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Blackboard Learn 9.1 – Q4 2015 Update

UCA will be updating to the latest version of Blackboard Learn in December 2016 (after the fall 2016 semester). This update includes the following main features.

New Features

  • Goal Performance Dashboard – A competency-based education Building Block to map goals to courses within Learn. The Goal Performance Dashboard evaluates evidence of competencies individually, allowing for true measurement of mastery.
  • Grades Journey – Grades Journey integrates your institution’s Student Information System with Learn. Grades Journey allows you to exchange grade information between two separate systems.
  • Grades Reporting – multiple bug fixes
  • PowerSchool SIS Integration – As part of the innovative classroom, SIS Central two-way integration is now available for PowerSchool customers who license Blackboard Learn 9.1 October 2014 release or higher. With this release, Blackboard’s SIS Central will provide bi-directional integration between all Blackboard Learn deployment options and the PowerSchool Student Information System. The Blackboard Learn PowerSchool Integration provides a hands-free, seamless synchronization of users, classes, enrollments, assignments, and grades between Blackboard Learn and PowerSchool.
  • Notifications – Certain clients may have experienced performance issues and outages when common notification queries were processed on their servers. Learn 9.1 Q4 2015 addresses many of these issues.
  • Announcement Date Restriction Default – When creating an announcement, “Not Date Restricted” is now selected by default.
  • Escaping Special Characters – When a user uploads a file to Learn and the filename contains special characters (such as / \ : ? * ” | ), the system replaces the special character with an underscore ( _ ).
  • Reply-to Header – This release fixes an issue with email sent from Learn. Some email clients do not use the reply-to header of emails sent by BbLearn to populate the “To:” field when the user replies to an email. As a result, some students were confused when they received email from do-not-reply@ instead of their instructor’s email address.
  • Content Folders – A hotfix is available for clients who applied the Cumulative Update 3 (CU3) for Learn 9.1 October 2014 and are experiencing difficulty accessing content folders within their system.
  • Browser Support – Learn 9.1 now supports the Microsoft Edge browser. Some new browser releases no longer support NPAPI plugins. Without these plugins, some Learn features may not render correctly.
  • HTML5 Support – The Content Editor now supports HTML5 Audio and Video playback in Chrome and Edge browsers.
  • WebEQ Conversion – ANGEL and WebCT Vista packages will convert WebEQ match equations to WIRIS.
  • Discussion Threads – Users can navigate from thread to thread without having to return to the main Discussions page.
  • Discussion Boards – Forum descriptions are read on the Create Thread page. This improves accessibility for users with screen reader technologies.
  • Assessments – When creating a hot spot question, an Image Alternate text box is now available. This improves accessibility for users.
  • Content Editor – The default heading size for all of the embedded headings has been increased so they are properly read in both the view and edit state in the Content Editor.
  • Other bug fixes and security updates

For the full list of updates, see Blackboard’s official update page.