New Blackboard Features!

There have been some exciting updates to Blackboard and we are so excited to share them with you.

Let’s have a drumroll please…our first announcement:

Manual Attendance Feature

THERE’S AN ATTENDANCE FEATURE!!!!!!!!!!!  Some of you have been eagerly waiting for it and we hope you’re going to like it.

Bad news first, for those of you hoping for the attendance code (which you had in ANGEL) for face-to-face classes, that is not a feature at this time. You will need to manually take attendance.

The good news, the attendance feature is tied to the gradebook, so, you don’t have to add columns. You can mark students  Present, Late, Absent or Excused. It’s got a beautiful interface and is easy to use. CAUTION!!! Unless you intend to use the Gradebook, DO NOT CLICK THE LINK IN THE COURSE TOOLS TO TURN IT ON. It will automatically add the Attendance column to the gradebook and it cannot be removed. It can be hidden, but, it doesn’t go away. Check out our blog article on this new feature.

Institutional Branding

We’re over-the-moon excited about the ability to add the eStarkState brand back into the LMS. It’s the small things that make our day!

Support for Large Monitors

Can you see me now????  We are thrilled to see the Bb environment FILL OUR SCREENS this week. Now Blackboard makes great use of whatever size screen you’re using. More room means less scrolling.

Gradebook Columns

Blackboard has improved the ability to read headings in gradebooks. We can actually read what’s in each column. Since we look at all of your gradebooks, we’re probably more excited about this improvement than you are!

eSS