As a part of the Refreshing e-learning at SHU initiative, Blackboard will be upgraded to Blackboard 9 in July this year. Blackboard 9 has a more modern interface and is estimated to take about 40% fewer clicks to accomplish the same tasks. Other benefits include:
- What’s New channel to notify students and staff when new content has been added
- An Integrated Control Panel menu
- Direct editing – edit content areas in place rather than via the Control Panel
- Drag and drop to reorder content and your site menu
- Improved flexibility for group settings
To help you become familiarised with the new interface and improvements, you will have the opportunity to prepare your 2010/11 sites using Blackboard 9 on a separate system before July. More details about this will be sent out next week.
There will also be opportunities to engage with Blackboard 9 in a range of supported workshops as a part of the broader Refreshing e-learning staff development programme.
Find out more about the improvements in Blackboard 9
More about the upgrade
Blackboard will be upgraded on the evening of 2nd July. It will be unavailable from 17:00 until the upgrade is complete, which is expected to take up to 24 hours. Existing Blackboard sites will not be affected, and will be available again after the upgrade.