These are the highlights of this month’s new and improved features in Blackboard Ultra that will be live Thursday, December 5. The most relevant updates are related to four key areas:
- Instructional design;
- Communication and collaboration;
- Flexible grading;
- and the Gradebook.
Instructional Design
Navigation Added for LTI and SCORM Items within Learning Modules
Instructors use learning modules to guide student progress through diverse types of course content. For easier navigation, students can now select arrows to the left and right of LTI or SCORM items to move through learning modules.
AI Design Assistant Rubric Generation Upgraded from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4o mini
Anthology regularly reviews the AI models used within the AI Design Assistant. New models are trained on more data and can complete a broader range of tasks at a higher speed than older models. Information in new models is more up to date, which makes their outputs more accurate. Also, new models are less likely to require multiple submissions to generate content. To benefit from these improvements, Anthology is starting to switch over the AI Design Assistant tools from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4o mini.
Communication & Collaboration
Discussion Enhancement: New Post Indicator
Anthology has added a "New" indicator that displays next to posts and replies that a user has not yet accessed. This helps direct engagement by making new discussion activity easier to find and access.
Flexible Grading
Improvements for late submissions
To help instructors quickly identify late submissions in the attempt banner, late submissions now have a Late indicator. Anthology also updated the wording from Submitted late <date> to Submitted <date>.
Gradebook
Grade override improvements
To increase transparency when overriding grades, Anthology has added an Override indicator to overridden grades on the Grades & Participation screen for Discussions. Anthology also implemented the Undo Override workflow on the Discussion grading interface, mimicking the Undo Override workflow in the Journal grading interface.
The full list of November updates is available on the Blackboard Help Center website.
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