October Updates to Blackboard

Each month, Anthology releases feature updates for Blackboard. These enhancements to ultra courses were added to our production system on Thursday, October 5:

SafeAssign Direct Submit:
Now, instructors can use the Direct Submit option in Ultra courses. SafeAssign appears as an instructor tool in Books & Tools.

Partial credit auto-distribution for correct answers for Multiple Choice questions:
In the past, instructors had to enter a value for partial credit percentage for each option. Now, partial credit is auto-distributed across correct answer choices. This distribution provides efficiency and saves instructors’ time. Values can still be edited.

Sorting controls for manually added gradable Items:
Instructors can now use sorting controls on the grades page for manually created items. These controls enable sorting in both ascending and descending order.

Send Reminder from Gradebook list and grid views:
Instructors may want to send a reminder to students or groups who haven’t yet made a submission for an assessment. To make this easy, a “Send Reminder” option has been added to items in the Gradebook.

Anonymous comments in Bb Annotate (This enhancement is also available in original courses):
To enhance anonymity, graders can now post Bb Annotate comments without disclosing their names. Instructors have the option to mark inline comments as anonymous when creating them or even after comments are added.

Copying grading schemas from course to course:
Instructors can now copy individual grading schemas from Ultra and Original courses to other Ultra courses.

And more! Detailed information is available on the Blackboard Help site.

OWU Sponsoring Organization/Office: Information Services
Contact: David Soliday at helpdesk@owu.edu