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Blackboard Learn™, Release 9.1 – New Features for K12

Blackboard Learn, Release 9.1, is the second major release in Project NG. It provides both Blackboard Classic and WebCT clients with an exciting step into our next generation teaching and learning platform. Let’s take a deeper look at what’s new in Release 9.1 – with a focus on fostering active and social learning, enabling planning and productivity, enhancing monitoring and evaluation, enhancing district-wide efficiency, and facilitating professional development.

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Wikis

Fostering Active and Social LearningIn Blackboard Learn™, Release 9.1, there are exciting new social learning

and teaching tools that foster more logical, visually impactful, and active

learning opportunities for students, helping them stay connected to their

educational experience 24 hours a day.

Wikis enable active collaboration around course content and group projects. Students collaborate on a document using only a web browser. Teachers can see the process and evolution of the work and even participate. Furthermore, teachers can see each participant’s contributions and grade accordingly.

Promote Active Collaboration

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Mashups

Journals and Blogs

Easily integrate rich media learning content using Web 2.0 resources from Youtube, Slideshare, and Flickr. Teachers can deliver more engaging course content in a convenient and powerful way by searching, finding, and inserting in a few clicks. Blackboard has added an accessible wrap around the YouTube player to make it accessible to everyone.

This group space contains powerful tools to enable collaborative learning in the virtual classroom. In addition to collaborative learning, teachers can use groups within their course to facilitate differentiated instruction.

Integrate Visually Engaging Content

Facilitate Conversation and Reflection

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Blackboard Learn Toolbar

* Note: This feature requires licensing an additional product.

Blackboard Connect™

The integration of the Blackboard Connect* platform delivers directly to students’ mobile devices the alerts and notifications they need to better manage academic priorities and course deadlines. Students can stay informed of vital course-specific updates and deadlines through the familiar Blackboard Learn interface.

Keep Students Connected

The Blackboard Learn Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox enhances the browsing experience for students. It facilitates research using context aware decision support information rather than raw search results. Students can use the toolbar to discover resources using the Microsoft Bing Decision Engine. Combined with

this new way to search are notifications your students use every day from the Blackboard Learn software. Reach students with course updates where they already are – browsing on the web. Any time their web browser is open, they are connected to your school or district and getting notifications from classes.

Aid in Powerful and Relevant Searches

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NBC News Archives

* Note: This feature requires licensing and activation by the institution.

NBC News Archives* On-Demand enables teachers to fully engage students by bringing historical and current events directly into course material and classroom discussions. NBC News Archives On-Demand is now integrated with the Course Delivery and Community Modules of Blackboard Learn. Teachers can access 12,000+ pieces of professionally created educational multimedia content archived in dynamic collections, then

download video clips and embed them directly in the Blackboard course environment. Search the archives in multiple ways, including by subject area, related topic, or keyword. Play videos at full-screen when used in the classroom. Read full text transcripts. The archives contain news footage of historic and current events, critical analysis and mini-documentaries covering topics from early American history to the modern day.

Bring Real Events into Course Instruction

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Accessibility

Web 2.0 Interface

Blackboard is committed to delivering software that is accessible to everyone. Release 9.1 includes advanced accessibility options that are Gold Level certified by the National Federation of the

Blind for Non-Visual Accessibility. Blackboard has improved accessibility to enable a blind person to more effectively interact with the application.

This user experience creates and delivers effective content with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that teachers and students are used to from their daily online experiences.

Increase Accessibility

Drag and Drop

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Learner Notification

Promoting Planning and ProductivityEnable intuitive planning and instructional productivity with integrated

efficiency tools for teachers and organizational leaders to deliver a more

engaging student experience.

The Teacher Dashboard monitors student activity and progress daily by aggregating and filtering key information so students and educators can quickly and easily see what’s new and what needs attention through the lens of fresh activity. Teachers can easy send messages to students with reminders or comments if they see something of note on the dashboard.

Regularly Monitor and Communicate with Students

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Lesson Planning

Improve classroom instruction with lesson planning and organization tools that can be used as a guide or customized to meet individual instructional approaches. Simplify the process of developing lesson plans and incorporating content in blended and fully online environments, leaving more time to focus on instructional activities.

Blackboard’s new Lesson Plan feature enables teachers to create a structured lesson plan with distinct and customizable sections that provide a means of documenting information such as description, grade level, and delivery instructions. Teachers may also incorporate any kind of content type, learning object, or tool enabled in the course within an individual lesson plan. There is a high degree of discrepancy in schools, school districts, and states as to what information and details are

required in lesson plans. Therefore, the Lesson Plan feature has a great deal of flexibility built in to accommodate these variations. Each section of the Lesson Plan can be individually re-named, ordered, and organized by the teacher.

The Lesson Plan feature also enables teachers to select which lesson plan sections are visible to students, enhancing insight into classroom instruction for both students and parents, keeping key stakeholders connected in the learning process. This provides a means for teachers to include non-student facing instructional information such as instructions for delivery in the classroom, comments, and suggestions for use in the lesson while also including student-facing information such as learning objectives, materials needed, and student team assignments.

Simplify Class Preparation

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Active Release

Course Files

Blackboard makes it easy to tailor class curriculum and personalize learning based on the unique learning styles and needs of each student. Adaptive release enables the teacher to control the availability of content based on the user, the

group, or various types of performance criteria. These are just a few examples of how teachers can use these tools to personalized instruction and increase engagement and effectiveness in the classroom.

Course files eliminate redundancy and simplify the management of content updates. An in-course file storage structure makes it easier to keep track of documents used in courses, similar to the type of file and folder structure that is used on your PC. The new table of contents allows students to see and navigate the organization of the set of content on the same page as the materials. A new thumb nail view and drag and drop upload applet make it quick and easy to get files into Blackboard and to view the image files.

Create Different Lessons for Different Students

Manage Content at the Course Level

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Learning Modules

Improved Grading

Grading in Blackboard is more flexible and consistent, enabling grading to be done in line with the review process. You no longer need to go to the grade center to enter the grade. Now you can enter wiki, blog, and journal grades directly in the assignment and grade question by question or

anonymously. Overall, Blackboard has enhanced the Grade Center and made the management of grading easier so you can grade the way that works best for you.

Learning Modules offer a simple and intuitive means for instructors to organize and structure course content with hierarchical organization so students can navigate through content in a logical, sequential way. Overall, it is a great tool for both designers and students because it offers new ways to structure and navigate content.

Provide Intuitive Online Structure

Grade in Context with More Options

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Save Grading Preferences

Customize Your Grading View

The Grade Center has been enhanced in Release 9.1 to include a dynamic filter that enables an educator to instantly view grade data by selecting a category and status criteria. Using the filters, an educator can easily change the Grade Center view to show

all tests that need to be graded, for example. With just a few clicks, the educator can switch to view of all complete assignments. The filters are designed to enable an educator to instantly view the Grade Center data they need.

Develop a Personalized Workflow

Assessment Manager

The Assessment Manager now includes improved search, which reduces the amount of time needed to create assessments. The Assessment Manager includes new filtering and search features, multi-question selection, and a ‘staging area’ to easily peruse what questions have already been selected

to streamline the assessment creation process. Random blocks have been updated to display all of the questions that can potentially be shown to test takers so that assessment designers can better anticipate the student experience.

Create Assessments in Less Time

Educators with courses that contain a large numbers of students with many grade item columns in the Grade Center are faced with managing a high volume of data and information. Educators need ways to efficiently manage grading in Blackboard without having to scroll or multi-click their way to the task at hand. In Release 9.1, any Smart View can be designated as a “favorite” which

makes it instantly accessible from the class’s front page. Imagine a scenario of an educator creating a Smart View that displays students who are falling under a certain grade threshold. By designating that Smart View as a favorite, the educator can access it from the front page Control Panel and instantly view those students and immediately take the appropriate action.

Efficiently Manage Grading

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Course Level Standards Alignment

From their lesson plans, teachers can easily align course content to state standards to ensure students receive instruction in alignment with learning standards. The integrated lesson plan and standards alignment tools in Blackboard provide that critical educational insight into classroom instruction that is vital today.

Plan Lessons Aligned to Standards

Enhancing Monitoring and EvaluationProvide educational insight into classroom instruction with integrated

lesson plans, standards alignment and standards reporting.

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Course Reports

With Release 9.1, teachers can use Course Coverage Report to show how they are meeting the standards in their classes and identify any gaps in their curriculum. Data contained in coverage reports can be used to improve curriculum development efforts.

Identify Gaps

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Standards Importing/Updating

Release 9.1 allows districts to import state learning standards from each of the fifty states into Blackboard and make standards available at the course level for content alignment. Curriculum specialists can associate specific courses to a set of learning standards so that teachers have starting points to commonly associated standards.

The automatic update functionality reduces the pain of mapping curriculum to standards year after year. When standard sets are update by the

states, the mapping feature enables the curriculum specialist to map the new set of standards to the old set of standards and then automatically update the alignment to standards of learning objects across your entire Blackboard environment, preventing the need to re-align thousands of learning objects. Additionally, this ability to create a ‘map’ between any two standards documents that exist on the system enables cross-discipline maps to be created as well, such as for areas of study like science and math.

Make Standards Readily Available

Enhancing District-Wide EfficiencyDo more with less and drive district-wide efficiency with streamlined

processes and automated standards mapping.

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District Coverage Report

Customizable Instructor Roles

Institutionally, district administrators can run a series of reports that show content alignments for standards across multiple courses. District officials can easily determine if all curricular goals are being met, or if there are gaps.

Instructor roles may differ considerably across districts or schools so they need more flexibility and granular control over defining roles and permissions within the online learning environment. Blackboard provides an easy way to manage course or organization roles, with a specific focus on separating course design or teaching privileges. An important benefit is that administrators can create roles that are used only within courses or organizations.

Ensure Desired Content is Being Taught

Give Desired Access

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Content Management

Release 9.1 includes content management module enhancements that enable you to easily upload and manage content across courses and organizations.

Ease Management of Learning Content

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Professional Collaboration

Blackboard creates an online hub or space for teachers and administrators to connect regardless of time and distance. New Blackboard capabilities such as lesson planning, learning modules, course files, and course wikis allow districts and schools to create learning communities among teachers where they can share learning from PD courses, or fabulous lessons they taught that day. For example, wikis promote 21st Century skills and a

culture of collaboration among teachers through knowledge sharing and management. Wikis also drive collaborative participation in PD courses and groups while gaining more insight into individual contributions, and improving authentic assessment.

Give Teachers a Place to Share and Learn

Facilitating Professional Development Sustain and reinforce professional collaboration with productivity

and engagement tools, delivering organized and continuous

professional development.

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