Assessment Tools

 
Grade Center 

One of the premier enhancements is the Blackboard Grade Center(TM), a completely redesigned smart grading tool with an easy-to-use interface that simplifies the grading process while providing powerful analytic capabilities for instructors.

 
Self  and Peer Assessment

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Assessment Options

New Feedback option for essay questions. New Question types: Calculated Formula, Calculated Numeric, Hotspot, Jumbled Sentence, Likert Scale, True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple Answer, Ordering, Matching, Fill-in-the-Blank, Short Answer, Essay, File Upload, and Binary Choice.

 
Performance Dashboard

Overview of the gradebook that stores and manages student performance results on assignment and assessments. The Performance Dashboard provides a view of student progress and indicates whether students have reviewed specific content items.

 
Early Warning System

Blackboard developed the Early Warning System, a tool that enables faculty to be alerted in a timely way to when students may be having academic difficulties. This capability enables faculty to quickly identify students who need more attention by defining rules against key performance metrics (Online Activity, Grades and/or Due Date) as well as encourages student engagement by making it easy for faculty to notify students and advisors about performance concerns via e-mail directly from the Early Warning System.

 
Adaptive Release

Content items, discussions, assessments, assignments, or other activities can be released to students based on a set of criteria including: date/time, username, group membership, institution role, grade on a particular test or assignment, or whether the user has previously reviewed another piece of content.

Respondus Lockdown Browser

Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard. Students are locked into the assessment and are unable to print, copy, go to another URL, or access other applications.

 Communication Tools

 
Wimba Pronto

Pronto is an instant messaging (IM) and voice chat tool that allows you to communicate with your classmates, individually or in groups, anytime. You do not have to be logged into Blackboard!

 
Wimba Live Classroom

Live Classroom allows faculty and students to build relationships by combining state-of-the-art interactive technologies such as voice, video, application sharing, polling, and whiteboarding, with traditional best practices of instruction. Now, enjoy the best elements of face-to-face and online instruction as faculty and students can talk to each other, express emotion, and feel as if they're part of a single community.

 
Wimba Voice Tools

Perfect for language learning and creating vocal exercises in any subject, these web-based voice tools facilitate and promote vocal instruction, collaboration, coaching, and assessment. Increase the interaction and student engagement level of any on on ground, hybrid, or online class by allowing faculty and students to easily embed vocal interactions into Blackboard.

 
Discussion Board

The Discussion Board enables threaded, asynchronous discussions. Instructors can set up multiple forums around different topics and embed those forums in appropriate content areas or lessons. Instructors can determine whether students can modify, delete, post anonymously, include attachments, and other options. Forums can be sorted/viewed by thread, author, date, or subject and are completely searchable.

 
Messaging

Better Text Editor Character Support - No more question marks (?) appearing when copying from a Word document to the Visual Text Box Editor!

 
Scholar

Scholar allows members of the Blackboard(R) community to save and classify bookmarks and searches, share resources with faculty, students and administrators from other institutions, automatically update courses with dynamic content feeds, and enable student contributions to course collections.

 
Announcements

Use the Announcements Feature to Communicate with Students. Create an Announcement within your Blackboard course using the new e-mail option.

 Assignments and Content Management

 
Assignments

The Assignments feature enables instructors to create an assignment that automatically becomes an item in the Grade Center. Blackboard has enhanced the Assignment feature - enabling instructors to designate a "due date." Simulations are available below to show how to: Create an Assignment, Review a Completed Assignment and Submit a Grade within the Grade Center, Clear a Student's Assignment Attempt, and Using the File Cleanup Feature.

Safe Assign

SafeAssign is now native to Blackboard.  Use this tool to ditect and teach about plagiarism.

Import/Export

Addresses activities involving managing the course site or major components of the course site. Course Management capabilities focus on the Course Copy tool and  for semester-to-semester migration and Course Import/Export for course backup.

Tasks Tool for Faculty

The Tasks page organizes projects or activities (referred to as tasks) by defining task priority and tracking task status. Instructors can post tasks to users participating in their courses. Task information is arranged in columns that display the priority, task name, status, and due date.

 
Tasks Tool for Students

Students will learn about the two kinds of tasks and how to create and sort a task. Course tasks : these are created by an instructor. You can report on your progress and your instructor can view the status of your tasks. Personal tasks : You can create, modify, update the progress of, and remove your own tasks. Instructors cannot see your personal tasks.

 
Content Authoring

The Visual Text Box, Spell Check, QuickEdit

 
Teaching and Learning Tools

Glossary, the Electric Blackboard (an online note-taking tool students can use to take and save notes online as they work through their course materials), and Staff Information.

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Course Cartridges

All major education publishers create pre-packaged content and course materials in the Blackboard Course Cartridge format to supplement their course textbooks. The course content may contain multimedia, assessments, Question Pools, and links to additional resources, such as interactive learning applications, that supplement the textbook reading. Cartridge materials can be customized once downloaded into a course site.