After the upgrade on 8 July, there will be some changes to the Blackboard system.  These changes are incremental in nature, building upon the existing interface (as compared to the changes last year which were much more significant).  These changes include:

• The ability to attach multiple files to an item quickly without saving and re-editing the item
• Newly uploaded files should open correctly for students
• Distinct options for uploading audio, images and video to a content area
• The ability to attach files to an announcement directly

There will also be a new blog and wiki tool available.  Old blogs and wikis you are using with students will continue to work until July 2012, and new ones of the old style can be created.  However we are encouraging staff to use the new blog and wiki tool.  It is integrated with the core Blackboard product instead of being an add on product.  This means the blogs can be edited with the SHUgo mobile app, the What’s New box will notify staff and students when there are unread blog messages, and it is easier to set up blogs for particular groups of students.  However, the wiki and blog tools do not include an option to export the entries as HTML right now.  We are encouraging Blackboard to add this option as it is a popular feature of the existing blog/wiki tool.  We’ll have a blog post about the blogs and wikis soon to highlight the changes to how you set them up.

The RSS feed tool has also changed.

There have been some improvements to the Grade Centre as well to make it more intuitive to use:

• The Grade Centre is a separate menu item in the Control Panel, and you can have customised views show up as direct links in the Control Panel
• There is a faster option to show/hide Grade Centre columns from students
• It is easier to jump to specific assignment attempts to grade them
• There is now the ability to attach feedback files to any regular grade column, so if you previously only provided online grades to your students, it is simple to give them online feedback as well without changing your Grade Centre configuration
• The concept of override grades has been refined so that they work more intuitively and are not used in the first instance when inputting grades in the Grade Centre spreadsheet