New Features in Blackboard - Spring 2020

Features in Blackboard that are new for the Spring 2020 semester or recently added to the KU Lawrence system.

Import media from Kaltura directly into VoiceThread

It is now possible to add media to VoiceThread directly from Kaltura.  Any recordings students or instructors have stored in MediaHub/Kaltura can be added easily to a VoiceThread:  

Learn more about where to find the feature, how to use it, and answers to common questions at VoiceThread's documentation site: https://voicethread.com/howto/media-from-other-services/.

 

Take attendance in Blackboard using Qwickly attendance

Record attendance, integrate records with the Blackboard grade center, and customize settings to fit your needs:

Learn more about how to get Qwickly Attendance up and running in your Blackboard course: https://blackboard.ku.edu/qwickly-attendance .

 

Auto generate Blackboard groups in merged courses

If you are an Instructor of a merged course in Blackboard, you can now auto-generate Blackboard groups based on the enrollments of the merged sections:

Learn how to get started using this tool under the "Auto Generate Groups" section of KU's Blackboard documentation: https://blackboard.ku.edu/users-and-groups

 

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Features added in the past year that you may have missed:

Audio/Video Feedback when Grading in Blackboard 

It is now possible to give audio/video feedback to students when grading in Blackboard. Instructors will need to use the Chrome or Firefox browser in order to use this function. Look for the microphone icon in any Feedback to Learner textbox toolbar:

Learn more about where to find the feature, how to use it, and answers to common questions at Blackboard's webpage: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Interact/Audio_Video_Recording.

 

Full Screen Grade Center

In the Full Grade Center instructors can expand the view of the grading area by clicking the 4 arrow icon in the upper right, located just under the 'Work Offline' button: 

This hides the left course menu and the top tabs to display more grade columns across the page. To return the left menu and top tabs, click the 4 arrow icon again. 

 

Download Annotated Assignment Documents

Instructors and students can now download a student's assignment document including the instructor's annotations as a PDF file.

A known issue with this feature is that Chrome's built-in PDF viewer may not show all the instructor's annotations. For best results, use a native PDF viewer such as Adobe Acrobat to view annoated documents.