One new feature of Blackboard 9 is the What’s New channel, part of the new Module Home Page section.  This channel notifies staff and students about content that has been added recently which is visible to those users.  It also notifies users about unread discussion board messages in both general and group discussion boards.  This is a feature that many students have previously requested for Blackboard in past surveys.

What’s New refreshes every 10-15 minutes when you are logged in, so if you have just added some content it won’t show up in your view immediately.  However, if a students logs in after you added the content, their What’s New will show the new content if it is set available for them.  Content that is set unavailable or not set to be released yet will not show up to students until it is available to them, including following adaptive release rules for specific students and groups.

Some content such as SHU and TurnItIn Assignments, blogs, wikis, and RSS won’t show up in the What’s New channel as these are external tools we have incorporated into Blackboard.  Announcements do show up in What’s New however, so the best way to inform students of these is to make an announcement.

Users have control over the settings in their What’s New channel.  They can dismiss individual items once they have seen them, as well as choose the types of content which shows up in their channel.  They can define what is considered ‘new’ (the default is the last five days’ worth of changes).  Users can also opt-in to receiving a daily digest email summary of all the changes to either all of their sites or specific ones.