Over the bank holiday we successfully upgraded Blackboard, which now includes a number of long-awaited new enhancements. We are very excited that Blackboard has had a make-over and now includes a new look, easier navigation and quick access to courses, fully automated anonymous and delegated marking, a student preview and two brand new tools, tracking students’ online performance and creating sign up lists.
Experience the new features by watching the screencast (4 min) below. For detailed overviews and video tutorials of the new features please read on and access the links below the screencast. Do not forget to visit the ‘Support for Staff’ tab to find our step-by-step guides!
1. New Look: Blackboard has a new cleaner interface using the University’s new style and branding.
2. Save time using Qwickly for easy navigation and quick access to your courses: Qwickly on the Enrolments tab allows you to easily make courses available, post announcements and send emails to multiple course in one go, see what online assignments need grading and access them immediately.
Watch these Qwickly demos to see how to:
3. Fully automated anonymous and delegated marking. Blackboard assignments can now be marked anonymously and you can automatically delegate marking to other colleagues. Access our step-by-step guides or visit this Blackboard resource for a quick overview.
4. Student preview. Without using a test student account you can now have a real student preview including the ability to submit blackboard assignments, take an online test or join a group, post to discussions and even view results in My Grades as a student!
5. Track your students’ performance: Using the Retention Centre and Performance dashboard you can now monitor your students’ learning. Take this tutorial to see the Retention Centre in action.
6. Create student Sign-up lists: A long awaited for feature, the sign-up tool enables you to create an online signup sheet for an activity or event, for example a group tutorial. This tutorial form Regent’s College gives you a good overview of this feature.
Please note: the Sign-up List tool will be available later this week
Visit the “Support for staff” to fins the updated step-by-step guides and do contact us to share your experience with using the new features.