For the first break I braced myself for a Blackboard session on what’s coming in Blackboard. This was one of those sessions where 10-20 people sit in chairs at the booth. The big deal is that the Discussion Board is almost completely redone. Faculty and students will now be able to search in the Discussion Board within a date range, across forums. Peer review can be set up for forums so TAs or students can moderate or grade. It’s possible to set up e-mail notification of posts to a Bb Discussion Board (note to self: e-mail from the server is going to exponentially increase), and forums can now have “controlled releaseâ€, i.e. faculty can create a forum and make it available between certain dates just like other Blackboard content.
Blackboard has also integrated a discussion grader into the Discussion Board. This will replace the Building Block we’re currently using but the good news is the new discussion grader was deployed with the assistance of the folks who built the Building Block.
Break food was not good, but that’s no surprise. On to the next session.
