Previous Updates to Blackboard SaaS

All updates older than 3 months are listed on this page.

March 6, 2025

  • Ultra Courses:
    • AI Design Assistant Image Generation: When an instructor generates an AI image, the image will now be saved so that the instructor can select a previously generated image. The saved images will clear when the instructor chooses an image or exits image generation.
    • AI Design Assistant Learning Module Generation: When an instructor uses the AI Design Assistant to generate learning modules, any learning module generated without an image will show with a blank placeholder image, instead of having no image space at all. Additionally, all learning modules generated will have a refresh button in the lower right corner of the image, so the instructor can select a new image if the first one does not match the module.
    • Release Conditions Panel: When setting a release condition based on date and time, instructors will now see the due date listed under the “Access from” box, to ensure they will make the item available before the due date.
    • Anonymous Discussions: Instructors and students are now warned that when a discussion is made anonymous, system administrators can make a user’s name visible. This is to address instances where the feature is misused, such as bullying, or if comments concerning the student’s or other’s health or safety. Administrators are required to fill out a form with information on when the reveal took place, who requested it, and the reason it was requested. After refreshing the page, the student’s name will once again be hidden from the administrator.
    • Discussion Usability Improvements: Improvements have been made to the discussion topics and discussion posts for better visibility. For instructors, the participation metrics are now displayed directly on the discussion home page, and a new Edit button is available directly from the post.
    • Pop-out rubric when grading an attempt: When an instructor is grading an attempt on an assignment with a rubric, they can now pop-out the rubric into another window for easier grading while reading the assignment. Additionally, the instructor can now choose performance levels in bulk by selecting a performance level heading, selected cells are highlighted in gray, a warning will appear if the instructor has the rubric in a pop-out window and tries to leave without saving, and a warning will show if the grade was overridden, with an option to remove it and regrade with the rubric.
    • Student Submission Review for Tests: Students will now see a different review page when reviewing a graded test. The new page will show feedback, test content, submission timestamp and receipt information, and the final grade for an individual attempt or for the assignment as a whole.
    • Show/Hide Calculation Columns: Instructors can now configure visibility for calculated columns from the item management menu within the gradebook. However, the Overall Grade cannot be hidden.
    • Course Access Improvements: Improvements have been made for how courses are accessed, including: the toggle switch for opening a course has been replaced with radio buttons labeled Open and Closed; and on the courses page, the Hide Course option has been relabeled to Hide Course from Me to better clarify it is for that user only, not for students.
    • Copy Banners: Instructors can now copy a banner from one course to another. This option can now be selected when doing a granular course copy, and is included when doing a full course copy.
  • Resolved Known Issues: 
    • Alternate formats not showing for attachments in assignment instructions
      • When adding images or documents into the Instructions area of an Assignment, the documents do not have the Ally Instructor Feedback or Alternate Format icons like other documents.
    • Embedded OneDrive read-only documents display an invalid message to students
      • When a OneDrive document has been embedded as read-only, students are presented with a message that indicates they can make changes.
    • Users are unable to log in with SSO on mobile app
      • Users may be unable to log in via the mobile app, or may be presented with a blank screen after a successful login.

February 6, 2025

  • Ultra Courses:
    • Learning Modules and Folders: Instructors can now change a folder to a learning module or a learning module to a folder when clicking on the item’s three dot menu.
    • Improved File Rendering: When viewing an uploaded document, such as a PowerPoint or Excel spreadsheet, the document will display in the original format, instead of having additional format changes.
    • Upload Images to Documents: When editing an Ultra Document, instructors now have a new Image block they can select to upload an image without needing to use the text box block.
    • Assessment access code updates: When a student is entering an exam with an access code, the access code will now be masked, similar to a password.
    • Improved Performance for Assignment File Submissions: When a student is attempting to upload a file right before the timer runs out, the file will continue and complete the upload process before the attempt is submitted. Additionally, if a file does not upload, students now have a re-upload workflow that will be presented to them.
    • Improvements to Discussion Avatar and Timestamp: When looking at a discussion board, the user’s avatar and date and time of submission are now at the top left of the submission, and are more easily recognized, instead of blending in with the submission text.
    • Enhancements to Course Groups: All groups that are created, including groups for specific assignments, will now be considered course-level groups, and can be created and viewed when creating the assignments. Additionally, instructors will now receive additional warnings if a group or group set is empty.
    • Excluded Attempts Removed from Needs Grading: When an instructor has excluded an attempt, that attempt will no longer be listed in the Needs Grading area, or included in any calculations.
    • Updates to the Assignment and Test workflows: In the August 2024 release, assignments and tests were separated out into two separate tools. During this update, all tests created prior to August 2024 that did not have any questions were converted to the Assignment tool. This does not affect any submissions, grades, calculations, or existing tests with questions.
    • Test Settings Updates: The following items were removed from the Settings panel on a test: collect submission offline, use grading rubric, maximum points, 2 grades per student, and peer review. This is to help separate the Assignment and Test settings and simplify the settings for a Test.
    • Improvements to Grading Interface: In order to optimize screen space and allow for a larger view of the student’s submission, the grading interface has been redesigned. The student’s name and the next and previous student arrows have been condensed and moved to the top bar, and the additional middle bar has been removed.
    • Improved Upload Grades Accuracy: Instructors can now upload grades and feedback for assignments, journals, and discussions, without having them stored as an override. They will now be stored as the grade for the attempt, which will remove the “New Submission” and “Override” labels, as well as remove the item from the Needs Grading list.
    • Improved Rendering in Bb Annotate: Files are now shown with the exact same formatting as they had when uploaded, instead of some files have the formatting changed or removed.
  • Resolved Known Issues:
    • Student activity report for assessment displays no activity details
      • When downloading the Student Activity Report for assessments, the file is empty and does not display any details.
    • Students cannot see rubric icon on assignments with multiple or unlimited attempts
      • When students attempt to view feedback for an assignment with multiple attempts or unlimited attempts allowed, they are unable to see the rubric icon.

January 9, 2025

  • Ultra Courses:
    • Content Block Updates in Documents: The content block no longer closes when an instructor collapses the editing menu. Additionally, the editor no longer closes when editing table settings. The undo and redo button are now available for File Uploads, and the default for an uploaded file is now “View and Download”.
    • Release Conditions Performance Options: When setting up Release Conditions on an item, there is now the option to choose “Attempt submitted” for an assignment or test as the release condition, instead of requiring a graded submission.
    • Column Management page and hiding columns in Gradebook: Instructors now have access to an item management page in their gradebook, which will allow them to show and hide columns from their view. If a column is hidden from instructors, it will still be visible to students.
    • Attempt grading and Override: When grading an assignment from the Grades or Grid View page, grades will now be stored as an attempt grade, and not as an override grade. This will remove the “New Submission” flag and remove it from the “Needs Grading” area.
    • Course Access in Course Settings: The location to make a course available or closed to students has moved to the Course Settings menu inside the course. Instructors will be able to change the course status to: Open – available to students; Closed – not available to students (previously “Private” or “Unavailable”); and Complete – course is visible to students, but no changes can be made by a student or an instructor, including grades.
  • Resolved Known Issues:
    • Error message displays randomly when accessing discussion forums
      • When an instructor accesses a discussion forum, sometimes an error message will be displayed when the forum is opened.
    • Grade override in gradebook leaves item marked as “Needs Grading”
      • In Ultra, when an instructor overrides an attempt with a grade, the attempt is still showing as “Needs Grading”, even though the overridden grade has been posted.
    • Grades not updating when viewing discussion attempts
      • When the instructor attempts to modify the grade in the user’s attempt by clicking on the view option in the gradebook, the grade reverts to its previous value after the page is refreshed.
    • Grades not visible in activity stream for discussion posts.
      • When an instructor posts a discussion board grade and the student views their Activity Stream, there is no link to view the graded discussion board on the Activity Stream page.
    • Grading journals via “# to grade” skips items
      • When an instructor attempts to grade a Journal using the “# to grade” option, once a student has been graded, the arrows to move to the next submission will become unresponsive for the first click, and the second click will move the user but skip over the next submission to the second one in the list.
    • Headings on Ultra Documents are not properly labeled in HTML code
      • When creating content on an Ultra document and using the Headers options, the header is given the incorrect heading code in the HTML code for the document. This can affect how the document is read via screen readers or other accessible devices.
    • New submission label remains after grading attempt
      • When creating an assignment with multiple attempts and setting the “Attempts to mark” option to “Last attempt”, only the last attempt should count for grading. However, if a student submits more than one attempt, and the instructor only grades the last one, the gradebook will still display a “new submission” label.
    • Questions with more than 170 characters in the question text moves the points possible pill
      • When a question has more than 170 characters in the question text, the points possible pill moves to the right in the gradebook and is inaccessible.
    • Second attempt appearance in the gradebook is delayed
      • When attempt exceptions are granted to students to submit a second attempt, the attempt will be delayed when it appears in the gradebook.
    • Sending messages through the Analytics tab fails to send email to instructor
      • When sending a message to students from the Course Activity tab within the Analytics page, the messages will be sent via email to the student, but not to the instructor.
    • Submission download breaks if file name contains “sessions”
      • When an instructor attempts to download a student’s submission file, and the file name includes the word “session” or “sessions”, the file will not download and an error occurs.
    • Unable to access discussion board rubric when grading on complete/incomplete schema
      • When instructors create a discussion board that is graded with a rubric, and the grade is set to display as complete/incomplete, the instructor is unable to access the rubric while grading.
    • Zoom meetings will not launch when accessing through the mobile app
      • When attempting to access a Zoom meeting via the Blackboard app, the Zoom meeting will not launch.

December 5, 2024

  • Ultra Courses:
    • Learning Modules with LTIs: Instructors who use learning modules and LTIs will now see the arrows in their student view when moving through the learning module LTI items. This will help with navigation within the module.
    • New post indicator for replies in Discussions: When a user views a discussion board, they will now see a “New” post indicator for both new posts and new replies to posts that they have not yet seen.
    • Link to attempt log in activity log: When viewing the activity log for a student, instructors will now see an icon that will take them directly to the attempt log for the assessment.
    • Late submissions updates: Instructors will now see a “Late” submission in the banner when viewing a submission that was submitted late. The text for the submission date has also changed.
    • Override indicator: Instructors who have overridden a grade, or graded on the assignment instead of the attempt, the grade will now indicate that it has been overridden. Additionally, the “Undo override” option has been added to the Discussion Board grading panels.
  • Resolved Known Issues:
    • Announcement view count does not increase when viewed by clicking email link
      • When an instructor sends an announcement and checks the “Send email copy to recipients” box to send as an email, if a student clicks on the email announcement to open within Blackboard, the view count will not change when they are redirected to the course.
    • Assignment instructions removed when accessing due date panel without saving
      • When creating an assignment and adding instructions, if the instructor clicks on the Due Date option to open the side panel without saving the instructions, the instructions will be removed when the panel opens.
    • Current grade displays incorrectly when using the letter grade schema
      • When viewing the current grade in a course where the grades are displayed as a letter on the mobile app, the student will see an “F” regardless of the actual grade in the course.
    • Decorative images disrupts JAWS or other screen reader navigation
      • When using a decorative image within Blackboard, Blackboard creates it as a button instead of an image, which will disrupt JAWS or other screen readers as they navigate through the page.
    • Inconsistent behavior in assessment due date countdown display
      • When viewing the assessment due date, the number of days, weeks, or months will display incorrectly and may omit the smallest number (i.e. 2 weeks and 1 day may display as 2 weeks).
    • Messages are failing to load via push notification
      • When attempting to access a new message via a push notification from the Blackboard mobile app, the message will not load and a blank screen or error message appears.
    • Screen Reader not correctly reading Ultra Document text
      • When a user is using a screen reader and is viewing an Ultra Document with iFrames, the content inside the iFrames will not be read.

November 7, 2024

  • Ultra Courses:
    • Ultra Document Block Resizing Improvements: Improvements have been made to the vertical resizing of a block within an Ultra document. This will help for blocks that are too tall to fit on one screen at a time or have multiple blocks along one edge.
    • Ultra Document Empty Indicator: When an instructor creates a block on an Ultra document but does not add anything to the block, Blackboard will now provide a line of text, only visible to the instructor, that the block is empty and to click on the block to activate and add content.
    • Skip Link to Content: There is now a “Skip to course information” bar added to courses that have a large image header on the content page within the course. This will allow users to skip directly to the first piece of content without having to scroll, and is especially helpful for users who navigate with the keyboard or have assistive technology needs.
    • Print Tests with Question Pools: Instructors can now print tests that have questions from a question pool. When printing a test, it will generate a new question list and answer key for each version printed.
    • Improvements for Assignment File Submissions: When students upload a file for an assignment submission, there are now improvements in how Blackboard handles the files, including: managing multiple file uploads and waiting for one document to upload before attaching another; file size limit notifications; and corrupted file alerts.
    • Discussion Board Replies: A reply to a discussion post will now be indented to better distinguish between an initial response and any replies to the response.
    • Editing Discussion Board Topics: Instructors will no longer be able to delete the Discussion Topic instructions. The only option will be Edit.
    • Download Student Activity Log: Instructors will now be able to download a student’s activity log while viewing the log. The log will be downloaded as a CSV and will only include the first 1000 events. If there are more than 1000 rows, additional filters may be applied within Blackboard and will apply to the downloaded log.
    • Changes to Batch Edit: Since the “change dates to a specific date and/or time” is the most popular option while editing items within the Batch Edit menu, it has been set to the default option.
  • Mobile App:
    • Updates to the Blackboard App Theme: To reflect Anthology Inc.’s rebranding, the Blackboard Learn App will now be known simply as the Blackboard App. In addition, the app will now feature a new name and app description, as well as a new app icon and splash page shown while the app is loading.
  • Resolved Known Issues:
    • Assignments with multiple attempts will not update when a new submission is made
      • When a student submits a new attempt for an assignment with multiple attempts, the gradebook will not automatically show the most recent attempt when the instructor opens the assignment.
    • Course settings menu does not work when on the groups tab
      • When an instructor is on the Groups page within a course, an clicks on the Course Settings menu in the top right, it will not open.
    • Journal feedback disappears upon grading submissions
      • When adding feedback to a journal entry and posting the grade, the feedback disappears when accessing the entry again.
    • Setting release conditions breaks when using scores with decimals
      • When an instructor creates a release condition rule based on a performance criteria, and the test selected for the criteria has a score containing decimals, the release condition rule breaks, and the instructor receives an “Oops!” error message.
    • Space added in front of content in tables during conversion process
      • When a course is converted from Original to Ultra, any table that has been created will have an additional space added before the content in each cell in the table during the conversion process.
    • Student activity report not showing student list
      • When an instructor views the student activity report, it will not load the list of students.
    • Student activity time in downloaded log shows in UTC
      • When an instructor downloads an activity report or access log for an assignment or tests, the time that is displayed in the downloaded log shows as UTC time.
    • Unable to add performance release conditions using overall grade
      • When setting a performance-based release condition, using the Overall Grade when it is displayed with points, an error messages will be displayed and the release conditions will not be set.
    • Undo button stops working in Assignment text editor
      • When an instructor is editing an Assignment and clicks outside of the text box, once they click back in, the Undo button on the text editor no longer works.

October 3, 2024

  • Ultra Courses:
    • Ultra Document updates: New updates to the Ultra Document item were added, including: returning the default file option to View and Download; keyboard navigation options when resizing blocks; and redo button and cursor function updates.
    • Knowledge Check updates: An update to the new Knowledge Check feature has been released that modifies the default difficulty metric to display as “–” until there is at least one attempt. Additionally, answer instruction text now reads “choose one or more correct answers” to align with the instructor’s ability to select more than one correct answer for the question.
    • Student Submission Review Page updates: New updates to the submission review page for students have been added, including: the ability for preview user accounts to view the submission review page; the ability for students to access offline submissions from this page; additional labels and other indicators for ease of access; and a “read more” option when viewing overall or attempt feedback.
    • Followed Discussion Emails: Users can now choose to have an email notification when using the “Follow Discussion” option.
    • Flexible Grading performance improvements: Improvements were made to the flexible grading panels, including faster load times when scrolling through the student list, posting grades, or viewing the rubrics.
  • Resolved Known Issues:
    • Unable to launch Cengage on iOS devices
      • When accessing a Cengage link on an iOS device using the Blackboard mobile app, the Cengage link won’t load.
    • Group discussions do not show new post icon except for group 1
      • When an instructor has group discussions, only group 1 (or the first group in the list) will show an icon for a new submission. Any other groups will not show the new post icon, even if there are new posts to read.
    • Screen Reader not reading attachment titles
      • When a user is using a screen reader, the title of an attachment will not be read as they navigate the page.
    • Screen Reader not reading sub-menus on homepage
      • When a user is using a screen reader, sometimes the screen reader will not read the three dot sub-menu when navigating through the homepage.
    • Sorting announcements by status column causes error
      • When sorting the announcements by the “status” column, an error message appears and the announcements are no longer accessible.
    • Ultra document content not visible when copying learning modules with force sequence enabled
      • When copying a Learning Module with force sequence enabled, the Ultra Document content is not visible to students, even if the document itself is visible.

September 5, 2024

  • Ultra Courses:
    • Knowledge Check in Ultra Documents: Instructors can now add a knowledge check when creating an Ultra Document. This can contain multiple choice and multiple answer, with automatic feedback. Instructors can also see metrics once students have completed the Knowledge Check.
    • Content Page Enhancements: The course content page has now flipped. The content for the course is aligned to the left, while the Instructor information and Details & Action tab is listed on the right. This also created greater content depth and structure when viewing content items.
    • Review Instructor Feedback: Students now have a new view when looking at their submission and reviewing instructor feedback. This provides information on the grade, any feedback or rubric items, and for assignments, any Annotate comments on their submission.
    • Assignment Feedback when Assignment is Hidden: Students can also now see feedback on assignments that are hidden by a release condition. This is currently only available for assignments.
    • Exclude Attempt when Grading: Instructors can now choose to exclude an attempt while grading student attempts for a test or assignment. These attempts will be labeled “Excluded” and will not appear on the Needs Grade panel.
    • Grading Overview Tab: Instructors can now see a new Overview tab within the Gradebook. This tab includes a list of what needs to be graded and what needs to be posted to students, and will allow quick access to any of these items for instructors to do their grading tasks.
    • Late Submissions that Need Grading: When a student has submitted a late assignment or test that has automatic zeros enabled, the indication that there is a new submission is clearer for instructors, and the 0 has been removed.
    • Student Activity Log: Instructors can now view a Student Activity Log when viewing an individual student in the gradebook. Activity items included are starting, saving, or submitting an assessment or discussion and accessing the course.
  • Resolved Known Issues:
    • Calculated formula answer range rounds to 3 decimal places
      • When calculated formula questions are used, the answer range always rounds to 3 decimal places, regardless of the chosen decimal places under the options for the answer set.
    • Editing a learning module takes more time to load than expected
      • When trying to edit a learning module, the page takes longer to load than expected.
    • Select All button in grade center messages feature does not work as expected
      • When an instructor is viewing an assignment and has sorted by “No Submission” and uses the “Select All” option to send a message reminder to students have not submitted, the message will show all students, regardless of submission status.
    • Submission fails to load on Bb Annotate
      • When an instructor attempts to view a submission that includes an uploaded document, the document will not load in Annotate for several days.
    • Trash can icon disappears in release conditions when item title is too long
      • When creating a release condition on an item with a title more than 35 characters long, the trash can icon is not visible.