We have now successfully completed the upgrade of Blackboard. In addition to the changes discussed in earlier blog posts, there are a few other changes worth drawing to your attention.

Blackboard Collaborate Ultra/Classic – If last year you set up a Blackboard Collaborate link in your Blackboard site, it will now redirect to the Classic version of Collaborate. Last year it redirected to the Ultra version.  If you wish to continue to use the Ultra version, then you need to add the Collaborate Ultra tool into your Blackboard site menu instead of the existing links you have. Note that recordings from the past year in Collaborate Ultra will still be viewable in the recordings section for Classic. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes.

Site Copy tool – The Copy tool, which allows you to copy large areas of your Blackboard site into another Blackboard site, has been moved and is slightly different now. It is now in the section of the Control Panel called Copy & Export. Previously the tool would show you a drop down list of all of the Blackboard sites you were enrolled on. To use the tool now, please copy and paste the site ID of the site you wish to copy contents to into the search box of the tool.

Clearing Assignment attempts – The ability to clear student submission attempts for Assignments has now been removed, following a number of cases of student work being accidentally cleared (which results in the work being lost). We recommend that staff use the Ignore Attempt option if they wish to ignore a particular attempt a student has made incorrectly, as this option will preserve the student attempt in case it needs to be viewed later.

Changing Blackboard site menus – We have installed a new theme in Blackboard which optimises the view of Blackboard on mobile devices. One of the implications of this new theme is that the left-hand site menu for each Blackboard site is fixed at the same colour.  Some older Blackboard sites which have rolled over for years may also be using button-style menus which may appear strange in the new theme. We advise staff to change away from button-style menus and switch to the newer text-style menus. To make this change, go to Control Panel->Customisation->Site Customisation. Then change the Style option from Buttons to Text and submit.  Note that the colours you choose for the Text option are ignored by the theme and do not make a difference.