This is a brief list of some of the changes to expect in the new version of NYU Blackboard.
Incremental Enhancements:
- A "Detail" view with an expandable tree structure to view all course materials at once
- Clearer separation of tools from content areas in the left-hand course menu
- Automatic email notification for announcements
- Way to add tool links to content pages
- New test question types such as matching, Likert scale, calculated formula, file uploads, and hotspots (where students identify points on an image)
- New menu and navigation languages to present Blackboard courses in languages, such as French, Italian, Arabic, and Japanese
Significant Changes and Brand New Features:
- Discussion Board: improved interface, RSS subscriptions, automatic alerts, instructor grading of posts, student star rating of posts
- Gradebook (now "Grade Center"): better interface, more flexible and extensible grade tracking, grading assignments by response instead of by student, emailing feedback to students directly from the Grade Center, customized calculations, customized views, tracking multiple attempts, exempting, extra credit
- Self and Peer Assessment: assignments that have students compare each other's work against a model example
- Adaptive release: making content visibility contingent on completion of other tasks
- Syllabus Builder: a step-by-step authoring wizard to build a better functioning and more interactive syllabus
Bug Fixes:
- Working WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") text editor
to allow greater customization of content pages and easy embedding of multimedia
- Interim grade calculations no longer skewed by the inclusion of zeros for unsubmitted assignments
- Course content retains original order when copied to a new semester's course site.
- Faster and more reliable system performance