HelpDesk >> New Features and Enhancements for WebCT

Printable View

Firefox Support Firefox 2.0 is now an officially supported browser.

Student Contributions The Web Links and Media Library tools have been enhanced so that instructors have the option to let students contribute to their own Web sites and library entries to the course. For example, students can contribute relevant articles or share some of their favorite resources. With student contributions, students are more engaged and everyone benefits from the collective knowledge in the class.

Peer Review The new Peer Review feature in the Discussions tool allows students to rate one another's posts based on criteria set by the instructor, promoting active engagement and quality interactions. Instructors can create custom linear rating scales for students to rate their peers' posts. Alternatively, instructors can associate a Grading Form with the discussion topic that students can use to provide their peers with richer feedback. Instructors can choose to make ratings anonymous and control whether students see ratings for all posts or only their own posts.

Class Blogs Instructors now have the ability to create Class Blogs in the Discussions tool, giving their students new ways of expressing themselves and collaborating with peers online. Students can casually read their classmates' entries or jump into the discussion by posting entries and comments of their own. Blogs provide a great way for students to stay connected and share ideas.

Journals Journals, in the Discussions tool, provide a private space where students can reflect on their experiences, chronicle their learning, or record their reactions to a class lecture or discussion. Journals are designed so that instructors can automatically assign a journal to each student and then efficiently review the entries made. By changing a setting, student journals can be shared with the rest of the class.

Roster All users enrolled in a course can use the new Roster tool to view the personal profile (including an optional photo) of all instructors, teaching assistants, and students enrolled in their class. In addition, the Roster tool displays all study groups in the course so that everyone can quickly see who belongs to each group. Students and instructors can share their personal interests and extra-curricular activities with the class to foster community building and promote social networking.

Enhanced Goals Tool The Goals tool allows designers to create, organize, and present the learning goals of the course to their students. Instructors can associate the goals with materials from the course so that students can click any given goal to see a list of all course content and activities that will help students attain that goal. The Goals tool makes it easier for students to understand what's expected of them and how individual activities contribute to achieving their competencies.

Date Rollover With the new Date Rollover feature instructors and designers can streamline term-to-term transition by automatically updating all dates for the items in their course. All content and learning activities, such as assignments, discussion topics, and assessments, can be simultaneously set forward by a specified number of days. Instructors can then make date adjustments to individual items through a centralized screen that is easy to navigate.

Grading Forms With the new Grading Forms tool, instructors can specify multiple grading criteria for a learning activity and define performance levels for each element of the criteria. The instructor or designer can create one or more grading forms in a course and associate the form with assignments, discussions, or Grade Book columns. Grading forms let instructor provide very clear performance expectations to students, as well as objective guidelines for any other graders in the course. Grading forms are easy to grade and students get much richer insight into their performance - far beyond grades alone.

Easier to Use Calendar The Calendar tool has been improved to enhance overall usability. The calendar now includes clearly marked tabs that make it easier to switch between day, week, or monthly view at any time. A mini-pick-me calendar appears on the right to facilitate navigation in the week and day view. In addition, instructors can now create links to learning modules directly inside the calendar.

Greater Flexibility in Discussion Management The Discussions tool has been improved to provide instructors more options and flexibility for efficiently managing student discussions. Instructors can now change many of the discussion settings midstream. For example, an anonymous discussion can be changed to non-anonymous midway through the discussion, making all posts non-anonymous after the cutoff . Instructors can better moderate a discussion topic to restrict students from posting or replying to the specific topic. When creating a gradable discussion topic, instructors can now determine if they want to automatically release the grades to the student.

Assessments: Tailored Instructions and Instant Feedback Designers and instructors can add their own custom quiz instructions to the top of an assessment, providing students with unique and tailored directions. If the assessment is delivered one question at a time, the instructor can choose to display the instructions only for the first question or for all subsequent questions as students advance through the assessment. In addition, students taking a self test can now receive immediate feedback after answering a question without having to first complete the entire self test.

More Efficient Learning Module Editing Designers can now quickly update all titles of the table of contents inside a learning module through a single screen where they can edit each title efficiently. Items in the table of contents can be expanded or collapsed for easier navigation.

Media Library Enhancements Media Library entries now display a thumbnail image if an image file is attached to the entry. In addition, workflow improvements have streamlined the process for adding entries and deleting multiple entries at once. Instructors can optionally grant students the ability to contribute their own entries into a collection, promoting greater student engagement and active learning.

Web Links Categories Instructors can now organize web links into categories for improved organization and presentation to students. In addition, instructors can optionally give students the ability to contribute their own annotated web links into a specific category, promoting greater student engagement and active learning.

Streamlined Enrollment Management Administrators and Course Instructors can now easily enroll themselves into any role by simply clicking the Enroll Me button when viewing the enrollments of any course, section, or any other organizational level. From this screen, administrators can also view and edit a user's access status as well as modify their user information. User queries now display results pre-selected for enrollment to reduce the number of clicks needed to enroll users.

My Profile The new My Profile feature lets all users manage a personal profile that can be shared with other users. Once the administrator defines which information can be included in a profile, this tool lets users make edits to the information and decide which fields to make public (if the administrator allows it). Users can even upload a photo of themselves to add a personal touch. Students and instructors can view one another's personal profiles from the PeopleLinks? and Roster tools in the course.

My Tool Options With the My Tool Options feature, users can customize their course by setting personal preferences that determine the behavior of tools and other elements of a course. For example, users can set a preferred calendar view (month, week, or day), choose their preferred font size and type, control their Who's Online visibility status, or even select a different language from the system default (if the language plug-in has been installed). Many more settings are available that allow users to create a more tailored learning environment.

Re-branding to Blackboard Learning System Application Pack 1 for Blackboard Learning System - CE Enterprise and CE Basic (Release 6), Service Pack 1 includes the first phase of re-branding to reflect our new product names. The following were re-branded in this service pack:

• WebCT? e-Pack was re-branded as e-Pack in the database
• user interface
• installer interface
• online help
• print documentation

IMPORTANT: Except for the Installation Guide, there are no content changes in print documentation. If you are installing this service pack as a new installation, you must refer to the appropriate version of the Installation Guide.

The following were not re-branded in this service pack:

• URLs

RESOLVED ISSUES

Back Up and Restore

• When a section was being restored, students were blocked from creating, sending, and viewing Mail messages. This issue has been fixed.

• If a user changes an administration setting but leaves a required field empty, a descriptive error message is now displayed.
• Performance has improved when a learning context is upgraded on a server with many courses and sections.
• Several cases where constraint violations interrupted garbage collection have been addressed.

• Deleting a restored section that contains a proxy tool now works correctly.
• Restoring Vista 3 Service Packs 3, 4, and 7 backups containing proxy tools and tracking data can now be restored from file when the option to restore as a new section with tracking data is selected.
• Several cases where external or shared files caused problems with restoring backups have been addressed.
• Clicking the Backup button will no longer redirect users to the institution login screen.
• In some cases, restoring a backup may fail due to a Numeric Overflow error. This issue has been fixed.

• A system exception no longer occurs when students access imported assessments.
• Images or internal links in assessments imported from CE 4.1 (MP) now appear
• correctly.

• In Assignment Dropbox, there is now a View by control in the Published tab, allowing users to select the assignment for which to view submissions.
• Clicking Last Comment and View Previous Comments in an assignment submission, now displays the correct content.
• An exception no longer occurs when the maximum number of characters is exceeded in the assignment Comments text box.
• Assignments using numeric or rubric as a grading scheme now display grades correctly when used as an artifact.

• Discussion topics containing messages can now be copied from one category to another.
• When Section Instructors grade a blog or threaded topic from within the topic, the course menu no longer disappears.

• The date format specified in International Settings is now reflected in the date entry fields throughout the product.

• From the Build tab, designers can now view and edit the sign-up sheet when they click the sign-up sheet link in Course Content.

• The Course Preview Page is now copied to sections that are assigned from a template based on a section backup.

• When students create a Calendar entry, they can now enter a web link.