Beta: Blackboard Native Cartridges
Gone are the days of enabling grade return in your Blackboard course assessment by assessment. When you import the native cartridge into Blackboard, it automatically brings in any discussions, file attachments, and assessments enabled with automatic grade return, with no additional steps required. Note this is a beta release; in case of technical issues, we recommend using the original generic cartridge. The generic cartridge does not support discussions, and it requires manual enablement of grade return, assessment by assessment.
The basic steps for importing a native Blackboard cartridge are listed below. For more detailed steps and video, see this article.
Step 1: Contact your Blackboard support team to confirm whether the Lumen OHM LTI Tool has been configured. If not, use this form to submit an LTI request, and give your Blackboard team advance notice that Lumen will be reaching out to configure Global LTI.
Step 2: In the meantime, prepare your OHM course. Configure the content, modify assessment settings, adjust questions, set due dates, and so forth. Once your course is finalized, you will be ready to integrate Lumen materials into your Blackboard course site.
Step 3: Download the export file from Lumen OHM. From your OHM course home page, click on “Export” under Course Items in the left navigation panel. Follow prompts to download the course export cartridge.
Step 4: Import the content into Blackboard using these instructions. Then click on any embedded OHM assessment in your Blackboard course shell to confirm its link to OHM.
Simplified LatePasses
Refer to this article for more detail about LatePasses and how to use them.
What’s changed?
Previously, LatePasses could only be used before the due date or, if specified in the assessment setting, within one LatePass period. These restrictions caused significant confusion, particularly when students tried to apply a late pass on the due date if the “within one LatePass period” setting wasn’t enabled. These restrictions have now been removed.
Great! How about an example?
Suppose Homework 1.1 is set to allow the use of 3 LatePasses and is due on Monday at 5 pm. The professor has kept the default LatePass length to be 24 hours.
Before:
If the professor selected “Allow LatePasses after due date, within 1 LatePass period”, a student would have to use their first LatePass by Tuesday 4:59pm. They could apply up to 3 LatePasses total to extend the assignment as late as Thursday 5pm.
Now:
A student can extend the homework at anytime before Thursday 5pm so long as they have enough LatePasses.
Unavailable assignments greyed out but visible
This feature originated with a great instructor request from Santa Ana College. They noticed students weren’t preparing for upcoming exams because no links were visible until the exam was available to take.
To alleviate this problem, instructors may now use a block setting for unavailable assessment links to appear greyed out with the available date displayed.
How do I use this feature?
This feature is enabled at the block/folder level. In the block settings, locate the “For assignments within this block, when they are not available” drop down option. Choose the option you prefer. Available options include:
- Hide
- Show greyed out before start date, hide after end date
- Hide before start date, show greyed out after end date
- Show greyed out before and after
Note: This feature does not control the visibility for LMS-integrated users. LMS integrated users should use their LMS functionality to control availability and visibility of items.
Improved Add/Remove question page
Now it’s easy to modify question points and default points in bulk from the page where you build assessments. In addition, we’ve tidied up the question management actions by placing them into a single drop down menu. Finally, the assessment table now shows a helpful metric: the average time students take to complete a question, based on system-wide usage. To access the Add/Remove question page for a given assessment, click on the gear icon next to the assessment and select “Questions”.
Misc Changes
Check out our Release Notes Log