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University of Tennessee

About ITC

Newsletter: Winter 2007

Out with the Old, In with the New


Online@UT Upgrades with several new features
Discussion Board Visual Text Box Editor Assessment and Gradebook backpack other new features

The latest Online@UT (Blackboard) upgrade was completed over the break. As part of this upgrade, you’ll see several changes and new features. Following is a brief summary of what you can expect after the upgrade.

Discussion Board

The discussion board tool has been completely rewritten in version 7.1. New features include:
  • Discussion board forums and threads are integrated with the gradebook.
  • Discussion board participation statistics are integrated with the Peformance Dashboard. Instructors can see the following for each participant: total posts, date of last post, average length of post, and minimum and maximum post lengths.
  • Discussion board forums can be moderated.
  • Discussion board post "star rating"(Peer Review).
  • Discussion board threads can be subscription based, providing participants with e-mail notification of new posts.
  • Discussion boards can be grouped into collections, which can be sorted and filtered.
  • Discussion board group users may create their own discussion threads instead of having to wait for the instructor to create a forum in the group area.

Visual Text Box Editor

The Visual Text Box editor, a built-in HTML editor, has been upgraded in version 7.1. It has previously been available only to PC users. Certified operating systems and browsers are:

Windows Operating Systems
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
  • Mozilla Firefox 1.0
  • Netscape 8.0
Macintosh Operating Systems
  • Safari 2.0
  • Mozilla Firefox 1.0
WebEQ and MathML tools in the Visual Text Box Editor have been enhanced.

Assessment and Gradebook

Assessments may now be set to allow a specific number of attempts. All attempts are displayed in the gradebook, and instructors may determine how the assessment is scored: last attempt, first attempt, highest score, lowest score, or average of scores.

Additional enhancements include:
  • Ability to mark individual assessment items as extra credit.
  • Customized assessment feedback options.
  • Self-assessment options for students.
  • Individual test and survey import/export.
  • Automatic generation of an assessment submission report (printable).
  • Ability to set gradebook to exclude individual grade(s) in overall score.

Backpack for Blackboard

Want to take Blackboard offline? Backpack allows course content, announcements, calendar items, and tasks to be downloaded to the Blackboard Backpack Client. A new version, expected December 2006, will provide two-way synchronization. Keep an eye out for more information in January 2007!

Other New Features

  • Spell check added to e-mail, glossary, and assignments.
  • E-mail includes Course ID in subject line.
  • Attach multiple files via e-mail.
  • Addition of simplified Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese to available languages.