Page 29

Blackboard 9: What’s New?

On June 16, 2010

Blackboard 9 (actually, 9.1) is coming to UR in August.

What should you expect?

First, you’ll enjoy a new-and-improved user interface. You can drop and drag modules on your personal Blackboard home page and within courses. Toggling edit mode on and off allows you to see exactly what your students see when they enter your Blackboard course. Blackboard 9 makes building and modifying course menus and content areas much simpler, and allows you to easily insert content from files and folders to YouTube videos and SlideShare presentations. The control panel is built into the lower-left side of your course, so you don’t need to go to the “back end” to access and use it.

As far as collaborative features, Blackboard 9 offers a wealth of new options. Of course, the discussion board is still there, but Groups have been expanded, and students can use group or class blogs and wikis and individual journals to express ideas. All are private — only available within Blackboard, and wikis show you what percent of the document each student edited.

Blackboard On-Demand Learning Center

By Jon

On June 8, 2010

In Online Training Materials

As we prepare to upgrade to Blackboard 9, we’ve been coming across some excellent training material, which will be posted here after it is evaluated. The first is the Blackboard On-Demand Learning Center, courtesy of Blackboard.

Understanding and Building Your Course includes videos and PDFs about building course content, importing a course, creating blank pages and tool links and more.

You will also learn how to use the Grade Center and create assessments (tests, surveys, pools) at Blackboard’s On-Demand Assessing Learners page, and can decide whether blogs, wikis, journals and/or discussion boards will enhance your course in the Communicating and Collaborating section.