With the new update to Blackboard, you can now use the Grade Center to easily add extra credit to your students’ grade calculations. Go into your class, and go to Control Panel > Grade Center > Full Grade Center. Once you see your grade center, click on the Create Column button. On the next page, enter a Column Name. For Primary… Read more →
In my opinion, the best new feature of the Blackboard upgrade is the new In-Line Grading tool for Assignments. For instructors who frequently have students submit papers and know the pain of downloading, opening, commenting, grading, closing, uploading commented papers and submitting grades to Blackboard, I am happy to report that the workflow is greatly improved! For anyone who has… Read more →
One of the most commonly used features of Blackboard on our campus is the Assignment tool in Blackboard. This allows instructors to receive their papers digitally, cutting down on printing and the possibility of losing a physical paper. The options for Assignments are now much more streamlined and provide the option to incorporate SafeAssign into every assignment. Let’s explore them… Read more →
Anyone who has tried to give tests or quizzes in Blackboard knows that in the older version it was difficult to accommodate students with special requirements (like extended time) and that providing timely feedback required instructors to go in and adjust settings after the assessment was completed. These are not problems any longer! Blackboard’s test tool now come with new sets… Read more →
The new Math Editor uses LaTeX to create and display equations in Blackboard. If you’re familiar with LaTeX, you can edit your formulas directly or copy and paste formulas from a library right into Blackboard’s main content editor, but the system also has a very easy WYSIWYG (What You see Is What You Get) Math Editor so anyone can use… Read more →
We all know the feeling – we work on an announcement or a content item in Blackboard for a while, confirm that it’s formatted just so, and we hit Submit…. only to find that Blackboard has mucked up all the formatting! Well, my friends, those days are past! With our upgrade comes a new Content Editor for editing text and adding… Read more →
With the new upgrade and Content Editor, we have a new tool that makes it easy to add multimedia from the web into your courses: Mashups. For most of us, YouTube video embedding is the best part of this new mashup tool, though there are other options including Flickr and Slideshare. Let’s take a look at how to embed a… Read more →
Getting ready for a new semester just got a little easier! Blackboard now has a one-stop shop for changing and updating dates in your course. Now, after copying your course from a previous semester, you can easily update the dates on assignments and other work and materials. To begin, head to the course you’d like to update, and go to… Read more →
Group Management in the updated Blackboard is a much easier and more straightforward process than it has been in the past. To access the Groups page, go to your class’ Control Panel > Users and Groups > Groups. You’ll come to the Groups Management page, where all the options can be found. On this main page, you can now see not… Read more →
Grading in Blackboard can certainly be a chore. Did you know that you can set up and use rubrics while grading almost any kind of gradable assignment in Blackboard? And you can use the same rubric for multiple assignments? If you teach a class (or classes) where you use several similar writing assignments or discussion boards, you can create a… Read more →
