Educator Insights Blog

In the past month, our focus has been on refining, updating, and introducing fresh features to enhance your experience with Blackboard ®  Learn. Some of these enhancements were inspired by the fantastic ideas shared by you, our users, through the Idea Exchange! Explore the highlights of what's new.  Highlights for Instructors     1) Image insertion ...

Blackboard ®  Learn's most recent updates are brimming with exciting new features and enhancements, designed to provide instructors with an even more streamlined and enriching teaching experience. Read on to learn more!  1) SafeAssign Direct Submit  Instructors have the ability to utilize Direct Submit for submitting materials to SafeAssign ...

The last several releases of Blackboard  ®  Learn have been jam-packed with new features and improvements, and many of these developments are specifically focused on enhancing and improving the instructor experience. We were thrilled to see that after we previewed some of these features and updates at our user conference, Anthology Together, our ...

Welcome to “The top 10 new things you can do in Blackboard® Learn Ultra today” site, your source for the freshest insights into the latest features and improvements of our Award-Winning course experience. As dedicated educators, you play a pivotal role in shaping the future, and we're here to ensure that you have the tools to make it extraordinary. ...

The past month has seen us working on improvements, updates, and new features for Blackboard Learn, some of which you, our users, inspired via the Idea Exchange! We've rounded up what's new for you here. For Instructors: 1) Flexible Grading Flexible Grading is a new, efficient assessment grading experience that provides intuitive and streamlined ...

We have been hard at work in the last month to bring new features, improvements, and updates to Blackboard® Learn. Some of them were even inspired by you, our users, via the Idea Exchange! Read on to find out what is new.

Instructors, learners, and system administrators lead busy lives, and this release aims to make their lives easier with a variety of exciting new features and improvements. These updates will save time, promote engagement, optimize course management processes, and speed up the upgrade to the Learn Ultra Course View.

The May 2023 - 3900.65 release has exciting new features in five key areas: Assessment and grading; Richer course and content; Data and analytics; Integration, extension, and management; and Course upgrading These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.

The April 2023 - 3900.62 release has new features in five key areas: Assessment and grading; Richer course and content; Data and analytics; Integration, extension, and management; and Course upgrading These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action.

The March 2023 - 3900.60 release is robust with features in six areas: Assessment and grading; Data and analytics; Mobile app; Integration, extension, and management; Communication and social engagement; and Course upgrading. These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require ...

The February 2023 - 3900.58 release is robust with features in five areas: assessment and grading; data and analytics; groups; mobile app; and integration, extension, and management. These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Some features do require administrative action. Due to numerous client requests I have ...

Happy New Year! The January 2023 - 3900.56 release is complete with features in five areas: assessment and grading; richer course and content design; mobile app; integration, extension, and management; and course upgrading; These improvements primarily impact instructors and students. Some features do require administrative action. Due ...

Happy Holidays from Australia! Thank you all for your engagement this year. I hope you have a restful and safe holiday season. The December 2022 - 3900.54 release is complete with features in seven areas: assessment and grading; richer course and content design; data and analytics; integration, extension, and management; course upgrading; ...

The November 2022 - 3900.52 release is complete with awesome enhancements and features in five areas: assessment and grading; richer course and content design; data and analytics; integration, extension, and management; and course upgrading. These improvements primarily impact instructors and students. Some features do require ...

The October 2022 - 3900.50 release has great new features to support an improved learner experience and teaching and learning: assessment and grading; richer course and content design; integration, extension, and management; and course upgrading. These improvements primarily impact instructors and students. Some features do require ...

The September 2022  release has some great new features in four key areas: assessment and grading; richer course and content design; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and  integration, extension, and management. These improvements primarily impact instructors and students, but add value for all users. Some features do require ...

August 2022 – 3900.46 Release The August 2022 - 3900.46 release is replete with features in three areas: assessment and grading; richer course and content design; and integration, extension, and management. These improvements primarily impact instructors and students. Some features do require administrative action. Instructors: Improved ...

The July 2022 - 3900.44 release is robust with new features in four areas: assessment and grading; richer course and content design; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and integration, extension, and management. These new features are available on production as of 7 July  2022 . Full release notes including API updates and bug fixes  ...

June 2022 – 3900.41 Release The June 2022 - 3900.41 release is rich with new features and improvements that support more creative approaches to learning online, in three areas: assessment and grading; richer course and content design; and integration, extension, and management. These new features are available on production as of 2 June 2022 . Full ...

This release features a variety of improvements. Some enhancements center on assessment and grading and better, more efficient workflows. Other features focus on refinement based on instructor, student, and administrator feedback.   These new features are available on production as of 5 May  2022 . Full release notes including API updates and ...

The April 2022 - 3900.37 release has lots of features to consider. Educators focus on many areas as they design high-quality, engaging courses. This release has improvements for instructors and students around assessment. Other features focus on intuitive and time-saving workflows and surfacing data insights. These new features are available ...

There are many ways educators can improve the learner experience online and keep them motivated to continue their education. Have you ever been in a class where you had to take an online quiz or submit an assignment through a Learning Management System (LMS)? If so, you may have experienced the anxiety that comes with waiting for your grade. You're not ...

As educators, we all know there is a distinct difference between having access to digital teaching and learning tools and using them effectively ! We hear you and have created a handy checklist to help your Blackboard Collaborate session run smoothly. Engage your students by adding more live, interactive online experiences to their learning. ...

The February 2022 - 3900.32.0 release includes several new features.  Pronoun Customisation  now includes a new field so that users can include pronunciation. Users may also add a short audio clip.  Granular course copy  in an Ultra course now includes content from Original courses. Institutions using domain branding will now have branded URLs in ...

This month's release 3900.30.0 of Blackboard Learn SaaS includes updates for Bb Annotations , Ally File Transformer in Blackboard Assist (global availability) and  Blackboard Assist (business/government availability). These new features are available on production as of 6 January 2022 . Full release notes including API updates and bug fixes  ...

This month's release 3900.28.0 of Blackboard Learn SaaS has many new features. Point-based and point-range rubrics now provide increased flexibility for grading. Accommodations support instructors to specify extra time for students on timed assessments. Banner images now have the option of an image description. Group Sets provide an option to ...

Blackboard ANZ EdTech Community of Practice Our NEW Community has been up and running for a few months now. This is a community for Learning Designers and Technologists to connect, share, create and contribute. We welcome members from across Australia and New Zealand and we would love to have you join us!  It is great to see more faces at the meet-ups each ...

The visual appeal of courses has a major boost this month with the course card image from base navigation now able to be used as a course banner in Ultra courses. Enrichments to the Rich Text Editor continue with new formatting options available when using Tables . Keep students informed with the new Ultra Course Schedule . As part of planned diversity, ...

You can now add a table in the Rich Text Editor ! This has been a much-asked-for feature and we are really happy to make it available in this release. Students need a way to ensure their work has been correctly submitted into the system. The new Submission Receipt feature in Ultra provides students with a unique tracking number. We are conscious of the ...

Evaluating student-submitted content is a continuous job critical to the learning process. We know it's important to instructors and graders to improve the content view and create a practical grading process. That's why we keep enhancing grading workflows. The assessment experience for Students now includes improvements to the handling of ...

This release includes a number of updates for Ultra Course View. We dive into the deep and seamless integrations between Microsoft Teams Classes and Ultra. There are improvements to the Ultra Calendar as well as advanced filtering options for the Gradebook , submission linking, and calendar links for Ultra Peer Review. Students can now mark and ...

This month's release brings several enhancements to the Gradebook for Learn Ultra including;   the ability to r emove the overall grade prompt , a new percentage option for overall grades, control of the visibility of Attendance columns, and a redesign of the group set configuration page to improve performance and stability of large courses. We have ...

In this release for Ultra Course View, we are continuing to expand options for Assessment Feedback with feedback by criterion . Audio/visual recordings  bring a new level of personalisation to learning and can be included in Announcements as well as in feedback to students. We are continuing to build functionality for Peer Assessment with ...

Welcome to Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere! In the Ultra Course View, we are pleased to announce the delivery of a proctoring framework to allow proctoring providers to integrate their solutions with native Learn Ultra assessment flow. In the Ultra Experience and Ultra Course View, instructors can now  drop grades inside categories for overall ...

This month's release is jam-packed with new features! It includes improvements for Peer Review and Peer Assessment , conditional availability to content by users and groups, the ability to disable notifications for users with high enrolments, Rich Text Editor improvements, and scripts to bulk download course archives . This post is designed to ...

This month's release features enhancements for EMAIL and SMS notification messages for all Users and an improved grading flow for Instructors using rubrics. This post is designed to provide an educator lens over relevant new features and updates provided by Release 3900.8.0 of  Blackboard Learn SaaS.  These new features are available on ...

This month's release features a new Tab Navigation for assessments.

Photo by Pineapple Supply Co. on Unsplash Happy New Year! Welcome back to Educator Insights for 2021. With this month's release students, instructors, and administrators will see changes everywhere they encounter the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View. There is a new session data capture feature that will make life easier for Administrators. ...

This month's release supports Instructors to provide a much more personalised approach to managing students, marking and providing feedback. Journals get a boost and can now be graded or ungraded. Admins can configure Student List view to mitigate privacy concerns and have improved manageability of third-party LTI tools. Instructors can now make ...

This post is designed to provide an educator lens over relevant new features and updates provided by Release 3900.0.0 of Blackboard Learn Ultra (these changes do not apply for clients on the Original Experience).  We are targeting general availability for these features  in the 3900.0 SaaS release planned for November 5  (test/stage on October 13) * ...