What’s New in Blackboard Learn – February 2024

Our Blackboard® Learn team here at Anthology has remained at work on new features and updates to the platform over the past month. The Learn 3900.86 release is chock full of features in the areas of Instructional Design, Flexible Grading, Communication and Collaboration, Learn Core and Security, and more. Read on to discover highlights from the latest Blackboard Learn release!

1. Instructional Design - AI Design Assistant context picker for test question generation

The AI Design Assistant offers inspiration and efficiency when generating test questions. Instructors can now select course items to help define those questions. This option improves the alignment of generated questions with course content.

Image 1. Auto-generate question option in assessment

Image 2. ‘Select Course Items’

Image 3. ‘Select Course Items’ and then ‘Select Items’

Image 4. Select ‘Generate’ to apply the context to the generation workflow

Image 5. Select questions generated and add them to your assessment

2. Flexible Grading - Last used view state of Flexible Grading side panels preserved

Instructors want to configure the grading interface according to their preferences. In flexible grading, instructors can collapse or expand the left panel (student cards) and right panel (feedback and rubrics). To provide a better user experience, the last used state is now preserved in the browser. As such, navigating between student attempts and across sessions becomes a more efficient experience.

Image 1. Flexible Grading view with both the left and right panels expanded

For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

3. Communication & Collaboration - Announcement indicators and mark announcements as read/unread

Announcements are an important communications channel within a course. Over the past 12 months, course announcements usage has more than tripled! With such an increase in usage, it was important to us to help create awareness of new announcements and read/unread controls.

Now, there is a number indicator next to the announcement tab in the course. The indicator signals the number of unread announcements available.

Additionally, users can now mark announcements as read or unread. On the New Course Announcement pop-up, users have the option to mark the state as read. Users can also mark announcements as read or unread from the Announcement page.

Image 1. Number of unread Announcements next to the Announcement tab

Image 2. Announcements pop-up with the option to mark as read/unread

Image 3. Announcements page with the option to mark as read/unread

Image 4. Matching announcement and messages indicators for consistency

For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

4. Blackboard Learn Core & Security - Group file size limit for Learn Ultra Courses

Administrators are tasked with the management of storage used by courses. To help, we have added a feature to equip administrators to set file upload limits by file extensions. For example, if an administrator wants to prevent users from uploading any Word documents, they can set the file upload extension limitations for .docx, .doc, .docm, .dotx, .dot, and other Word extensions. This way, users will not be able to upload any files with those extensions to the course that exceed the limit set by the administrator.

Administrators can specify a maximum file size that applies to files in general. They may also set maximum file sizes by groups defined by file extensions. There are no restrictions on the number of groups an administrator can define.

Example:

• An institution has a policy of 512MB size limit for most files. The administrator sets that limit for the maximum file size overall.
• The institution licenses a video platform and wants users to store large videos there. Because of this, the limit for video files in Learn Ultra courses will be 25MB.
• The administrator creates a group for video files and sets the limit.
• The administrator defines the following file extensions, each separated by a comma. This will restrict all video files: .webm, .mkv, .flv, .vob, .ogv, .ogg, .drc, .gif, .gifv, .mng, .avi, .MTS, .M2TS, .TS, .mov, .qt, .wmv, .yuv, .rm, .rmvb, .viv, .asf, .amv, .mp4, .m4p, .m4v, .mp2, .mpe, .mpv, .mpg, .mpeg, .m2v, .svi, .3gp, .3g2, .mxf, .roq, .nsv, .f4v, .f4p, .f4a, .f4b

Image 1. Manage file limits by maximum file size; add custom file groups

Image 2. A message informs the user of any files that do not comply with the limit set by the institution

For administrators: This feature applies to Learn Ultra courses except for content collection direct uploads. To configure it, open the Administrator Panel -> System Configuration -> File size limits.

Explore these updates and more in the full Blackboard Learn 3900.86 release notes.