Blackboard Changes Archive

October 6

Learn Version: 3900.50

Original Course Experience

1. Issue: Creating an Announcement containing a video and no text sent an e-mail that was empty.
   Status: Resolved.
2. Issue: When a Test with essay questions was aligned to a rubric, multiple copies of the rubric were created when:
   
   • the Test was copied
   • the Test was exported/imported
   • the question pool of the Test was copied
   Status: Resolved.
3. Issue: Tests with a conditional availability rule show the student a time limit different from the time set in the Test.
   Status: Resolved.
4. Issue: Student sees a group submission Assignment attempt that was deleted by the instructor and cannot submit a new file.
   Status: Resolved.
5. Enhancement: Setting categories and mobile specific categories were added to the mobile app to support effortless movement between mobile and desktop applications. Users with automatic updates enabled on their mobile device are not required to take any action. Users with automatic updates disabled on their mobile device must download the update.

September 1

Learn Version: 3900.48

Original Course Experience

1. Issue: Announcements containing a video without any accompanying text would result in an empty e-mail message being sent.
   Status: Resolved.
2. Issue: Assignments with file attachments containing an apostrophe in the filename displayed an error and were not submitted.
   Status: Resolved.
3. Enhancement: A side panel summarizes all comments in a list of annotations for inline grading. Clicking a comment will navigate to the location of that comment in the document.
4. Enhancement: Microsoft’s Immersive Reader, which helps students improve their reading, comprehension, and grammar skills, has been added as an alternative format for documents.

Ultra Course Experience

1. Issue: Assignments with file attachments containing an apostrophe in the filename displayed an error and were not submitted.
   Status: Resolved.
2. Issue: Not all students with accommodations were showing in the Accommodations filter in the class roster.
   Status: Resolved.
3. Issue: When the screen was maximized, Announcements would freeze and not allow scrolling.
   Status: Resolved.
4. Issue: The Due Dates tab in the Calendar did not show the due date for the last item in the list.
   Status: Resolved.
5. Issue: When entering text in the ‘Add Text’ option of a Test, the text was included in the downloaded gradebook as a test question column.
   Status: Resolved.
6. Issue: Selecting the ‘Add Text’ option in a Test that has multiple choice questions and is randomized, would gray out the Randomize answers option and display an error.
   Status: Resolved.
7. Issue: Group feedback was not visible to students when the instructor overrode the grade.
   Status: Resolved.
8. Issue: The ‘Next Page’ in the Gradebook would not load after adding a calculation to a gradebook item. 
   Status: Resolved.
9. SafeAssign Originality report was not available to a grading role other than Instructor.
   Status: Resolved.
10. Students could self-enroll in groups after the ‘Enrollment End Date’ had expired. 
    Status: Resolved.
11. Issue: Selecting ‘User Statistics’ for a student in the gradebook displayed the Average column as a percentage instead of an absolute value.
    Status: Resolved.
12. Issue: Overriding a grade for multiple students in a rubric of an anonymous Test to a value containing a decimal, and then undoing the override on one student, caused the other overridden values to revert back to their original value. 
    Status: Resolved.
13. Issue: Adding questions to a Test from a question pool did not allow the Save button to be clicked.
    Status: Resolved.
14. Enhancement: Ability to copy Rubrics from another course.
15. Enhancement: Ability to sort Test Question Banks by name, number of questions in a bank, or the last edited date.
16. Enhancement: Ability to reply to student discussion posts from the individual student grading page.
17. Enhancement: View a log of changes to non-posted grades in the Grade History.
18. Enhancement: No longer need to set a manually created gradebook item as Points in order to edit the maximum points.
19. Enhancement: Addition of timed Test notifications to reduce stress on students:
    • For Tests less than 10 minutes, there is no notification.
    • For Tests less than 1 hour but greater than 10 minutes, there will be a single reminder when 10% of the time remains.
    • For Tests longer than or equal to 1 hour, there is an additional notification when 50% of the time remains.
    • If a student has a time limit accommodation, a notification will appear when 10% of the extra time remains if the extra time allowed is greater than 10 minutes.
    •  If a student has an unlimited accommodation, there will not be notifications for the time remaining.
    NOTE: All notifications for time remaining will auto-dismiss after 20 seconds; however, a student can click the ‘X’ to dismiss the notification, if they wish.
20. Enhancement: To prevent inadvertent full course copying in the same course, the checkbox next to the course you are in is greyed out but can be selected.
21. Enhancement: An on-hover underline has been added to the course name and content item name in the Activity Stream to make it clearer where you are navigating.
22. Enhancement: A side panel summarizes all comments in a list of annotations for inline grading. Clicking a comment will navigate to the location of that comment in the document.
23. Enhancement: Microsoft’s Immersive Reader, which helps students improve their reading, comprehension, and grammar skills, has been added as an alternative format for documents.

Ultra Base Navigation Menu

1. Issue: When typing in the search bar of the Courses page, the courses refreshed; however, the search bar lost focus and you had to click in the search bar again to continue typing. 
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: Students enrolled in a child course would see the parent course id on the Grades page.
   Status: Resolved

August 11

Learn Version: 3900.46

Original Course Experience

1. Issue: The exported .xlsx file of a downloaded Course Activity Overview report displayed an error upon opening.
   Status: Resolved.
2. Enhancement: Instructor and Student mobile apps are consolidated and can be used for both Original and Ultra experience courses.
   NOTE: Support for the Blackboard Instructor iOS and Android apps ends in September 2022. Download the new app beginning August 8, 2022 to assure continued use.

Ultra Course Experience

1. Issue: When adding questions to a new Test, the option ‘Allow students to add content at end of assessment’ defaulted to Enabled.
   Status: Resolved.
2. Issue: For Tests that prohibit late submissions and do not allow students to add content at the end of the assessment, the student’s attempt does not save and close when they acknowledge the ‘Time is Up’ pop-up message. The student can still continue the attempt and the Submit Late button works.
   Status: Resolved.
3. Issue: For content copied from an Original course that contains date release rules, the dates cannot be edited.
   Status: Resolved.
4. Issue: Tests using Question Pools copied from an Ultra course do not contain the questions.
   Status: Resolved.
5. Issue: Enrollments on pages other than page one cannot be viewed when calculated columns are added to a gradebook.
   Status: Resolved.
6. Issue: Copying an Ultra course that has a folder or learning module that contains a Peer Review assignment produces an ‘Oops! Something went wrong’ error message.
   Status: Resolved.
7. Enhancements: Overall Grade supports an advanced calculation. To set up the overall grade, go to the Gradebook > List view > Gradable Items and scroll to the bottom.
8. Enhancements: New Question Bank features have been added.
   • Create new question banks
   • View and search for questions within a question bank
   • Add, edit, and delete all aspects of a question within new and existing question banks
9. Enhancements: Due Date exceptions can be added to specific students. Key considerations:
   
   • Due date exceptions support is for individual tests and assignments only
   • If an assignment or test does not have a due date, an exception cannot be set
   • If an instructor wishes to remove the due date on an assignment or test, they must first remove all due date exceptions
10. Enhancements: A Grading Status column has been added to the submissions page in the gradebook for Assignments, Tests, and Discussions to give a clear view of student progress.
11. Enhancements:  Student responses entered in the Content Editor of a Test are auto saved two (2) seconds after the student stops typing. The last time saved displays at the bottom of the assessment and auto updates. If there is a disruption in connectivity, a ‘Connection lost’ warning appears to inform the student that action is needed to re-establish the connection so their work is saved.
12. Enhancements: Exiting Student Preview allows the data to be saved or deleted. The three (3) dot and ‘X’ have been replaced with an Exit icon.
13. Enhancements: A LaTeX equation feature has been added to the content editor. These equations display as text in the content editor and when saved, render as images. The equationscan be edited in text format in the content editor or by using the Math formula option. Key Considerations:
    
    •  Content editors that have math editor option render also Latex equations.
    • Essay questions and the "Additional Content" section in Assessments do not have a save option in the text editor. In these areas, LaTeX equations will render as images after submission. Students can verify that the formula will render by opening the equation using the Math editor option.
    • Formatting such as italics or bold must be in the LaTeX code. Users can add the code formats in text or when editing using the Math editor. If a user chooses the bold format in the content editor, the image will render without that format.
      Example:
      • Code without format: $$axˆ2 bx c=0$$
      • Code with format: $$\style{font-size:72px}{axˆ2 bx c=0}$$
    • LaTeX equations are not rendered when they are inside code snippets. This is because LaTeX equations are treated as part of the code format.
    • Upgrading from the Original to Ultra course experience: LaTeX equations convert and respect the size limit and options of the text editor in Ultra. If the text editor in Ultra does not support math formulas, the LaTeX equations will copy as plain text.
14. Enhancements: Members can be added to Group Sets by importing a .csv file. Group members can also be exported to a .csv file.
15. Enhancements: Messages can be sent from Private courses allowing students to receive an e-mail from the instructor before the course is available to them.
16. Enhancements: Recipients of a Message will receive an e-mail copy.
17. Enhancements: Messages with more than one recipient will indicate whether the message will be sent as a group or private message.
18. Enhancements: Course task logs have been added to give the instructor the ability to view the conversion report, view/filter by task, and download logs. Course tasks include: 
    • Copy
    • Convert to Ultra
    • Archive
    • Export
    • Import
    • Restore
19. Enhancements:  All linked questions in Tests remain intact after the Test is copied.
20. Enhancements: User’s experience in the Blackboard mobile app and a web browser are the same.
    NOTE: The app needs to be updated on mobile devices.
21. Enhancements: Instructor and Student mobile apps are consolidated and can be used for both Original and Ultra experience courses.
    NOTE: Support for the Blackboard Instructor iOS and Android apps ends in September 2022. Download the new app beginning August 8, 2022 to assure continued use.

Collaborate Ultra Version: 22.14

1. Enhancement: The Engagement Insights metrics will refresh only when there has been a change.
2. Enhancement: Since the beta version of Collaborate powered by Amazon Chime was released, these more advanced features have been added:
   • Human captioning in sessions and recordings. View Captions in Collaborate
   • Engagement Insights. View Session Engagement Insights

July 7

Learn Version: 3900.44

Original Course Experience

1. Issue: When a Discussion Board had a rubric attached and a Post First policy applied, students could access the Grading Information section by using the navigation arrows which allowed them to see other people’s posts without first submitting a post.
   Status: Resolved.
2. Issue: Rubric Evaluation Reports didn’t contain rubric usage details.
   Status: Resolved.
3. Issue: When a user enrollment had a Disabled status, the Show All button in Adaptive Release: Advanced > Membership was not clickable.
   Status: Resolved.
4. Issue: When unchecking the New Content setting under E-mail Notifications of the user’s profile, the New Content setting remained checked.
   Status: Resolved.
5. Issue: Saving an Evaluation Rubric did not display the ‘Rubric Evaluation has been submitted’ message.
   Status: Resolved.
6. Enhancement: Ability to copy test question banks from Original to Ultra courses.
7. Enhancement: Math formulas as images will render in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format which will allow the user to zoom in or enlarge formula images without losing quality.
8. Enhancement: When a user’s profile is updated to add text guidance to describe the pronunciation of their name and an audio recording of how to pronounce their name, this information will display in the following course areas:
   • Group Assessments
   • Peer Review
   • Roster
   • Discussions
   • Messages
   • Gradebook
   • Groups
   • User profile
   NOTE: There is a known issue creating or playing pronunciation records in the Safari browser. Safari users will receive warnings about the issue in the interface.

Ultra Course Experience

1. Issue: When the grade for a group test was overridden, the feedback for the student was hidden.
   Status: Resolved.
2. Issue: When attempting to add images and attachments in a table, they randomly moved to a different cell after saving or after opening the table for editing.
   Status: Resolved.
3. Issue: Copying Content Items from one Ultra course into a Learning Module of another Ultra course caused the content to appear in the root of the course outline, not in the Learning Module.
   Status: Resolved.
4. Issue: Adding a new item to existing course content didn’t display the item’s icon but rather displayed non-functioning links.
   Status: Resolved.
5. Issue: A test submission containing an attachment that was set to ‘View only’ by the student could not be viewed or downloaded by the instructor.
   Status: Resolved.
6. Issue: The Overall Grade for a student with zero points was displayed differently in grid view (0%) and list view (--%).
   Status: Resolved.
7. Issue: Changing the release conditions and/or the number of attempts on an assignment for a student caused the student’s name to display as ‘…’ in the submission’s list for the assignment.
   Status: Resolved.
8. Issue: When unchecking the New Content setting under E-mail Notifications of the user’s profile, the New Content setting remained checked.
   Status: Resolved.
9. Issue: Saving an Evaluation Rubric did not display the ‘Rubric Evaluation has been submitted’ message.
   Status: Resolved.
10. Enhancement: Overall Grade supports points-based calculation. To set up the overall grade, go to the Gradebook > List view > Gradable Items and scroll to the bottom.
11. Enhancement: Ability to display the Overall Grade as points.
12. Enhancement: Prohibit backtracking in one-question-at-a-time tests.
13. Enhancement: Download grade history as a tab or comma separated file (.xls or .csv).
14. Enhancement: Change the points a student earns on an test question. Negative and positive value with up to two decimal points is supported.
15. Enhancement: When a student adds a filter to a test, a filter chip appears below the test from which any applied filters can be removed.
16. Enhancement: Graded Discussions and Journals now have a ‘Grade category’ settings panel.
17. Enhancement: The text ‘Choose at least one correct answer’ within the multiple choice question was confusing and has been removed.
18. Enhancement: Files can render inline in Course Content, Folders, and Learning Modules as:
    • View and download (default)
    • View only
    • Download only
      File types supported:
    • .pdf
    • .doc, .docx
    • .ppt, .pptx
    • .xls, .xlsx
    • .ods, .odt, .opd
    • .txt
      Image, audio, and video files will open in a large panel. Users can view or play back media in the browser:
    • .jpeg, .gif, .png
    • .m4a, .mpeg, .mp3, .ogg, .mp4, .flac, .wav
19. Enhancement: Blank pages will convert when a copy is done from an Original course.
    NOTE: If there is an attachment to the Blank Page with the ‘Display media file within the page’ option, the attachment may duplicate and will have to be deleted after the conversion is complete.
20. Enhancement: Messages will be authored and viewed on a large panel instead of a peek panel.
21. Enhancement: The LTI Item button name in the Rich Text Editor > ‘ ’ (insert content) has been changed to Content Market.
22. Enhancement: Ability to copy test question banks from Original to Ultra courses.
23. Enhancement: Math formulas as images will render in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format which will allow the user to zoom in or enlarge formula images without losing quality.
24. Enhancement: When a user’s profile is updated to add text guidance to describe the pronunciation of their name and an audio recording of how to pronounce their name, this information will display in the following course areas:
    • Group Assessments
    • Peer Review
    • Roster
    • Discussions
    • Messages
    • Gradebook
    • Groups
    • User profile
    NOTE: There is a known issue creating or playing pronunciation records in the Safari browser. Safari users will receive warnings about the issue in the interface.

June 2

May 12

Collaborate Ultra Version: 22.08

Original Course Experience

1. Issue: Pools report
   • If an attendee gets disconnected, their poll answers will be saved in the report
   • If the poll question or options are updated by the moderator, the poll report will reflect the update
   Status: Resolved
2. Enhancement: Amazon Chime, a new audio/video service, features higher quality video and application sharing will be released as a beta version. To enable in the Scheduler Session Settings, check Use AWS Chime for audio and video under Multimedia. These features are not yet part of this beta release
   • breakout groups
   • polling
   • large scale sessions (more than 250 attendees)
   • joining the session by phone dial in
   • not suitable for conducting sessions with accessibility requirements (including captioning)
   NOTE: Amazon Chime is being rolled out gradually in May and June
3. Enhancement: When the moderator shares a file on the board or whiteboard, session attendees can download the full document including
   • annotations, and
   • as a PDF file

May 5

Learn Version: 3900.39

1. Issue: When copying a course that had two or more items with the same label in the left navigation menu, all of the menu items beginning with the duplicate label and below were not created.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: The collapse/expand icons on the Control Panel menu were small and had low contrast which caused accessibility issues.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: An ‘Access denied’ error was received by instructors and students when trying to open the Portfolios Homepage tool link.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: When a student used the Chrome 91 or Edge 91 browser when taking a Test with Forced Completion and navigated away from the Test, they would not see the pop-up message ‘You recently left the test ‘Test Name’ without submitting it. It was automatically submitted for you. Contact your instructor for assistance if you did not mean to leave and submit your test.
   Status: Resolved
5. Enhancement: Add an Image Title to images in the Content Editor
6. Enhancement: Bb Annotate now has Undo and Redo options.
   NOTE: These new features do not apply to Comments. The new features will not be released during the update but will be released later in May.

Ultra Course Experience

1. Issue: Course copy
   • Duplicate user-defined gradebook categories
   • Unrelated data copied to the item in the gradebook
   • Titles in Original course content with custom font-colors displayed as an error in the Copy Detail menu
   • Groups deleted via the Batch Edit Delete option no longer remain in a hidden state in the course
   • Copy content into or from a course that is in Ultra preview mode
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: Conditional Release Test items were visible under Grades before the condition was met.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: A Link that contains '&section' in the URL is modified in a manner where the '&sect' portion of the URL is replaced with the symbol §.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: When an Assignment was created without text in the Assignment Content field, students were able to submit blank Assignments.
   Status: Resolved
5. Issue: When changing the visibility of an item in the Gradebook, the icon in the Gradebook changed but the Course Content outline did not.
   Status: Resolved
6. Issue: Long titles on a Discussion Board were not formatted and ran off the page.
   Status: Resolved
7. Issue: When a course was unavailable and had multiple instructors, the Last Access Gradebook column contained a value for students enrolled in the course.
   Status: Resolved
8. Issue: An ‘Oops! Something went wrong’ error was received when an instructor changed the visibility or due date of an Assignment or Assessment.
   Status: Resolved
9. Issue: Student receives a ‘Sorry! Your name isn’t on the list’ when clicking on a Group Assignment after another student in the group started an attempt and then left the group.
   Status: Resolved
10. Enhancement:Tests
    • Question filter – students can return to skipped questions and find essay questions
    • Unanswered question warning – the number of unanswered questions is displayed
    • Hide the timer – students can toggle the timer off and on during timed tests
11. Enhancement: The Weighted Overall Grade calculation now includes the ability to assign a weight to empty grade categories. There are options to auto-balance and lock weights you do not want to change.
12. Enhancement: To prevent instructors from triggering the submission of in-progress and saved attempts on tests and assignments, the Prohibit Late Submission setting 
    • due date cannot be changed to a date in the past when students have submitted attempts, and
    • if the due date has passed, the instructor cannot select the Prohibit Late Submission setting
13. Enhancement: Journals
    • Students may make unlimited entries
    • Students and instructors have improved navigation with pagination on the Entries page
    • Students and instructors can decide the number of items that appear per page
    • Instructors have a count of graded journals
14. Enhancement: The Blackboard session will timeout when the user is idle for over three (3) hours. A Session Ending Soon warning will appear at least six (6) minutes before the session times out. Some examples of a user working but considered idle are when:
    • authoring a Discussion Board post
    • authoring an Assignment submission in the text editor in Learn
    • creating a Content item
15. Enhancement: Bb Annotate now has ‘Undo’ and ‘Redo’ options.
    NOTE: These new features do not apply to Comments. The new features will not be released during the update but will be released later in May.

March 10

Collaborate Ultra Version: 22.04

1. Enhancement: Large session (more than 250 attendees) scheduling allows:
   • Sessions without an end date
   • Sessions with an end date that is more than 24 hours after the start date
   • Recurring sessions

March 3

Learn Version: 3900.34

Original Course Experience

1. Issue: The Date picker used the default server time zone rather than the user’s time zone.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: When an instructor had over 500 course enrollments and then dropped below 500 enrollments, notifications were no longer sent.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: The Rubric Evaluation Report did not contain the rubric usage information.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: When changing the correct answer on an Assessment, an error message was displayed.
   Status: Resolved
5. Issue: Exponential (Scientific Notation) formatting and trailing zeros were removed from the Answer Set values when creating calculated formula questions.
   Status: Resolved
6. Issue: Blog and Journal posts with images showed an ‘x’ in the post where the image should be inserted.
   Status: Resolved
7. Enhancement: Automatic grade release for add-on tools

Ultra Course Experience

1. Issue: The Date picker used the default server time zone rather than the user’s time zone.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: When an instructor had over 500 course enrollments and then dropped below 500 enrollments, notifications were no longer sent.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: When a new rubric was created in an Ultra course, and then immediately after, a new rubric is created and modified in a second Ultra course, the error ‘Oops! Something went wrong. Please reload the page.’ was received.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: When converting Original View courses to Ultra View courses, Journals didn’t open from the Gradebook.
   Status: Resolved
5. Issue: The Overall Grade column was not being calculated correctly.
   Status: Resolved
6. Issue: Notifications for Journals were not removed, so instructors could not tell when new posts were being made.
   Status: Resolved
7. Enhancement: Learning Module workflow improvements
   • Updated to display all settings in a peek panel. From the peek panel, you can
     • Name the Learning Module
     • Set the visibility of the Learning Module
     • Add an optional description
     • Apply forced sequence to the content
       NOTE: This option is no longer available on the Release Conditions panel.
   • Additional content can be added to the Learning Module when forced sequence is applied
8. Enhancement: Instructors can add Microsoft OneDrive files to
   • Course Content area
   • Learning Modules
   • Folders
     NOTE: You may need to sign in to your Microsoft account to view and select files.
9. Enhancement: In the student view, a sticky header has been added to Assessments and Assignments that include the assessment questions. The header displays
   • A progress bar
   • Number of answered questions out of the total number of questions in the Assessment/Assignment
   • Time remaining if the Assessment/Assignment has a time limit set
10. Enhancement: To help with reducing storage space, user-created export and archive packages will be automatically deleted after 30 days of creation. The user is notified
    • When creating the export/archive package
    • When the package is ready for download
    • In the course package list view for the course
      NOTE: Existing user-created course packages will be set to expire 90 days from the March 3 Blackboard update.
11. Enhancement: Automatic grade release for add-on tools.

February 10

Learn Version: 3900.32

Original Course Experience

1. Enhancement: Force Completion on a survey or test requires a time limit and automatic submission. This change was made to enforce the submission of incomplete or abandoned attempts.

Ultra Course Experience

1. Issue:The assignment submission receipt reported the timestamp of when the student started the attempt. This has been corrected to the timestamp of when the student submitted the attempt.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: Instructors received the error ‘Oops! Something went wrong’ when creating an assignment or test with greater than 21 matching pairs.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: Instructors and students received the error ‘Oops! Something went wrong. Please reload the page’ when trying to access group assessments.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: Edits to assignment feedback had to be saved before saving grade changes.
   Status: Resolved
5. Issue: When an instructor created a discussion and then viewed the Discussion Analytics, the text ‘Message all # Non-participants’ was repeated twice.
   Status: Resolved
6. Enhancement: Instructors can copy content from Original Experience Courses to an Ultra Experience Course.
7. Enhancement: Instructors may set both a due date and a time limit on an assessment.
   • Prohibit late submissions – Select this setting to enforce a hard deadline and disallow a late submission. In-progress and saved attempts will auto-submit at the due date. Students will receive a submission receipt via e-mail. Specified accommodations are still honored.
   • Prohibit new attempts after due date – Select this setting to prevent students from beginning a new attempt after the due date.
8. Enhancement: In the Assessment view list, the descriptive text read ‘Edit settings’ and in the Submission view, the descriptive text read ‘Exceptions’. Both texts now read ‘Add or edit exceptions’. The title of the peek panel has been changed from ‘Edit Submission Settings’ to ‘User or Group Exceptions’.
9. Enhancement: The user’s profile can be updated to add text guidance to describe the pronunciation of their name and an audio recording of how to pronounce their name (up to 20 seconds). In the Ultra Course Experience, the pronunciation and recording will display in the following course areas:
   • Group Assessments
   • Peer Review
   • Roster
   • Discussions
   • Messages
   • Gradebook
   • Groups
   • User profile
     NOTE: There is a known issue creating or playing pronunciation records in the Safari browser. Safari users will receive warnings about the issue in the interface.

January 6

Learn Version: 3900.30

Original Course View

1. Issue: When a user accessed grades through the Base Navigation menu, an automatic archive of the course could be triggered.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: Retention Center Missed Deadlines, Grade Alert, Activity Alert, and Access Alert pages only displayed half of the page’s information and truncated the remainder.
   Status: Resolved

Ultra Course View

1. Issue: When a user accessed grades through the Base Navigation menu, an automatic archive of the course could be triggered.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: When the name of a course module was changed or an assignment or test was moved from a course module to another location, the updated information was not reflected in real-time in the Activity Stream panel.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: The title of an assignment feedback recording displayed with a title of dialogs.collab_video.newRecordingLabel.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: Group Attempt feedback files could not be downloaded from the individual student’s tab and displayed a ‘500 – Access Denied’ error. 
   Status: Resolved
5. Issue: Student names were not appearing correctly in the gradebook when an accommodation was set. 
   Status: Resolved
6. Issue: When a course was copied, the Rubrics panel wouldn’t open on Journals. 
   Status: Resolved
7. Issue: The assignment submission start date/time was displaying on assignment receipts.  This has been corrected to display the assignment submission received date/time.
   Status: Resolved

December 2

Learn Version: 3900.28

Original Course View

1. Issue: Special characters were appearing in the subject of Original view course messages and a paperclip icon was displaying to the left of Status column header in the Sent messages folder.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue:  When a course title contained an ampersand and an announcement was created selecting ‘Send a copy of this announcement immediately’, the instructor received a message that the announcement was created but the e-mail was not be sent.
   Status: Resolved
3. Enhancement: Common preferences and custom stamps can be saved in the BB Annotate tool to be used when grading one submission after another. Your saved preferences and stamps will persist through all courses.
   NOTE: This feature will be available in December with no exact release date assigned.

Ultra Course View

1. Issue: The Discussion Board visible/hidden menu appeared with a scroll bar that didn’t have enough space to see the available options and the Discussion Analysis for graded discussions showed no information.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: When in student preview mode, the ‘Reset Preview’ text box was shown in white over white making the text invisible unless the user highlighted it. When selecting the ‘Reset’ button, the coursework for the student preview user was not reset.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: In a restored course, line spacing between a heading and paragraph in a document was affecting legibility.
   Status: Resolved
4. Enhancement: Common preferences and custom stamps can be saved in the BB Annotate tool to be used when grading one submission after another. Your saved preferences and stamps will persist through all courses.
   NOTE: This feature will be available in December with no exact release date assigned.
5. Enhancement: Point-based and point-range rubrics have been added.
6. Enhancement: When adding a time limit accommodation for a student, a percentage of extra time can be applied.
7. Enhancement: To meet accessibility practices and standards, a course banner image can be marked as decorative or an image description can be added.
8. Enhancement:  Course Group Sets can be created and used discretely to organize students based on things such as performance, interests, and adopted knowledge. The visibility of a course Group Set can be set to hidden on the Course Groups page. If the group set is hidden, the group self-enrollment option is disabled. Instructors can see the visibility status of Group Sets when applying filters in the gradebook grid view, setting up conditional release, and associating a Group Set to content.
9. Enhancement: To give instructors more tools for providing feedback on student quizzes, tests, and exams, LTI items, YouTube videos, and Cloud storage files are available in the question feedback text editor.

November 11

Learn Version: 3900.26

Ultra Course View

1. Issue: Needs Grading didn't take effect in an Ultra graded journal on the Grades and Participation screen.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: When an instructor tried to rename a file added to an Ultra assignment, a pop up titled "Close Without Saving?" appeared when navigating away from the page.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: When the search box was cleared in the gradebook grid view, the students (rows) and gradable items (columns) were filtered.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: When a due date accommodation was added for a student in the roster, the student’s name wouldn't appear in the list when adding users to groups or discussion boards.
   Status: Resolved
5. Issue: The discussion board froze when the user was enrolled in many courses.
   Status: Resolved
6. Enhancement: The course card image can be made visible as a banner in the course if the image size is at least 1200 x 240 pixels. From the Base Navigation > Courses (when in grid view) > 3 dots > Edit course image > toggle the pill to On. From the Course itself > Course Image > Edit display settings > toggle the pill to On.
7. Enhancement: A list of course faculty can be seen in the course on the left menu. Course faculty are defined as Instructors, TA’s, and Course Builders. Students can click on the envelop icon to e-mail the faculty member.
8. Enhancement: A course schedule can be added to display class meeting days, times, and location. When in the course, click Add Course Schedule in the left menu.
9. Enhancement: Progress tracking can now be turned on in a course at any time. If turned on after students have made submissions, participatory items submitted previously will be marked as complete and  non-participatory items will need to be manually marked by students.
10. Enhancement: Text editor Table options have been expanded to include:
    • Text style (Title, Header, etc.)
    • Alignment options (Left, Center, etc.)
    • Lists (Bulleted, Numbered, etc.)
    • Insert content

October 14

Collaborate Ultra Version: 21.18

1. Enhancement: Playback speed of a recording can be adjusted between a range of speeds (0.5x, 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x) with the default being 1x. This feature is located in the playback controls at the bottom of the recording window.

October 7

Learn Version: 3900.23

Original Course View

1. Issue: Calendar items that contained links to a third party tool displayed a permissions error.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: When a SCORM package was added to a course content item with a grade category of Test/Assignment and then a test with a release condition based on the performance of the SCORM content was added, the test did not appear for students.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: Instructors were required to log back in to Blackboard after accessing a third party tool and selecting the ‘Return to Learn’ button.
   Status: Resolved

Ultra Course View

1. Issue: In the instructor view, the help bubble icon on a discussion board disappeared when the instructor created and closed the discussion as well as when the discussion was again accessed.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: When adding content to a course by selecting the plus sign (‘+’)  then selecting create (‘+ Create’), a menu was displayed to the right. If the action was cancelled (‘X’), the content area didn’t refresh properly.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: Students couldn’t access feedback from the feedback icon in tests using Respondus.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: When a SCORM package was added to a course content item with a grade category of Test/Assignment and then a test with a release condition based on the performance of the SCORM content was added, the test did not appear for students.
   Status: Resolved
5. Issue: Instructors were required to log back in to Blackboard after accessing a third party tool and selecting the ‘Return to Learn’ button.
   Status: Resolved
6. Enhancement: After a student makes a submission in an Ultra course:
   • A submission receipt is e-mailed to the student.
   • A window with the confirmation number is displayed.
   • The submission receipt can be downloaded as a .txt file to be kept for the student’s records by clicking the ‘Download’ button.
7. Enhancement: The maximum number of columns and rows allowed in a rubric has been increased from 10 to 15.
8. Enhancement: Tables can now be added in the text editor with the exception of the below options which are NOT yet available:
   • Text style (Title, Header, etc.)
   • Alignment options (Left, Center, etc.)
   • Lists (Bulleted, Numbered, etc.)
   • Undo
   • Attachments
   • Insert content

September 9

Collaborate Ultra Version: 21.16

1. Enhancement: Groups created in a Blackboard course are now available in the course’s Collaborate sessions for breakouts. Instructors can use their existing course groups, as per the bullets below, to create breakout groups in advance to save time.
   • Original course – group sets (not standalone groups)
   • Ultra course – course level groups
     • NOTE: This integration will be released gradually from September 9 - September 13.
2. Enhancement: A ‘Browser soon unsupported’ warning will be displayed to users launching Collaborate Ultra in an old browser version. This message will not stop users from joining the session; it is meant to pro-actively inform users to upgrade to the latest browser version to get the best experience during the session.

September 2

Learn Version: 3900.21.0

Original Course View

1. Issue: Preview mode for the content editor was displaying a grey background. This has been changed to transparent for better readability of the contents.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: There were differences in color for certain HTML tags in the content editor between display and edit modes.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: The math editor was sometimes displaying overlapped formula symbols.
   Status: Resolved

Ultra Course View

1. Issue: When attempting to grade an assessment submission with a rubric and then clearing the rubric using the grading pill on the grading bar, the grading pill displayed as empty and colorless.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: When changing the way students were sorted in the gradebook for a course's discussion, assignment, test or attendance, students were sorted alphabetically by first name instead of by last name.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: In the Grade Centerof a course set as Unavailable, the Last Access column was showing students as if they had accessed the course instead of showing no activity.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issue: Automatic zero functionality wasn’t working for some content items with release conditions set.
   Status: Resolved
5. Issue: For the course announcements and instructor feedback features, users couldn’t use the recording option in the text editor.
   Status: Resolved
6. Issue: The math editor was sometimes displaying overlapped formula symbols.
   Status: Resolved
7. Enhancement: The assignment attempts screen has been widened to better display the content being graded. This includes a collapsible and expandable panel where users can navigate through tabs such as rubrics, feedback, and originality report. Users can navigate the submission view with different scroll bars to scroll up and down the submission content without affecting the side tab navigation or the header. Instructors can use rubrics to provide feedback on a specific part of the submission.
8. Enhancement: A partial credit option has been added for Fill in the Blank test questions.
9. Enhancement: The ‘Additional Content’ section for assignments and tests was always visible to students by default. A toggle has been added to allow instructors to show or hide the ‘Additional Content’ section.
10. Enhancement: E-mail styling enhancements have been made to the below notifications to include the course ID, the course name, and the reason for the e-mail.
    • New announcement
    • New message
    • Assessment overdue soon
    • Assessment overdue
    • Daily digest
11. Enhancement: Peer review assignments
    • When an instructor deletes a student submission containing peer reviews, they’ll receive a warning message showing a list of affected students.
    • When grading or viewing peer reviews, the submission from a student with a disabled or unavailable enrollment status will be shown as ‘Unavailable’.
    • Peer reviews started or completed for submissions made by a student with a disabled or unavailable enrollment status will be shown as ‘Unavailable’ and can no longer be accessed.

August 10

Collaborate Ultra Version: 21.14

1. Enhancement: The whiteboard formatting, usability, breakout groups, and annotation persistence have been improved. This feature will gradually roll out between August 12 and August 19, 2021.
   • Formatting - The pencil thickness, fonts and font size, shapes with color fill, arrows, and more have been added to the annotation tools. 
   • Usability - You can erase part of the annotations or clear all. There are multi-line text blocks, text wrapping, and safeguards before clearing all annotations. 
   • Breakout Groups - A file can be annotated in the main room and then shared with breakout groups. A breakout group’s annotated file can be brought back to the main room together with its annotations. 
   • Annotation persistence – Annotations made to the whiteboard, or on a file, are saved in the session. You can share something new, go to a new slide, or stop sharing. Select Clear Annotations to remove all annotations. A  multi-page whiteboard feature is now available.
     • NOTE: The new whiteboard doesn’t include a pointer but you can easily draw your own by using the Shapes tool (arrow, dot) and point to different areas of the whiteboard. 

2. Enhancement: The network indicator will show red only for the person impacted with a network issue instead of showing red for all attendees.
3. Enhancement: The language set as your browser’s default was used as the Collaborate language. You can now set a default preferred language that is supported by Collaborate in Session Settings > Default Language. The selection is remembered by the browser on that particular device for your next sessions.

August 5

Learn Version: 3900.19.0

Original Course View

1. Issue: Content editor toolbar settings such as font, size, color, and spacing were inconsistent. When existing content is selected, the content editor toolbar now updates to display the current font, size, and header settings.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: Text in a table cell remained left aligned even though a different text alignment was specified within the content editor.
   Status: Resolved
3. Enhancement: Original Course View - Files and media can be embedded in Tests, Surveys, and Pools using the Add Content button in the editor for:
   • Calculated formula: Question text
   • Essay: Answer text
   • Matching: Question/Answer pairs
   • Multiple Answer: Answer options
   • Multiple Choice: Answer options
   • Ordering: Answer options
   • Short Answer: Answer text

Ultra Course View

1. Issue: When copying a course that contained quotes in the custom alt-text descriptions for images, the assignments and assessments in the course appeared blank.
   Status: Resolved
2. Enhancement: Progress tracking can be enabled from the Details & Actions menu. This will allow students to mark and track their progress inside their course. The feature needs to be turned on before any student activity has taken place in the course (this includes student preview mode activity).
3. Enhancement: The course’s top menu iconology that appeared on the right will be replaced with a text based menu on the left. The menu will remain sticky and visible to users while scrolling down the page.
4. Enhancement: The Student Preview link has been removed from the Details & Actions menu on the left and placed at the top right of the course.
5. Enhancement: When in the grid view of the gradebook, multiple filters can be applied for variables such as users, groups, gradable items, and categories. These filters can be bookmarked and accessed later.
6. Enhancement: Instructors can add a link to any virtual meeting tool in a calendar event’s location field and students can launch the virtual session from their calendar.
7. Enhancement: Student Peer Review assignment submissions for each student can be reviewed and graded by the instructor on the gradebook page. Students can access submissions available for their review by going to the course calendar event and clicking the Start Peer Reviews button.

July 15

Learn Version: 3900.17.0

1. Issue: Original and Ultra Course View – When making a copy of a course that contained quotes in custom alt-text descriptions for images, the assignments and assessments in the course appeared blank.
   Status: Issue: Resolved

July 8

Collaborate Ultra Version: 21.12

1. Issue: Gallery view supports the display of 25 videos at once which can demand a lot from your network connection or device. Collaborate will monitor your experience and if the load is too much, the number of videos will automatically reduce to 4 and a notification will appear in the banner at the top of your screen. You can turn the full gallery view off to limit the videos to 4 from My Settings > Audio and Video Settings > under Video Quality Experience, uncheck Auto (recommended).
   Status: Resolved
2. Enhancement: The Date in the recordings interface was indicating the end date and time. This now reflects the start date and time of the recording.
3. Enhancement: A Chat profanity filter will replace inappropriate words with a series of stars. Offensive terms relating to race/national origin and gender identity/expression as well as derogatory slang for body parts or sexual acts are filtered. No such list will be complete and is likely to be over or under inclusive. To set the filter, go to My Settings > Session Settings > check Hide profanity in chat messages and end your current session. Start a new session to apply the changes to subsequent session recordings.
4. Enhancement: Some ambiguous emojis have been removed from the emoji picker in Chat.

July 1

Learn Version: 3900.17.0

1. Issue: Original and Ultra Course View – Users were directed to the Blackboard landing page when downloading files attached to Organization discussion boards.
   Status: Issue: Resolved
2. Issue: Ultra Course View – An automatic zero was set for assignments delivered late and an assignment that was never submitted was just marked as late, without the zero grade.
   Status: Issue: Resolved
3. Issue: Ultra Course View – When an instructor was grading an assignment, the page refreshed each time they moved between different sections using tab navigation.
   Status: Issue: Resolved
4. Issue: Ultra Courses, Organizations, and Gradebook – When using the Safari browser, the page would go blank when the zoom was below 100%.
   Status: Issue: Resolved
5. Enhancement: Ultra Course View – A Post All button is now present for manual grade columns on the Submissions page.
6. Enhancement: Ultra Course View – A question mark bubble has been added in the lower right of Ultra courses that offers links to Blackboard Help documentation, Chat Support to ask questions to a digital chat assistant with the resulting information previewed directly in the chat window, and Session Debug to obtain debug information about an issue encountered in an Ultra course session to include with your request for assistance.
7. Enhancement: Ultra Course View – In the Gradebook settings, instructors can change the Overall Grade to show grades by Letter (grade schema) or Percentage.
8. Enhancement: Ultra Course View – In the Attendance settings, there is an option to use attendance as a grade which controls the visibility of the Attendance columns for students and instructors in the gradebook.
9. Enhancement: Ultra Course View – For courses with a large roster, the Group Set configuration page allows instructors to paginate through students who aren’t assigned to a group and also offers a search for a specific student.

June 3

Learn Version: 3900.15.0

1. Issue: Original and Ultra Course View - The student's browser needed to be refreshed manually in order to show them exams that should have been visible based on exam settings.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: Original Course View - After a Learn user had disabled their profile image from view, other users were still able to see it as it remained publicly available.
   Status: Resolved.
3. Enhancement: Ultra Course View – Rubric feedback by criterion is available wherever rubrics appear.
4. Enhancement: Ultra Course View – Insert audio and video recordings in course announcements.
5. Enhancement: Original and Ultra Course View – Relevant changes in Peer Assessment submissions can be seen via the Activity Stream.
6. Enhancement: Original and Ultra Course View – Edit Peer Assessment review items in batches from the item’s ellipsis > Batch Edit. 

May 20

Learn Version: 3900.13.0

1. Enhancement: Original Course View - The last updated time/date stamp in the Full Grade Center view has been removed to improve performance. You can still see this information under Full Grade Center > Reports > View Grade History.

May 6

Learn Version: 3900.13.0

1. Issue: When trying to edit an Organization content item or file created with attachments, an error message was received.
   Status: Resolved.
2. Issue: When recipients were selected for an enterprise survey response period, there was no way to identify or exclude child sections of merged courses which caused some students to receive two copies of each survey.
   Status: Resolved.

April 29

Learn Version: 3900.10.0

1. Issue: When a Calculated Formula question was used in a test, if the answers used the exponential form (E-2, E-4, etc.), some correct answers were marked as wrong depending on the position of the decimal point. Also, the correct answer format field wasn't verified, students were able to answer a question with an incorrect format and the system would mark it as correct.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: A student could receive a past due notification for an on-time submission sporadically. Blackboard put in place proactive measures to monitor this behavior in order to fix it in a future release.
   Status: Blackboard put in place proactive measures to monitor this behavior in order to fix it in a future release.
3. Enhancement: More course tools added in the Content Editor > Add Content menu. Depending on the type of tool, either a link will be added or the resource will be embedded and rendered automatically in the Content Editor.

April 8

Collaborate Ultra Version: 21.06

1. Enhancement: The Whiteboard editing tools have been made easier to see.
2. Enhancement: The Clear Whiteboard tool icon is now a trash can to better represent that the tool clears the entire Whiteboard and not just a selected element. To delete just one element from the Whiteboard, select the item and press Delete on your keyboard.
3. Enhancement: The Remove Attendee option is colored red and moved to the last option in the Attendee controls menu. This change was made in order that moderators don’t accidentally remove attendees from a session when trying to mute them.
4. Enhancement: See more attendees with Gallery View. Moderators can see up to 25 videos at a time. With the Zoom controls, Tiled view, and Speaker view, moderators have greater control over how to view the attendees.

March 18

1. Enhancement: The Blackboard Banner integration has been updated to assist faculty with more efficiently obtaining last date of attendance/participation information, for students who have dropped your class, for the federally mandated attendance verification process required of all courses each semester. Students who have withdrawn from a course will now remain on the Blackboard course roster and in the grade center. Review the View and Hide Dropped Students tutorial to see the effects to the grade center and course roster.

March 4

Learn Version: 3900.8.0

1. Issue: Students were unable to view iframe content (i.e. YouTube content) in the “Notes” field in Contacts, Tasks, and Glossary entries.
   Status: Resolved
2. Issue: The Goal Performance Dashboard was failing for certain reports.
   Status: Resolved
3. Issue: In instances where rounding was required for a calculated formula, the number 5 was rounded down rather than rounded up for some values.
   Status: Resolved
4. Issues: When an instructor wanted to find non-participant users in Blogs or Journals to grade them with zero, the non-participants were not visible.
   Status: Resolved

February 25

Learn Version: 3900.6.0

1. Issue: Within the Content Editor, a user won't be able to use copy and paste to transfer images from other sources.  Blackboard made this change to address performance problems that arose with certain large or numerous images. 
   Workaround: The user can include images with the Add Content workflow.
   Status: Blackboard will review whether it's possible to reintroduce this capability in the future.

February 9

1. Issue: When a student is using Respondus Lockdown Brower for an online exam, short answer questions are displaying a pop up message that says “Question is unanswered” and the answer entered is not saved to the assessment.
   Workaround: Students should update Respondus Lockdown Browser to the most recent version (Windows 2.0.7.00; Mac 2.0.7.01). Follow the instructions to Check Which Version of Respondus that you currently have installed.

February 4

Learn Version: 3900.6.0

1. Enhancement: EAC Visual reporting tool updated to V 5.29.122 to correct a .jsp file error identified with the Blackboard update to version 3900.0.0. No assessment data will be lost from prior semesters and the update will only impact the tool where the assessment reports are run, not the Blackboard courses or scoring rubrics.
2. Issue: When an instructor added content to a discussion board thread which contained an iframe, the iframe content was not visible to students. 
   Status: Resolved

February 2

Learn Version: 3900.6.0

1. Enhancement: Zoom integration for Blackboard and TechSmith. Create Zoom meetings within your Blackboard courses and save the recordings to your TechSmith library, where you can apply closed captioning, quiz questions, or discussion questions. Access the tutorial from our Instructor Training and Resources page under Course Tools Tutorials > Creating Virtual Meetings > Create a Zoom Meeting in Blackboard, or simply type Zoom into the search field. A student tutorial is available on our Student Training & Resources page. 

January 7

Learn Version: 3900.4.0

1. Issue: Blackboard Grade Center header row has increased in height. 
   Workaround: Grade center column names must be 15 or fewer characters. To make this adjustment, use the Grade Center Name field as indicated below:
   Full Grade Center > Column Header drop down menu > Edit Column Information > Grade Center Name field > Enter a shortened column name of 15 or fewer characters > Submit
   Status: Expected Resolution Summer 2021 

No updates

November 5

Learn Version: 3900.0.0

1. Enhancement: Content Editor Improvements