra interface. For complete release notes, visit the Blackboard help site.

1. Instructional Design - Deploy Role Play Separately from Socratic Questioning for AI Conversation

We listened to your feedback and adjusted the  AI Conversation toggle in the administrator panel. Previously,  Socratic Questioning  had to be turned on so that  Role Play  could be selected. Administrators can now choose to deploy  Role Play  separately from  Socratic Questioning. 

Image 1. The AI Design Assistant and Unsplash configuration screen

For administrators: Turning AI Conversation off after deployment will stop AI Conversation services. Therefore, any AI Conversation activities visible to students won't operate as expected.

2. Instructional Design - Video Studio: Skip to a Specific Part of a Recording

In Video Studio, users can now skip to a specific part of a recording, giving them more control over viewing. By selecting a time stamp in the transcript, the recording plays from the time selected.

For example, a student who views a recorded lecture can skip forward to a specific portion of the video. They can also replay any part of the video by selecting the desired time stamp in the transcript.

Image 1: Select a time stamp on the transcript and the recording plays from that part of the video

For Administrators:  Video Studio is a premium solution. We are offering customers a free trial until June 30, 2025. This trial provides access to the full version of Video Studio. 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. In the Administrator Panel, select Configure in  The Ultra Experience is Here!  module. Select  Enable creating/uploading videos using Video Studio. Beyond this date, your institution will have to purchase Video Studio to continue using it.

3. Instructional Design - Navigation Added for LTI and SCORM Items within Learning Modules

Instructors use learning modules to guide student progress through diverse types of course content. For easier navigation, students can now select arrows to the left and right of LTI or SCORM items to move through learning modules. 

For administrators:  There are no configurations needed.

4. Instructional Design - AI Design Assistant: Rubric Generation Improvements

We optimized our AI Design Assistant rubric generation. Rubrics generated by the AI Design Assistant will now have more complex outputs, and the AI Design Assistant will also work faster. Instructors can expect better, more robust rubrics, including for long, complicated assessments.

Image 1. Rubric generated by the AI Design Assistant in 3900.104

Image 2. Rubric generated by the AI Design Assistant in 3900.106

For administrators:  There are no configurations needed.

5. Upgrade to Ultra - Copy Items from Courses Improvement

We updated the copy workflow in Blackboard to make copying easier. Now, users with the following privileges can copy from any course that they have access to, even if they're not enrolled: 

• Administrator Panel (Courses) > Courses > Copy Course 
• Administrator Panel (Organizations) > Organizations > Copy Organization 

For administrators:  There are no configurations needed.

Explore these updates and more in the full Blackboard 3900.106 release notes.

Topics: LMS