What Can Blackboard 6.2 Do For You?

If you liked Blackboard version 6, you’ll love version 6.2. The new version of the popular UNH course management system, which went live Aug. 7, contains features that make it easier for faculty to create Blackboard courses, and easier for students to use them.

Although the Blackboard interface will not look much different to faculty, students, or staff, there are some exciting new tools embedded in it:

WYSIWYG Editing: WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. This Word-like tool bar lets you control font, text style, and color, add bullets and numbering, and change indentation and underlining in all Blackboard textboxes. WYSIWYG editing makes it easy to create outlines and bibliographies without uploading separate documents.

Spell Checking: This tool now appears in the toolbar for all text boxes. Like other word-processing spell checkers, it provides suggested corrections and a replace/replace all option.

Course Glossary: Create course-specific glossaries accessed through the navigation menu. The glossary items are displayed alphabetically, indexed, and can be imported from other documents.

Course Messaging: Enables quick email-like exchanges to single or selected students without leaving the Blackboard frame.

Tool Linking: Add communication tools to any course content area. Put threaded discussions inside any folder to keep topical content together and make it easier to find.

Quick Edit: Go straight to any content item to change it without going through the control panel.

But there’s more. “While there are always great new features included in Blackboard upgrades,” says Mark Yacovone, manager of the Instructional Development Center, “we are always trying to improve Blackboard in ways unique to UNH.”

Faculty have repeatedly asked for an easy way to combine courses or sections within one Blackboard site. “With this new release,” says Yacovone, “we hope to streamline that process by creating a Combine Courses option in the Tools section of the faculty Control Panel. This will allow you to request that multiple courses or sections be combined, without leaving the Blackboard frame. You will also have the option to either hide or show the original sections, giving you great flexibility in how you communicate with students across sections and courses."

“We hope this enhancement will be ready by the opening of classes. And we hope it will be the first of many such customizations prompted by feedback from UNH faculty and students,” he says.

“This version of Blackboard may not look much different, ” says Terri Winters, director of Academic Technology. “But it has added functionality that is critical to the future development of MyUNH. Specifically we will be able to assign people multiple roles within the Blackboard portal.”

For instance, a faculty member may be an associate professor in the College of Liberal Arts here in Durham, and teach at UNH Manchester. A student may be first-year student, an honor student, and a student in the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture.

“The ability to assign multiple roles,” Winters says, “will allow us to direct specific information to community members depending on the role or roles they are assigned in the portal.”

Two information sessions to demonstrate the new features will be held in Dimond Library Room 521 Thursday, Sept. 1 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., and Wednesday, September 7 from noon to 1 p.m. Register online at http://www.unh.edu/blackboard/training.html.
Questions and suggestions? Contact Mark Yacovone at mark.yacovone@unh.edu (2-3629).