Release Notes for 3500.5 (December 6, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
Fixed Issues:
- Users saw an error when downloading an annotated PDF with comments. Downloads now include a summary list of comments.
- · When a student attempted to access an unavailable course in the Ultra experience, the date was recorded in the Performance Dashboard under “Last Course Access.”
- When a user attempted to access Organizations in the Ultra experience while using a touchscreen device, the page would display an error.
- When the Attendance tool was set to unavailable or inactive at the system level, instructors may have encountered error messages in the gradebook.
- Optional data wasn’t consistently included in Grade Journey extractions using REST.
- When an administrator attempted to move a user from one child course to another, the user enrollment wouldn’t change successfully.
- Students may have had trouble accessing the activity stream due to conflicting backend logic regarding grade columns and due dates.
- Special characters in custom Ultra locales weren’t displaying correctly.
- Course reports weren’t enforcing the date format for the system’s chosen language pack.
- Some devices displayed misaligned numbers for options in multiple choice, either/or, and true/false questions.
- Based on user feedback, we’ve updated the activity stream messages regarding student achievement and activity in courses. The new messages aim to reduce confusion and be more encouraging.
- The Availability Override option didn’t work as expected when a start date wasn’t specified. Students with this privilege can now access courses with or without a specified start date.
Release Notes for 3500.3 (November 1, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
- In the Original Course View, users designated as Observers were unable to view files added to the course through the Build Content > Add File workflow. We fixed the issue.
- Attachments to course messages in the Original Course View resulted in the Tomcat temp directory disappearing, which led to other areas of Learn malfunctioning. We fixed the issue.
- When an instructor attempted to grade a group assignment using a rubric and the language pack used commas to designate decimal places, the grade would display inconsistently. We fixed the issue.
- In the Original Course View, pattern matching questions with incorrectly formatted regular expressions in the answer were marked wrong. We fixed the issue.
Release Notes for 3500.0 (October 4, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
Course page changes include:
- Delegated grading lets an instructor share grading responsibilities by assigning course members to grade sets of submissions. Grading and feedback from more than one grader can promote reliability, improve consistency, and remove bias. The instructor can reconcile grades and settle on final scores after the graders have completed their assigned submissions.
The ability to reconcile grades was previously limited to instructors and users who were granted the permission by an administrator. In this release, instructors can grant this permission to graders. The Can reconcile grades option appears when the instructor delegates grading. Instructors can choose to grant the permission to any or all graders who are delegated submissions.
More on Delegated Grading in the Original Course View
- When an instructor reversed the decision to ignore an attempt in the Original Course View, the message displayed on the screen was unclear and didn’t indicate the workflow. We’ve updated it to say Attempt marked as Not Ignored.
- When a user edited a test question in the Original Course View, some options in the text editor didn’t display correctly. We’ve fixed the issue.
Release Notes for 3400.11 (September 6, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
Course page changes include:
- Users were accustomed to downloading annotated files when Crocodoc handled inline file rendering. With the switch to New Box View, this capability wasn’t available and highly requested. Blackboard listened and developed the ability to download annotated files using the New Box View. In this release, both instructors and students can download certain file types (DOC, DOCX, PDF) with annotations as an annotated PDF. Students can download the annotated file after their submission has been graded.
Visit Inline Grading and New Box View Update on the Blackboard Community for more information and a video demonstration
- Multimedia is essential in many mixed-mode and online courses, and poor performance can lead to a frustrating user experience. To help speed the delivery of online media, such as video, we’ve added configuration options for administrators to control content delivery through signed URLs. Signed URLs allow content to be delivered directly and securely from cloud storage, which provides faster transfers and requires fewer resources to run on the system. A signed URL is equivalent to the actual file after it’s delivered to the browser.
Release Notes for 3400.9 (July 5, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
Course page changes include:
- Addition of a quick drop down for quick past-term navigation
- Original Course View label added to all Original courses
- Original courses descriptions are now available from the expanded course card view
- Term sub-listings are now displayed on the current courses page to let users scan quickly
More on how terms affect the Courses page in the Ultra experience
Release Notes for 3400.7 (July 5, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
You can now view maintenance items in Behind the Blackboard. Our Known Issue articles provide information for individual bug fixes, and may include bug descriptions and which Learn versions were affected. You can filter bug fixes by SaaS release for easier navigation. View the 3400.7.0 maintenance issues on Behind the Blackboard.
Release Notes for 3400.5 (May 31, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
Improvements to User Privacy in Accordance to General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR)
Blackboard is committed to protecting the privacy of all users. Due to changing regulations globally concerning use of data and privacy, including the European Union General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), this release includes updates that impact user experience.
Miscaellaneous Updates
- We've fixed an error that appeared when an instructor attempted to create an assignment using a Portfolio template in the Original Course View
- The number of points possible for an assessment in the Original Course View was inconsistent when a rubric was applied. This issue has been resolved.
- When students uploaded multiple attachments to Self and Peer Assessments, only the first attachment was displayed. This issue has been resolved.
- On the Goal Performance page, the overall progress for a goal was incorrectly aggregating the performance on aligned course items. This issue has been resolved.
Release Notes for 3400.3 (May 4, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
Course Page Display
The Courses page in Ultra is a simple, quick way to access all of your courses, including those in the past or in the future. But is it really that simple if you're enrolled in a lot of courses?

In this release, we've enhanced the Courses page to work for instructors and students who are enrolled in a small or large number of courses. Improvements include:
- A new search bar lets a user quickly find one key course without scrolling through all of their courses.
- Course cards now occupy the full width of the list so you can easily read the full course name, instructors, and other key information.
- The Courses page now include pagination for longer lists to improve load speeds and prevent information overload.
- Users can now add courses to a Favorites list for quick access. Favorite courses appear at the top of the course list.
- Courses in the Original Course View appear with a grey course card. Ultra course cards contain colors.
Explore the courses page from the instructor perspective
Miscellaneous Changes
- In both Ultra and Original courses, when instructors first access the attendance feature, they’re able to select Add Attendance and add an attendance column after attendance records are generated. In the Ultra Course View gradebook, instructors can delete attendance if no attendance records exist.
Release Notes for 3400.11 (April 6, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack.
- Attendance in the Original Experience now supports Internet Explorer 11.
- When a course Collaborate room is in session, an indicator appears on the Course Content page to let others know the room is in use.
- Content items in the Original Course View were unexpectedly moving their position in a list after being edited. This issue has been resolved.
- Some students who had been removed from an Original course were receiving notifications regarding group activity in the course. This issue has been resolved.
- When upgrading Blackboard Learn, the Mobile Building Block’s environment setting was reset and caused issues for users searching for courses via mobile apps. This issue has been resolved.
- After an upgrade, the scrollbar in the Grade Center appeared on the left side of the screen and obscured information. This issue has been resolved.
A special note from Blackboard Product Management
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery - v3300.11.- 9 March 2018
As we move into 2018, we are thinking about and developing our teaching and learning products toward the greater good of a holistic, next generation digital learning environment through the lens of three critical, unifying product themes: academic effectiveness, learner engagement, and education insight. By focusing on these themes, we will unify the development of our products to empower excellence in teaching and learning, inspire genuine interest, attention, and interaction in the learning process, and enable continuous improvement through accurate and deep understanding of the teaching and learning process.
In the Learn SaaS 3300.11.0 release, we focused our development and design on academic effectiveness, learner engagement, and education insight. You’ll see below that we’ve also aligned our feature list in to groups based on value and benefit to you and your users.
Clear multiple choice selection
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3300.11.0 | Release to Production 9 March 2018
Original Course View
Students are now able to clear a selection from multiple-choice questions. This lets students avoid a penalty when they’ve made an initial selection and negative points are associated with answer choices.
Miscellaneous updates
Blackboard Learn SaaS Continuous Delivery v3300.11.0 | Release to Production 9 March 2018
Original Experience, Ultra Experience
- We've made indexing improvements to help speed up the migration from Crocodoc to New Box View.
- Previously, instructors using the Swedish language pack in the Original Course View were unable to edit text questions. This issue has been fixed.
- In the Original Experience, date selectors broke when a user accessed Blackboard Learn using a browser set to Swedish, Danish, or Spanish. This issue has been fixed.
- In the Ultra Experience, when a user saved content in the editor that included multiple breaks to create white space, the editor automatically removed some space. This issue has been resolved.
Release Notes for 3300.08 (February 2, 2018)
Blackboard has released notes on its latest service pack. Please remember that Elmhurst University uses Ultra Experience with Original Course View.
Grading Group Discussions
To support instructors who design assessments using groups, we've added the ability to assign grades for group discussions. Instructors may want to use discussion groups to help students feel more comfortable conversing in a course because fewer people are involved. Group discussions can also help students feel freer to speak their minds or encourage students with opposing viewpoints to respectfully make their points.
Instructors can now assign grades to groups in a discussion. Assign one grade to the whole group or change an individual group member's grade if you feel their contribution earned a grade different from the group.
Miscellaneous Updates
- When a student received a 0 score for a graded item, it appeared as negative on the My Grades page in the Original Course View. This issue has been resolved.
- In both experiences, users who requested a new password weren't obligated to enter a new password when navigating to Learn using the recovery link emailed to them. This issue has been resolved.
- When exporting a course from the Ultra experience, some course IDs weren't appearing in Firefox. This issue has been resolved.
- After upgrading to the 3300.0.0 release, the Default Course View option was reset to Original Course View. This issue has been fixed.
- The following Crocodoc to New Box View issues have been addressed:
- Inline comments were appearing as HTML.
- Students replying to instructor comments received an error message regarding session expiration. The vendor has addressed this issue.
Release Notes for 3300.06 (January 12, 2018)
Institutions and instructors want to track attendance for various purposes, including at-risk detection, federal financial aid and accreditation compliance, and to support instructor pedagogical preference where being present is a component of a course grade.
Now, all gradebook columns (online and downloads) and My Grades support up to five decimal points, aren't rounded and are consistent for all display types (score, percentage, letter grade). This new improvement relies on JavaBigData for all calculations, increasing consistency in edge cases where Java methods may have rounded or calculated differently.
We've enhanced the content editor to use more intuitive iconography and organization. Use the options in the menu to format text and paragraphs. You can also insert links and images using a simplified workflow. This new editor will be introduced to other areas of the application over the next few releases.
More on targeted notifications in the Ultra experience
The Ultra experience includes a new content editor, which is being introduced to certain areas of the application with each new release. Starting with this release, you can use the Insert Video option to insert an embedded video directly into the updated content editor. Simply paste the video source, add alternative text, and save – the editor automatically embeds the video so it appears alongside the other content you include. Students can watch the video within the same window, without having to navigate to the video's host site.

Instructors can now grant an additional attempt for scenarios when the student needs one and the prior attempt can't be cleared because it is in an anonymous state.
To improve the user experience on larger screens, the Ultra interface now spans the entire browser window. Previously, the Ultra interface was restricted to a maximum width to ensure consistent appearance and behavior. Now, users can increase the amount of screen real estate the Ultra experience occupies, if they prefer.
Within a group assignment or test, group members may want to communicate with each other about the questions, division of labor, or to review each others’ contributions. For institutions who use Collaborate, groups can use a standing Collaborate session to interact in real-time if the instructor has allowed conversations on the item. Now, when students enter the group Collaborate room, they each have presenter privileges to let them take advantage of more features, such as white boards and application sharing.
More on presenting in a Collaborate session
-
Miscellaneous updates
- In some environments, when attempting a test or assignment with math equation images, students were unable to view the image. This error was due to the image not being stored in the appropriate permanent storage location and has been resolved.
- When changing course availability in the Ultra experience, the padlock icon was difficult to visually distinguish as open or closed. The padlock icon has been updated to more clearly show the open or closed state.
- Some error messages have been updated to provide more context for users. For example, empty title or message fields in Targeted Notifications say Please type a title or Please type a message respectively, instead of simply Required.
- In the Original Course View, users who connected to and browsed content from McGraw-Hill and returned to Blackboard Learn were unable to exit the course. This issue has been fixed with the improvements made to LTI launch return behavior.