Release Notes

The potential uses of Artificial Intelligence are exciting. As we look to explore the benefits AI has to offer, we are prioritizing lawful, ethical, and responsible use. We have established our Trustworthy AI principles, where we commit to: 

• humans in control, 

• fairness, 

• privacy, 

• security and 

• safety to name a few.

We recommend reviewing the documents linked below as you consider using AI within Learn Ultra. These documents are designed to support your implementation, training, and policy setting as it relates to AI usage.
  

Our Trustworthy AI Principles can be found in our Trust Center. 

• Further information on the AI Design Assistant can be found on our help pages. 

• (Link on the item above still to be created, Legal is working on the content) 

We chose to partner with Microsoft to provide this functionality for many reasons. A primary reason is that Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to the ethical use of AI. Please find helpful resources from Microsoft below: 

• Microsoft's Responsible AI page 

• Microsoft's Transparency Note for Azure Open AI Service  

• Microsoft's page on Data, privacy, and security for Azure Open AI Service 

 
Creating a course from the ground up can often feel like a daunting and time-intensive task. Some educators might find themselves without access to the necessary instructional design resources, leaving them in search of extra support. 

 
Enter the AI Design Assistant—an innovative solution designed to tackle these very challenges. By harnessing the power of advanced AI, this assistant offers a helping hand in structuring your course. Drawing insights from the course's title, description, and contextual information, it effortlessly generates learning modules. 

 
What sets the AI Design Assistant apart is its commitment to putting instructors in the driver's seat. Empowering educators, it allows for the provision of supplementary context, such as descriptive text or keywords. Instructors have the flexibility to add a title prefix—think "topic" or "unit"—infusing a personalized touch. Visual elements can also be seamlessly integrated, amplifying the learning experience.

In a testament to customization, instructors wield the ability to fine-tune the complexity of their content. Additionally, they can precisely dictate the quantity of learning modules to be generated, ensuring a tailored approach to their teaching journey.  

All learning module images are automatically marked as decorative by default. The instructor has the ability to edit each learning module and add a specific alternative description if this image context is required. 

Learning Module Image Integration Options 

Learning modules serve as a strategic tool for structuring and curating course content. Elevating both the visual allure of the learning modules and the ease of content discernment is important. To help, we plan to provide two more options for integrating images into learning modules. 

Search stock images from Unsplash. With this option, instructors can enter keywords to search for and select high-quality, royalty-free images. When enabled, the AI Design Assistant suggests keywords.
Generate images with the AI Design Assistant. Image generation leverages insights from the learning module description and other contextual cues in the course. To further empower instructors, they can describe the ideal image and regenerate images. 

Note that images will automatically appear if your administrator activates “Generate keywords for Unsplash.” 

Once the ideal image is selected, the instructor can choose the focal point of the image. 

The image is marked as decorative by default. The instructor can untick ‘Mark the image as decorative’ and add specific alternative text. 

Rubric Generation  

Grading rubrics offer a structured framework to assess student work. They ensure both fairness and consistency in grading. Moreover, they furnish students with clear directives to meet desired learning outcomes. However, crafting rubrics can be a time-intensive task. The AI Design Assistant can take the helm in rubric creation, drawing cues from course context. While retaining human-centered authority, instructors can define the rubric. This includes specifying details like descriptions (learning objectives or topics), rubric type (percentage, points, or range), complexity, and dimensions. The rubric remains open to review and refine, guaranteeing the instructor's input at every step. 

Rubric generation is an option everywhere we support rubric creation. 

Test Question Generation  

Crafting test questions from the ground up demands a significant amount of time. The AI Design Assistant steps in to offer test question suggestions, helping instructors reclaim valuable time. This resource is beneficial for both formative and summative assessments. 

Instructors can refine the suggested questions by adding a description. The description might be learning objectives or topics. Furthermore, instructors can handpick preferred question types. The innovative "Inspire me!" question type suggests a variety of question types that an instructor might not typically consider. The instructor can specify the desired level of complexity and number of questions. 

Question Bank Generation From Ultra Documents  

The Ultra Document is a valuable way to present content. It seamlessly blends text and media components, enriching content presentation. With the aid of the AI Design Assistant, instructors can build question banks to gauge comprehension of the text-based elements within an Ultra Document. This streamlined process saves significant time. It also stands as a robust aid in shaping both formative and summative assessments. 

Instructors can select preferred question types or use the “Inspire me!” option. The instructor can specify the desired level of complexity and number of questions. After reviewing the questions, it’s a single click to publish the questions to the question bank. 

From the question bank, the instructor can filter, search, and edit questions as desired. 

Course Banner Images From Unsplash  

The course banner image provides an important sense of identity for the course. We are expanding the image options for the course banner by introducing Stock Images from Unsplash. Instructors can enter keywords to search for high-quality, royalty-free images. 

Images will automatically appear if your administrator has activated "Generate keywords for Unsplash." Once the ideal image is selected, the instructor can choose the focal point of the image. 

The image is marked as decorative by default. The course banner toggle is turned on. The instructor can untick ‘Mark the image as decorative’ and add specific alternative text. 

Learning Modules provide a way to organize and structure content. To enhance the visual aesthetics of a course and to aid in content identification, we now support the option to add images to Learning Modules. 

• to add an image to a Learning Module, instructors can edit the module, 

• instructors can drag and drop an image of their choice or upload one from their device, 

• the image appears in preview. This helps the instructor ensure that the desired image is selected, 

• instructors can drag the image and modify the zoom to select the focal point of the image, 

• instructors can mark the image as decorative or provide appropriate alternative text.

Reusing content eliminates the need to create everything from scratch. This saves time and effort in the content development processes. To support reuse, instructors can now copy specific announcements or all announcements from another course. Instructors can copy Announcements from both Original and Ultra courses. When copied, each announcement will be set to draft. 

This change improves the course rollover process. Instructors no longer need to reschedule or delete announcements immediately after copying. Instructors can take their time reviewing announcements and adjusting as needed.

Ensuring accessible and inclusive experiences for our students is of paramount importance. We have taken a significant step forward by implementing automatic captioning for audio and video content used in assessment feedback and announcements. This feature enhances accessibility and fosters inclusivity. Auto-captioning also supports diverse language preferences, aligning with the user's chosen language in Learn.

Accurate course progress tracking is key for both students and instructors. Some instructors include graded LTI content in their course. In the past, progress tracking for graded LTI content was only updated manually by the student. Now when a student submits their work, their progress status updates to "complete." This change ensures better reporting for instructors and accurate progress tracking for students.  

Batch editing offers value by streamlining and expediting repetitive tasks. Batch edit actions now apply to all items inside of Folders and Learning Modules. 

With this change, all items are now visible on a single page. We have added the ability to expand and collapse Learning Modules and Folders. 

Instructors can now perform the following tasks much faster: 

• Shift Dates: Select all items and shift the dates forward before you adjust the dates for each item. This is helpful when needing to make sweeping date adjustments. 

• Adjust Visibility: Select all items and set them to visible or hidden. This is helpful after course copies, imports, or conversions. In some copy cases, items are hidden by default. Instructors may want to make them visible. 

• Remove date/time release conditions: Select all items and set them to visible or hidden. This is helpful when having trouble updating due dates. Due dates must be after the Show On date and before the Hide After date. 

We have also made a couple of usability improvements:  

• Truncated Long Titles: Items with long titles would overlap with dates and times. Long titles are now truncated to prevent that from happening. 

• Fixed Table Header: Batch Edit was difficult to use with courses that had a lot of items. Users would need to scroll to the top of the page to see the column title. The table header now follows the user as they scroll down the page. 

• Replaced Dropdown: The batch edit actions available were not obvious. We have replaced the dropdown with individual buttons. The buttons do not become active until a user has selected items. 

Users can select up to 100 items when performing a batch edit action. 

Blackboard Anthology is producing a corporate blog which will allow a quick grab/copy of screenshots for your change management initiatives. Please visit Anthology.com

Learning Modules provide a way to organize and structure content. To enhance the visual aesthetics of a course and to aid in content identification, we now support the option to add images to Learning Modules. 

• to add an image to a Learning Module, instructors can edit the module, 

• instructors can drag and drop an image of their choice or upload one from their device, 

• the image appears in preview. This helps the instructor ensure that the desired image is selected, 

• instructors can drag the image and modify the zoom to select the focal point of the image, 

• instructors can mark the image as decorative or provide appropriate alternative text. 

Flexible Grading is a new, efficient assessment grading experience. The new experience: 

• provides intuitive and streamlined navigation, 

• eliminates artificial barriers, 

• saves time and effort when navigating from student to student or question to question.

Flexible Grading capabilities: 

• Grade by question or student 

• Filter on grading status of choice 

• Navigate between students and multiple submission attempts 

• Keep track of your grading process 

• View both the attempt and the final grade for each assessment 

• Provide meaningful feedback with or without a rubric 

• Grade inline using Blackboard Annotate 

• Collapse side panels to view more of the student submission 

• Post all grades when ready

Supported assessment grading configurations: 

• Individual student test and assignment submissions 

• Single and multiple attempts 

• Grading with rubrics 

• SafeAssign 

Other assessment configurations will continue to route through to the current grading experience. There is no loss of grading functionality for these configurations: 

• Anonymous submissions 

• Group submissions 

• 2 graders per student 

• Peer review 

Flexible Grading will come to these assessment configurations in future releases.

Groups are essential for fostering collaboration, promoting active learning, and deepening understanding of course material. In the past, instructors could define groups and group sets. Instructors could also create group assessments.

This release includes improvements aimed at helping all users make better use of groups. 

We've moved Groups from the Details & Actions menu to the top navigation bar. This improves the visibility and prominence of Groups. 

This release also introduces a new feature for Groups: Group Spaces. This first milestone of Group Spaces provides a list of all assessments by group.

From Manage groups, instructors still have access to: 

• Group lists 

• Show Members 

• Group management options 

To access a Group Space, instructors should select Enter Group Space from the group’s three-dot menu. 

Instructors can access Group Spaces from the three-dot menu from Manage Groups. 

Students can access their assigned groups on the Groups landing page. From there, students can view all student members of their group. 

To access a Group Space, students should select the group's name. Once in Group Spaces, students can access all assessments aligned to their Group. 

Future milestones will include synchronous communication and project management tools for students.

Instructors have varying preferences of the gradebook view. Some prefer the gradebook grid view to get an overview of student performance or locate new submissions. In the past, the gradebook grid view displayed "Grade Now" in each cell even when no submission had been made. This was confusing. 

To remove confusion, the default state of a given cell in the gradebook grid view has changed from “Grade now” to “-” (a single dash). This change reduces the cognitive load on users working in the gradebook. This change also makes new submissions more obvious. 

There is no change in gradebook functionality. Instructors can still select a given cell and enter an override grade.

Identifying students at risk is challenging. This challenge is compounded when teaching multiple courses and large numbers of students.

Now, a flag appears for students with alerts in the Course Activity Report. Instructors can customize their course alerts based on the following: 

• Number of days a student is inactive in the course 

• A student’s overall grade in the course is below a specific percentage 

The instructor may hover over a flag to view the alert type. Instructors can filter alerts for: 

• All students 

• Students with alerts 

• Students without alerts 

Instructors can identify students with alerts in other views of the Course Activity Report. 

• In the chart, purple dots indicate students with at least one (1) alert. Instructors can select the dot to display student information. An alerts section explains the applicable alerts for the student. 

• In the CSV download, the Low overall grade and Last access alert columns indicate when a student has an alert. 

• As before, activity stream notifications summarize students with alerts per course. Instructors may select these notifications to open the Course Activity Report. When accessing the report via notifications, the filter “Students with alerts” is auto-applied. 

Key considerations: 

• Instructors define Alerts Settings at a course level so that each course can have its own alerts values 

• Five is the default value for the number of days a student is inactive alert; there is no default setting for overall grade alert 

• Course alerts can be added, edited, and deleted at any time

Blackboard Anthology is producing a corporate blog which will allow a quick grab/copy of screenshots for your change management initiatives. Please visit Anthology.com

Instructors often strive to include media in their course design to help create an engaging course. Students may desire to include media in their discussions or assessment responses. When inserting media, users expect an easy way to control the size of the included media. In the past, this wasn't easy to do. Users would have to size media before uploading it in the course. 

Now media items have handles in each corner. Users can resize the media by dragging a corner handle. Users can also resize media via keyboard navigation. Media types available for resizing include images, videos, and media inserted via URL. 

This enhancement provides users with a seamless and intuitive way to resize media.

Multiple Choice and Multiple Answer questions are graded automatically. Answers are scored based on the instructor-selected scoring option. 

In the past, instructors could select from the following scoring options: 

• All or nothing. A student must select all the correct answer choices to receive credit. If a student selects one or more incorrect answer choices, they earn no points. 

• Allow partial credit. A student receives partial credit if they correctly answer part of the question.

• Subtract points for incorrect answers. A student will have points subtracted for incorrect answer choices. This option discourages guessing. The overall question score is not less than zero. 

With the partial credit and subtract points options, all answer choices were equally weighted. Instructors could not control how much partial and negative credit is awarded for each correct and incorrect answer. 

To provide instructors with more control, we have made some changes. Now instructors can turn on partial and negative credit. This option allows instructors to: 

• Define a positive percentage value to award credit for a correct answer(s) 

• Enter a negative percentage value to subtract for an incorrect answer(s) 

• Allow a negative overall score for the question 

This improvement reduced the number of default answer options from 4 to 3. Instructors can still add additional answer options if required.

We have simplified the navigation for Assessments. Instructors now have convenient access to different sections using tabs: 

• Content and Settings 

• Submissions 

• Student Activity 

• Question Analysis 

This improvement is designed to optimize instructor efficiency. It provides a more streamlined assessment management experience for instructors.

The complete/incomplete grade schema is now available for the Ultra Course View. This grade schema helps to shift the focus from points earned to student effort and completion of tasks. It offers a more holistic approach to assessing student progress. 

Instructors can select the schema in the settings panel from the Grade using section. When a grade is assigned, a checkmark is displayed on that item for the student in the gradebook. An incomplete is displayed as a dash in a grey-colored pill.

Progress Tracking provides students with clear visibility of their progress throughout a course. In the past, students would need to expand the module to view progress for the contents of a learning module. To save time and provide greater clarity, a progress summary for learning modules is now displayed at the top level.

Blackboard Anthology is producing a corporate blog which will allow a quick grab/copy of screenshots for your change management initiatives. Please visit Anthology.com

To provide a better user experience, we moved Announcements from the Details & Actions menu to the top navigation bar. This reduces the number of items within the Details & Actions menu. This change also improves visibility and prominence of Announcements. Users will be able to access announcements anywhere from within a course. All existing announcements functionality remains the same.

At present, Blackboard Ultra supports up to three levels of hierarchy for content nesting on the course content page. We have received consistent feedback from students indicating that they prefer this structure. Many have shared that it improves course navigation. Instructors have shared the same and cited it helps them easily design and layout their courses. 

 
We have also heard that some institutions need more than three levels of content nesting to structure their course content. To address this feedback, we have added an option to use one additional level of content nesting. This extra level provides instructors with greater flexibility to organize content in ways that better suit their needs. The option to use one more level of content nesting improves the overall usability of the platform for some of our users. Opting for the extra level of content nesting also reduces the flattening effect of content when upgrading courses from the Original to Ultra course view.

To provide a better experience, we’ve made a series of improvements for Course Links: 

• Instructors have the option to add course links to folders and learning modules on the Course Content page. The option to add course links to folders and learning modules is hidden for nested content containers. 

• Instructors cannot move into another folder or learning module a course link to a folder or learning module. A warning message displays if an instructor tries to move a course link in this way. 

• Instructors cannot copy into another folder or learning module a course link to a folder or learning module. The option to copy course links to folders and LMs is hidden if an instructor selects the Copy Content option from the + menu while inside a folder or learning module. 

• To help users identify course links to folders and learning modules, we have made a new icon. This icon displays a link at the top left corner of the icon for a folder or learning module. In the past, the learning module did not have an icon. Learning modules now have an icon, which is the same one displayed for learning modules on the Create Item panel. 

• The context menu for a course link to a folder or a learning module now provides these options: 

• Edit Course Link 

• Edit Linked Folder or Learning Module 

• Delete Course Link 

• Users can expand a course link to a folder or learning module as they would a folder or learning module. This allows the user to view the nested contents of the target folder or learning module. The contents displayed are read only. An instructor cannot modify the nested contents displayed for the course link. An instructor cannot move additional content into the folder or learning module course link. 

• When an instructor makes changes to the nested contents of a folder or learning module, the changes will appear for any related, expanded course link. These changes include: 

• Adding/deleting nested contents 

• Re-order nested contents 

• Moving additional contents into the target folder or learning module 

• Editing the names of nested contents 

• Modifying the visibility or release conditions of nested contents 

• In the past, if an instructor copied a course link to an Ultra Document, some of the contents added via "Add Content" did not copy. This has been fixed. Now the Ultra Document and its contents, along with the course link, are copied as expected. 

• When creating a Course Link, an instructor can now select a folder and/or learning module from the Category section of Search Criteria. Additionally, instructors can expand the folders and learning modules in the search results to select one of its contents. 

• When upgrading an Original course to the Ultra course view, course links to folders and learning modules are not retained. The conversion report includes an exception for course links and explains their removal.

Besides course content, assessment questions are one of the most valuable teaching artifacts. Up until now, instructors could only create new questions in tests, assignments, or question banks. This process could be time-consuming and inefficient.

Now instructors can author questions offline in a text file. Instructors can upload the file into a test for a more streamlined test building workflow. Each question file must be a tab-delimited TXT file. The file should not exceed 250 records to avoid time-out restrictions. For more details on formatting requirements, please review the related Help pages for Original and Ultra platforms. 

Instructors can easily edit and use the uploaded questions as they would a question created in a test. Uploading questions saves instructors valuable time and effort. 

Supported question types include: 

• Multiple choice / multiple answer 

• True / False 

• Essay 

• Fill in the Blank 

• Fill in Multiple Blanks 

• Numeric response 

• Matching

We all live complicated lives and special circumstances often arise. When this happens, instructors may need to grant an exception to a student for specific tests or assignments. These exceptions may include the following: 

• providing additional attempts 

• rescheduling due dates, or 

• granting extended access.

These exceptions are available even if the assessment is hidden from other students. Until now, exceptions were only accessible from the submissions page for an assessment. Now, instructors can access the exceptions workflow from the gradebook grid view and Student Overview page.

Starting this month, Blackboard Anthology is producing a corporate blog which will allow a quick grab/copy of screenshots for your change management initiatives. Please visit the link: Learn Ultra's Newest May Release: Innovative Tools to Enhance Your Teaching Experience.   

Efficiency is key for instructors when creating course content. To assist with this, we've added a drag and drop support for uploading folders with files to the course content page. Instructors may drag and drop a folder from their computer to the course content page. If an instructor drags and drops more than 25 files at the same time, a warning message appears. This message does not restrict the upload, but it informs the user that it may take a few minutes to complete. During the upload process, the instructor can cancel at any time. If the upload is canceled, the files are deleted.

Teaching many courses is challenging. Keeping track of student details can be even harder. To help, we've created a dedicated space for instructors to take notes about students in each course. These notes are private. Only instructors, administrators, and higher roles can access them. To access the notes, instructors may select the Notes tab on the Student Overview page. From there, an instructor can add notes and review any other notes for a student in that course. They can also review notes added by other instructors in the same course. The text editor for notes includes basic formatting options such as bold, italics, colors, styles, and font size. The most recent notes appear at the top of the list. These notes have many possible uses: Tracking the evolution of a student's progress over time. Noting agreements with a student, such as extensions on assignments or meeting times. Noting students with behavioral issues or a history of academic dishonesty. Recording considerations for grading, such as student athletes. Key considerations: Each note includes the author's name and a timestamp with its creation date. If a note is edited, a separate timestamp for the latest edition is added. This helps instructors keep track of changes. Authors can edit and delete their own notes. Instructors in the course cannot edit or delete another instructor's notes. Instructors, teaching assistants, facilitators, and grader roles can view all notes in their course and create, edit, and delete self-authored notes. Administrators may delete any note. Administrators may also assign the privilege to delete notes to other roles. An administrator can grant view only privileges.

Aside from course content, test questions are some of the most valuable resources in a course. Instructors invest significant time and effort creating and refining banks of test questions. Instructors use these banks to easily reuse questions across various assessments. Now instructors can copy questions between question banks. To copy a question, an instructor can select the new Reuse Questions option. Additionally, instructors can copy questions from existing assessments directly into their question banks. This process makes it easier to build and expand question libraries.

When assessing a student's knowledge of visual content, the hotspot question type is a popular choice. To further enhance this question type, we have added two new features: Zoom In/Out and Full-Screen view. These controls enable instructors to define hotspots more precisely. These new controls are also accessible using convenient keyboard shortcuts.

Discussion Forums in the Original Course View are an essential feature. Instructors often create discussion prompts as threads within a forum. Students respond by creating a thread or replying to existing threads in the forum. In other cases, Discussion Forums serve as containers. Instructors create a thread for each discussion prompt within the forum. Students respond to the discussion prompt by replying to the thread. To better support each of these use cases, we have updated our conversion process. Now, when the "allow members to create new threads" setting is selected, the Discussion Forum converts to a Discussion in the Ultra Course View. If this setting is not selected, the Discussion Forum will become a folder in the Ultra Course View. All threads within the forum convert to Discussions inside the folder.

In the past, Ultra courses allowed only one grading schema per course. Now instructors can add, copy, and edit up to 100 grading schemas per course. Items copied from other courses will keep their grading schemas. When copying, any configured schemas copy even if not aligned to gradable items. 

Instructors can now choose the best grading schema for each assessment in a course.

It is important for the gradebook to support efficient workflows. We have made several improvements to improve the Gradable Items View: 

• Instructors can now sort the records of any column on this page. Sorting helps instructors more easily find the desired information. For example, instructors may sort on Grading Status to locate assessments that need grading. 

• Selecting the assessment name now navigates the instructor to the selected assessment. 

• Selecting '# to grade’ now navigates to a Needs Grading  filtered Submissions page. This provides instructors with quick entry into the grading process. 

• The new Post column provides instructors with status information for an assessment. This also simplifies the action to post all grades for the assessment.

It is sometimes difficult to remember the location of a course item. In the past, locating an item was a time-intensive task and unintuitive. Searching for the item would involve opening every folder or learning module to find the item. 

You can now search course content titles to find these items on the course content page. The course search icon, a magnifying glass, is easy to find at the top of the course content page. When a user types a few letters, the course search function displays a list of matching items by title. A user may expand the search results to view more information related to the course item(s).

Instructors often review various aspects of course discussions to assess and engage students. To improve navigation and increase visibility, we have introduced a new tab navigation: 

• Discussion 

• Student Activity 

• Grading & Participation

We commit to providing accessible and inclusive solutions for all users. Many users navigate Ultra using assistive technologies. To better support instructors using assistive technology, we have made several accessibility improvements to the Course Activity Report: 

• The description of the Course Activity Report includes a “Learn more” link. Now the screen reader states this link, directing the instructor to the related Help documentation. 

• Instructors can sort data on any column. Now screen readers indicate if column sorting is in ascending or descending order. 

• Instructors can select many students to send messages. Now screen readers state the number of students selected. 

• Screen readers now state when an instructor selects or deselects all students. 

• In medium and small screens some options of the Course Activity Report combine in a single drop-down menu. Now screen readers state that the 3-dot menu contains more options.

Multiple-attempt assessments can be more complicated for instructors because there are more submissions. To switch between attempts for a student in the past, an instructor would have to close an attempt then select a different attempt. This wasn’t intuitive and required extra clicks. Now instructors can navigate directly between a student’s attempts. If a student has multiple attempts for an assessment, an instructor will see an option to switch attempts. This is more efficient. When the instructor clicks a student name in the Submissions list, the most recent submitted attempt will be loaded. 

The attempt selector displays information to help instructors select the desired attempt: 

• Attempt number 

• Submission time stamp 

• File size 

• Grade (if graded) 

• Late indicator (if applicable) 

The course activity page helps instructors understand students' performance. With this information, instructors can: 

• Identify struggling or high performing students based on their grade, hours in course, or days of inactivity. 

• Message students who have a low grade and/or have not accessed the course recently. 

• Receive alerts when a student has not accessed their course in a while or if a student's grade has dropped. 

With this update, we have made the following improvements: 

New Table - Updated to be more consistent with other features. Those who use progress tracking will find the feel of the new table should be familiar. The new table makes it easier to select and message students. 

New Days of Inactivity Column - the number of days since a student last accessed your course. Instructors can use this information to identify students that might be falling behind. 

Access Student Overview - click or tap a student's name to see their grades, progress, and activity over the weeks. Instructors can use the Student Overview to get a full picture of a student's performance and engagement in a course.

More Student Information. Accommodations, name pronunciation, and pronouns are now visible. Instructors can use this information when drafting messages to students. 

Instructors need sorting controls in the Gradebook. These sorting options are helpful for organizing the Gradebook data for various contexts: 

• identifying students with grades at a grade boundary 

• ordering students from highest to lowest grade, or vice versa 

Now instructors can sort the Gradebook Students list view on the Overall Grade column. Any sorting applied yields a temporary change to the sort order of all columns.

Instructors have not had the ability to reschedule announcements. If the show on and hide after date fields were set for the future, a pop-up window would not generate. Instructors prefer a pop-up window because it helps students see the announcement. If there is no pop-up, a student may not know there is an announcement for them to view.

Some instructors were recreating announcements from scratch to generate these pop-ups. With this update, instructors can now reschedule announcements without having to recreate them. They can do this by changing the show on and hide after fields to a future date. 

When users first enter a course, the rescheduled announcement will trigger a pop-up.

Before this release, the only way to prevent posts in a discussion was by defining a due date. Instructors now have a checkbox option in the Discussion Settings panel. When checked, participants cannot edit or delete posts in a discussion.

There are times that instructors need to exempt students from assessments or activities in the course. Now instructors can provide exemptions. Students can view exempted items. A student is not expected to complete an exempted task. When exempted, a student’s overall calculation will adjust for them. The overall points possible or weighting for a student with exemptions may change compared to other students. 

Instructors may exempt any gradebook item in two ways: 

• From the submission list view, select the ellipsis menu of a student and choose to add or edit the exemption. 

• From the student detail view, select the ellipsis menu of the item and choose to add or edit the exemption.

When exempting an item, the item will not be: 

• included in the overall grade calculation, 

• marked late for students who do not make a submission, or 

• assigned an automatic zero. 

Students can still supply submissions for exempted items. Instructors can grade and provide feedback for these submissions.

There are times when instructors allow students to overachieve on an assessment. Some instructors may allow students to earn back points lost on other assessments or activities.

Now instructors can assign one or more questions as extra credit in an assessment. A correct answer results in adding the extra credit question points to the points earned for the assessment. Students are not penalized for incorrect answers to an extra credit question. In other words, points are not deducted because the question is excluded from the assessment’s possible points. If a student answers extra credit questions correctly, it may be possible for the student to earn a score greater than 100% on the assessment.

Students can discern how many extra credit points are available on the assessment. While students are taking an assessment, they can identify questions designated as extra credit. Students can also filter the test to find extra credit questions if present.

Instructors may want to assess a student’s knowledge of visual content. The hotspot question type is popular for this type of assessment. This question type is also good for reducing the potential of cueing or guessing.

Hotspot questions present an image without any answer options for students to choose. Students must mark a certain area of the image that is within the area the instructor defined as correct.

Building on the initial hotspot question introduced in the 3900.52.0 release, we are adding two enhancements to this question type:

• A new polygon shape selector can be used to draw more complex shapes. 

• Improved keyboard controls. Instructors can now create and place new hotspot shapes on the image canvas directly via the keyboard.

In Original Course View, instructors can only create hotspot questions using a mouse. In the Ultra Course View, instructors can create the hotspot question using a mouse or keyboard. Students may answer hotspot questions via a mouse or keyboard.

Instructors and students need to see group memberships. In the past, there was not an obvious way for instructors and students to see the members in a group.

From the Course Groups page, users may expand a group set to see a list of groups. Now each group has a "Show Members" option. Group members are listed alphanumerically in a panel. Users may search for a specific group member. A future release will provide profile cards and options for messaging group members from the search results.

Note: Students see only the groups and members for groups where they have membership.

An accurate representation of course progress is key for both instructors and students. With this latest addition, any Ally alternative format accessed by a student will reflect in their presented course progress.

Students will: 

• See the progress indicator updated to “started” as they download an alternative format using Ally. 

• Be able to mark an item as complete after accessing any alternative format. 

Instructors will see the progress made by each one of their students based on access to the original file or an alternative format.

• Instructors want to ensure that they grade students’ work fairly and consistently. This can be especially challenging when evaluating student responses to essay questions. Instructors like to have a reference while grading. Now instructors can include a model answer for essay questions. Instructors and graders can see this when grading. 

• Students can see the model answer when reviewing their results if the test is configured to show correct answers. Students do not see the model answer when they take a test. 

• Instructors randomize test questions to improve academic integrity. In the past, instructors couldn’t randomize questions if the test contained text blocks, files, or images. 

• Now instructors can enable randomization when the test has text blocks, files, or images. The non-question elements are locked in place. The test randomizes questions between those non-question elements. 

• Instructors can also randomize questions in a test that contains page breaks. Questions randomize within their assigned page. If a page contains non-question elements, the questions randomize between those elements. 

• When there are pages for the test, instructors can also randomize page order. If instructors randomize the page order, they can also lock the first page into position. This is useful when the first page is a cover page or contains test instructions.

• Instructors need clear information about the status of group progress on an assessment. In the past, the submission view of assessments and discussions included two status columns: 

• Student status 

• Grading status 

• Now we also show both in the group submission page. This gives instructors greater clarity into group work status. We also separated the filter to allow compound filtering of student and grading statuses. The default filter shows everything. The filter resets every time an instructor accesses the submission view. 

• In the past an “all course members” recipient type appeared for all course users. Students could send messages to all course users, on accident or on purpose. 

• Now students can only send messages to: 

• all instructors 

• selected course members 

• Instructors can send messages to: 

• all course members 

• all instructors 

• all students 

• selected course members

• The Original Course View allows instructors to choose any color for text. This content may be difficult to read or not accessible. Ultra Course View has a curated set of text colors to ensure readability: black, gray, purple, blue, and green. During conversion, we remove unsupported text colors. This text becomes black.  

• This release adds several areas where text colors are corrected for readability: 

• Journals 

• Groups within group sets 

• Tests 

• We remove unsupported text colors during conversion from the following: 

• Announcements 

• Discussions 

• Assignments 

• Documents 

• Journals 

• Groups and Group Sets 

• Tests and Question Types