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About Blackboard

Blackboard Upgrade

Version 8.0
June 2008
Version 7.3
January 2008
Version 7.2
April 2007


Follow along with this podcast/website/e-newsletter and learn Blackboard from the ground up.  Every other week David Gray and Dr. Haydn Davis deliver instruction and discussions on the technical and pedagogical how-tos of building a blackboard course site and getting it to work to achieve your instructional goals.

A great way to learn the key features of Blackboard is to view our "Teaching With Blackboard" screen videos.

 

What's New in Blackboard 8 (June 2008)

We have updated the Blackboard Learning System to version 8 as of June 22, 2008.  The biggest change is the replacement of the version 7 gradebook with the version 8 Grade Center.  For more on the Grade Center, click here (PDF) and here (video); for more on the new critical thinking tools, click here (video).  To see version 8 in person, login to Blackboard or the Blackboard sandbox.  If you have questions, email onlineclasses@palomar.edu or call ext. 2862.

 

What's New in Blackboard 7.3 (January 2008)

Mostly Blackboard 7.3 was a collection of bug fixes to 7.2.  The one functionality change was the ability to apply the "old" discussion board look to "new" (ie, version 7.2) style discussion boards.
 

We have deployed a "Sandbox" environment at Palomar College (http://bbsandbox.palomar.edu) so that new Blackboard features can be tested by faculty members before they are implemented on the production system.  Blackboard version 8, which has been released, will be available on the sandbox by February 2, 2008.  The major change in version 8 is the introduction of a new Grade Center feature, which will allow Excel type functionality to the Blackboard Gradebook.  We expect to deploy Blackboard version 8 in late May or early June, 2008.
 

What's New in Blackboard 7.2 (April 21, 2007)

There are a number of enhancements to current Blackboard tools:

·         Announcements – An extra checkbox now appears on the Add Announcement page, which will send an email to all course users about the new announcement.  This vastly simplifies a Best Practice of posting an announcement whenever an email goes out to all students.

  • Email – Although the Email tool still does not allow use of the Visual Text Box Editor, now emails sent from within Blackboard can contain HTML.  If an email is sent in conjunction with a posted Announcement (as above) the limited Visual Text Box Editor of the Announcement tool can be used to format the email text.

  • Gradebook - Instructors can now add and store optional notes or explanations with each grade that is visible to students.  A “Modify Comments” button is available when an instructor edits a grade, and a corresponding “View Comments” button displays in the student My Grades list if a comment has been provided.

  • Discussion Board – Several enhancements to the Discussion Board screens have been added, including the ability to search for posts on a specific date range without having other text to search for.  Also the Thread Detail page may be switched from the top or bottom of the page for easier navigation of threads.

  • Discussion Board Grading – Grades based on the Discussion Board are now included in gradebook calculations by default.  Also, when students drop from the course they will no longer show up in the Discussion Board grading interface.

  • Performance Improvements – The Discussion Board forum lists and Performance Dashboard information should load much faster in all courses.

The Early Warning System tool is added into course Control Panels.  This tool, although originally designed for K-12 institutions, may be of use in identifying trends (both positive and negative) in student performance.  Similar to grade-based Adaptive Release, Early Warning rules are established which will allow instructors to receive lists of students meeting the rule criteria, with tools to easily email students listed for any desired follow-up contact.

New OS and Browser combinations may also be used with this new Blackboard version, including Windows Vista with either IE 7 or Firefox 2.  Firefox 2 is also supported on both Windows XP and OS X 10.4.

 In addition to these new abilities, this version increase of Blackboard will fix several reported known issues, such as:

  • Posting graded Discussion Boards on a copied course causes the Discussion Board grades to disappear from the gradebook in the source course.

  • When a Course Copy is processed, all content is placed into a single content area, instead of properly distributed across multiple content areas.

  • When a Course Link is added to an Announcement, the link appears at first, but vanishes after a user clicks on the link.


A Note on Publisher Course Cartridges

An increasing number of textbook publishers are providing Course Cartridges to supplement their textbooks.  Course Cartridges are an easy way for instructors to supplement their Blackboard courses with content-rich materials developed by academic publishers. Using a Course Cartridge allows import of publishers’ content directly into a Blackboard course site.
 

Cartridges may contain a wide variety of resources, including basic instructional text, PowerPoint presentations, subject-specific multimedia objects such as videos, or banks of test questions. Publishers may use different kinds of content in different Cartridges. Cartridge content is typically updated when new textbook editions are released.  Access to the Cartridges can be provided by your Textbook Sales Representative.  The course instructor will receive a "key" (a serial number) from the publisher which will enable you to import your own course cartridge.

What is the Blackboard Course Life Cycle (ie, how long will my courses remain on the server)?

We keep the current semester, the previous 3 semesters, and the future semester (as soon as future courses are created in Peoplesoft, approximately 90 days before the start of a semester) in our Blackboard database.  Courses are pruned from the system on a rolling year schedule.  For example, at the conclusion of the Fall 2006 semester, the Fall 2005 courses are pruned from the system.  Immediately on the conclusion of the spring 2007 semester the spring 2006 courses will be pruned, and so on.  The following chart illustrates course creation/deletion:

For more information, listen to a discussion of this topic from our podcast, episode 37.

For this reason, we strongly recommend that professors make archive copies of their courses as they develop them and once they are complete so that if they only teach a course every 2 years, say, they will be able to restore the content from the archive file.  Click here for information of creating archive files.


Related Resources

  Of Special Interest

 
 
History of Online Classes at Palomar
 

In the Fall of 1998, Palomar College began offering online courses.  We had only 2 offerings:  English 100, taught by John Tagg, and  Psychology 205, taught by Mark Vernoy.  Since then, the program has expanded.  In the Spring of 2008, we will be offering over 250 online sections.  In addition, many more classes which were not totally online have taken advantage of online resources to present class enhancements and assessments.  In July 2005 Blackboard was fully integrated with the PeopleSoft Student Information System, so that course shells for every course are created within Blackboard and student enrollment is managed automatically.  The use of the shell is entirely up to the faculty member teaching the class, those that want to use Blackboard can make the Blackboard course available to their students.

 

A Video Series about the early days of the online college is available (Windows media broadband only).

 

Becoming an Online Instructor

If you are interested in becoming an online instructor, please contact:

Dr. Haydn Davis
Academic Technology Coordinator
Phone ext. 2341

Office LL-110A

 
 

 

 
 

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