• Ultra Grades Show as Complete When Automatic Zero Feature is Enabled - Article #76376
• Automatic Zeros no longer update the GRADEBOOK_GRADE.LAST_OVERRIDE_DATE column.  This has been fixed. - No Article

• Images From Original Question Pools Become Attachment Links Only After Importing Into Ultra - Article #76239
• Tests with Random Blocks Using More than one Pool Become Corrupt After Copy - Article #76257
• Restricted Archive Privilege Prevents Download of Export Zips - Article #76346

One Question at a Time 

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Course Builders

Careful assessment design is important. Instructors desire flexibility in question presentation. For example, an instructor may select a one-question-at-a-time presentation so that students:

• Focus on a single question at a time without feeling overwhelmed by all the questions
• Enhanced browser performance for student access on older computers
• Enhanced experience for students in remote areas with poor network connections
• Have an improved user experience when test taking from a mobile device, where touch scrolling can lead to mistakes

Instructors may enable this setting, if desired, from the Test Settings panel. This option also appears in Assignment Settings when the assignment includes questions.

For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Granular Content Copy within the current Ultra Course

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Course Builders

Course copy is an important feature for building out and updating courses. Instructors desire flexible approaches to support how they design and build courses. To better equip instructors, we have added a way to copy content within a single course. This new workflow supplies a way to duplicate content for quicker course building. Instructors can access the Copy Content menu to search for the current course. From there it is easy to navigate content and select content to copy or duplicate.

Supported content types include:

• Folders
• Documents
• Tests, including group tests
• Assignments, including group assignments
• Links to websites
• SCORM packages
• Discussions and Journals
• Learning Modules and individual items within a Learning Module

For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Student Feedback Display Controls

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Course Builders

Supporting academic integrity and protecting assessment content is important. Instructors need controls and flexibility for sharing assessment results with students. This new choice allows the instructor to decide when assessment results become available.

If selected, the instructor defines when the student can view their assessment submission:

• after submitting the assessment,
• after the instructor posts the individual student's grade for the assessment,
• after the assessment due date,
• after the instructor posts all the grades for the assessment, or
• on a specific date.

When not selected, students cannot view:

• assessment content such as the title, videos or images, text sections,
• the assessment questions,
• answers,
• automatic feedback, or
• the additional content section at the end of the assessment.

Scenario examples:

1. Scenario. An instructor is delivering a high-stakes exam. Students should not be able to return to the exam questions after they submit their answers.
    
2. Scenario. Students take an exam asynchronously. The instructor wants students to review the questions, answers, and automated feedback after all grades are posted.

For instructors and administrators: The default setting is that students can view the assessment results after submitting. Deselecting this option hides the student submission view. Other feedback options included in the side panel remain visible. This includes the overall assessment feedback, final grade, and originality report (if applicable).

Prevent Grades from Auto-Posting 

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Graders

The option to control if a grade auto-posts supports academic integrity. This new option gives control to the instructor to post grades at the right time. When selected, an assessment grade appears to the student as soon as the attempt is graded. To prevent students from viewing grades, the instructor may de-select this option. The instructor may view this new setting in the assessment settings and assessment preview panels. The workflow to post grades manually is still the same.

When this setting is de-selected, the instructor will need to manually post grades. Students will see ‘not graded’ in the grade pill until the instructor posts results.

When instructor selects the option to auto post, the post grades button will not appear.

For instructors and administrators: The default setting is that grades are auto posted. Deselecting this choice requires the instructor to manually post grades for the assessment.

Calculated Numeric Question Type

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Course Builders

Robust and diverse questions better support assessment across various disciplines. The calculated numeric question type is important for math and other STEM courses.

This new question type supports the following:

• Students may enter a number as an answer. The number can be an integer, decimal, or scientific notation. The largest value supported is 16 digits.
• Instructors may combine text and mathematical formulas in the question.
• Instructors may define an answer range. The range value can be an integer, decimal, or scientific notation. The largest value supported is 16 digits.
• The answer field validates only numeric digits.

For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Download Assessment Results 

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors

Instructors may need to download test results for external analysis and evaluation. External analysis is important for supporting course quality and assessment efforts. Furthermore, institutions often want compiled assessment data for accreditation and program review activities.

With this release, instructors may download assessment results in the Ultra course experience. Instructors may download assessment results from either the gradebook grid or list views.

When downloading results, the following options are available:

• file type - Excel spreadsheet (.xls) or Comma Separated Value (.csv); the default is .xls
• format results by student or by question and student; the default is by student
• download all attempts or only attempts included in the grade calculation. The instructor defines which attempts to include in the grade calculation in the ‘Grade attempts’ settings. The default is to download only attempts used for calculation.

The downloaded report includes the following information:

• Student name
• Username
• Questions
• Answers
• Grading status
• Any content the student may have included with their submission

For instructors and administrators: We improved the readability of the downloaded data by removing extraneous HTML tags. This is the same for reports downloaded in the Original Course View and Ultra Course View.

When using anonymous grading the downloaded results exclude student and score details until grades are posted for all students.

Instructor Reporting for Submission Receipts 

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Original Course View
Impact: Administrators, Instructors, Graders

Learner support is a key part of exemplary course building and instruction. To better enable instructors to support students, we have expanded submission receipt functionality. For each attempt a student makes, the instructor can search for a receipt confirmation number. This helps instructors find student submissions when extra verification is needed. Using this receipt confirmation number, the instructor can find the following information:

• assessment name
• assessment grade
• the number of attempts for an assessment the student who submitted the assessment
• the size of any file included with the submission; this allows the instructor to insight into what a student has attached for marking
• submission date and time stamp

This information appears on the peek panel for all submitted attempts.

The receipt number and size of any attached files appears at the top of the submission view.

For instructors and administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Code Snippet - Content Editor Improvements

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students

Supporting collaboration and assessment across diverse disciplines is important for students and instructors. This includes computing, logic, and math courses where participants discuss programming syntax. Now instructors and students can author and share computer code in the Content Editor using a new Code Snippet tool.

The Content Editor identifies eleven programming syntaxes:

• Python
• Java
• JavaScript
• Kotlin
• R
• PHP
• Go
• C
• Swift
• C#
• HTML

The text style menu in the Content Editor has changed from text to an icon. This improves tool spacing for different screen sizes.

For instructors: This feature is included in the Content Editor in all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Improve the display of and access to the Course Activity Related to Grades Report icon

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students

Instructors gain insight into student performance through the Course Activity Related to Grades report. This helps instructors intervene early, if necessary, to improve student outcomes. Students may use this report to review their performance and compare to other members of the class.

The icon to access the report is now always visible to instructors. Students can see their report earlier because we reduced the activity rule. We also made updates to the way the metrics are processed.

Students can always access the "How Am I Doing?" panel from the Course Progress icon on the Grades page.

For instructors and administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. The charts in these reports are based on data obtained from courses. For the Grades chart to appear to instructors and the My Grades chart to appear to students, instructors must set up the course overall grade.

Branded URLs in Scheduled Notification Emails

Blackboard Learn SaaS, Managed Hosting, Self-Hosted
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Original Experience
Original Course View
Impact: All users

Some institutions use domain branding. Different authentication providers (IdPs) can have an association with a specific domain. When this is the case, notification emails reflect the domain in the URL for each individual user. This functionality supplies support for all authentication types for each individual user. When a user clicks into a notification email, they will authenticate to that domain.

Recently scheduled notifications sent daily had correct URLs in links. This release improves links for emails sent because of a user action (e.g., a user may share a portfolio or send an announcement).

For administrators: No action is necessary. This update is structural only.

In-product updates and user engagement surveys

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Original Course View
Impact: Administrators, Instructors, Students

To help users understand changes and effectively use new features, we are introducing in-product updates. Product updates are brief mentions of what is new in the Ultra Course View or Original Course View. Product updates will vary by role. For example, instructors will have different updates from students.

We strive to be data-informed to help make our products better. Feedback and input from those who use our products every day is a critical part of this process. User engagement surveys are brief polls launched to a small sample of users. Each survey has its own purpose. For example, a survey might ask users to rate their overall experience of a feature or workflow. A user can easily dismiss a survey and will not see the survey again. Only a small set of users will see the survey. The collected feedback will help us improve the product and prioritize our roadmap. We will share survey results with our clients.

For instructors and administrators:

• Product updates and user engagement surveys do not support right to left languages.

• These new settings apply to Base Navigation and include Original and Ultra courses.

• Both options are off by default in the April release. In the May release, the options will be on by default. Administrators will be able to opt out if desired.

• Administrators can define the setting for their institution: Administrator Panel | Configure Ultra Experience.

Improvements to permissions

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: System and Course Roles with corresponding permissions

There are several areas where permission checks do not work as expected. This results in “You’re not on the list” errors. We are making improvements over several upcoming releases that address permission issues. These improvements will also remove the need for a quick enroll option. In this release, we have corrected the following issues:

Change course availability permissions for non-instructors

Non-instructor users with permissions to change course availability states may have experienced problems:

• opening a course,

• setting a course to complete, or

• setting a course to private.

We have corrected this.

Student preview access for support roles

Some privileged support roles could not access the student preview mode. The permission is “Course/Organization > Student Preview > Access Preview Account.” We have corrected this.

Fixes to role permissions for accommodations

There are four permissions for course and system roles that relate to accommodations. These were not working as expected. We have corrected this. When granting an “edit” permission, administrators should select the associated “view” permission. This ensures the user can access the settings as expected.

• Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > Edit User's Due Date accommodation

• Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > Edit User's Time Limit accommodation

• Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > View User's Due Date accommodation

• Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > View User's Time Limit accommodation

Manage Gradebook username display by course role

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Course Roles with corresponding permissions

Instructors can see student usernames even when the username display is off for all other users. At some institutions, this can help instructors distinguish between students with similar names. In the past, this permission was only managed by system role. This restriction created too much management burden for administrators. Now administrators can grant the permission to the correct course roles for teaching staff. The permission is “Show username even when hidden from other users.”

For administrators: Please review course role configurations to decide if instructional roles should have this permission.

Session timeout warning for Original Course View

Blackboard Learn SaaS, Managed Hosting, Self-Hosted
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users

When a user is idle for over three hours the session ends. A user must login again to continue to use Learn. If a user saves a page or selects a button, the session refreshes and stays active for three more hours. There can be times a user is working but considered idle.

This happens because the browser is not sending data to Learn. Some examples are when a user is:

• authoring a Discussion Board post,

• authoring an Assignment submission in the text editor in Learn, or

• creating a Content Item.

With this release, users whose session is ending soon will receive a warning. This warning will appear at least six minutes before the session times out. If the user closes the warning before the session ends, the session will extend for three more hours. This is the primary scenario for this improvement. The goal is to help users who have been authoring for an exceptionally long time not to lose their work.

A user away from the computer for an extended time will receive the warning. Yet the user will not be able to extend their session. When the user closes the warning, they will return to the current page instead of returning to the login page. This allows the user to copy anything authored before it is lost. A user in this situation will redirect to the login page when they select any link or button on the page.

With this release, for a user who was away from their computer for a long time it will be unclear when the warning appeared. Thus, the user will not know if the session renewed or not. We are considering future improvements for session timeout behavior. This release focuses on helping users who have been idle to the server but engaged in authoring content. The goal is to help these users not lose authored content.

For administrators: The user warning will appear at least six minutes before the session ends. Users may have more than six minutes to extend their session because the session cleanup process is a grouped background task.

The most common setting for session duration is three hours. Some institutions have configured other durations. This feature will work with these other configurations, and always give users at least six minutes to extend their sessions.

We are planning to make similar improvements to the Ultra Course View.

Ability to set node administrators via APIs

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Original Experience
Impact: All clients and partners

Blackboard Learn clients use institutional hierarchy to distribute management tasks to authorized staff. Using APIs, developers can now manage hierarchy level administrators. This is also beneficial for segmenting access to data in Blackboard Data reporting.

For more information about our REST Public APIs, please explore the Learn API at: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi

• External Links in Announcements and other Course Tools Fail due to X-Frame Options and Samesite External Website Settings - Article #75882
• Guests Cannot Access Content Items of File Type  - Article #75919
• Korea Language Pack Translation Issue With Visibility Setting - Article #75750
• Match a Pattern Fill in the Blank Question not Reading Regular Expression Language Properly - Article #76179
• Student Activity Details Do not Show the Student's Saved Draft Under the Activity Timeline - Article #7570
• Update Japanese Language Translation Phrase Available for Bb Annotate Translation - Article #59632
• Intermittently Cannot Add Content or Attachments from Cloud Services - Article #75972
• Change Author Tool in Discussion Board is Missing after Course Copy - Article #75332
• Course Events do not Populate in External Calendar Applications from Share Calendar Link - Article #75636
• Embedded Course Videos Stopped Working When Trying to Play Embedded Videos - Article #75586
• Error 500 when Setting Name of a Group in Ultra Course via REST - Article #76354
• An Error is Displayed When Trying to Create New Learning Modules - Article #76189
• Malformed Text for Ally Downloads Link - Article #75697
• Originality Report Not Visible in Ultra Courses When Opened Via Grid View of Gradebook - Article #75617
• Default Font Size not Represented Consistently in New Editor - Article #74943
• Shared Portfolio Snapshot Cannot be Deleted by the User it is Shared With - Article #75465
• Single Staff Names not Aligned on Base Navigation - Article #76073
• Small Boxes are Being Added When Adding Table in Ultra Rich Text Editor - Article #75908
• Students can break Discussion Grading by pasting the GUI into the VTBE of a posting - Article #75496
• The Pronunciation Recording Playback Button is not Available when a Pronunciation Description is not Included - Article #76352
• Timer in the Test Availability Exceptions Dispenses Unhelpful Error if Decimal Used - Article #75662
  • When setting a time exception for a student on a test, the instructor can’t use decimal numbers. If an instructor tries to use a decimal number they’ll be warned to use whole numbers only.
• Wrong Translation of Invalid File to 부적절한 파일 in Korean - Article #76139
• Courses are not Visible After Clicking Upcoming Courses Link From Page 2 of Current Courses List - Article #76126
• Inconsistency on Spanish Translation for Multiple Choice Type Questions - Article #76267
• Manually Added Grades do not Change the Submission Timestamp on Forums, Blogs, Wikis and Journals - Article #76356
  • Forums, Journals, Wikis and Blogs do not have attempts. Instead, rules about post counts will alert the instructor in Needs Grading to review a student’s work. Previously, the date displayed in the task details for a grade would be any change to the grade record. This included the instructor updating the grade. Now, only student activity will update the date each time the criterion for instructor review is met. Only the most recent time the student met the activity criterion for Needs Grading will be shown.
• In Ultra course view, some support roles could not access the student preview mode even when they had the permission, “Course/Organization > Student Preview > Access Preview Account.” We’ve corrected this. 
• In Ultra Course View, users who had permissions to modify the course availability state but were not instructors could have problems opening, completing, or making private courses. We’ve corrected this. 
• There are four permissions related to student Accommodations in Ultra Course View that can be configured for course and system roles. These were not being properly handled, and we’ve corrected this. When granting an “edit” permission, be sure to also select the associated “view” permission so the user can access the settings. 
  • Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > Edit User's Due Date accommodation 
  • Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > Edit User's Time Limit accommodation 
  • Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > View User's Due Date accommodation 
  • Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > View User's Time Limit accommodation

One Question at a Time 

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Course Builders

Careful assessment design is important. Instructors desire flexibility in question presentation. For example, an instructor may select a one-question-at-a-time presentation so that students:

• Focus on a single question at a time without feeling overwhelmed by all the questions
• Enhanced browser performance for student access on older computers
• Enhanced experience for students in remote areas with poor network connections
• Have an improved user experience when test taking from a mobile device, where touch scrolling can lead to mistakes

Instructors may enable this setting, if desired, from the Test Settings panel. This option also appears in Assignment Settings when the assignment includes questions.

For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Granular Content Copy within the current Ultra Course

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Course Builders

Course copy is an important feature for building out and updating courses. Instructors desire flexible approaches to support how they design and build courses. To better equip instructors, we have added a way to copy content within a single course. This new workflow supplies a way to duplicate content for quicker course building. Instructors can access the Copy Content menu to search for the current course. From there it is easy to navigate content and select content to copy or duplicate.

Supported content types include:

• Folders
• Documents
• Tests, including group tests
• Assignments, including group assignments
• Links to websites
• SCORM packages
• Discussions and Journals
• Learning Modules and individual items within a Learning Module

For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Student Feedback Display Controls

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Course Builders

Supporting academic integrity and protecting assessment content is important. Instructors need controls and flexibility for sharing assessment results with students. This new choice allows the instructor to decide when assessment results become available.

If selected, the instructor defines when the student can view their assessment submission:

• after submitting the assessment,
• after the instructor posts the individual student's grade for the assessment,
• after the assessment due date,
• after the instructor posts all the grades for the assessment, or
• on a specific date.

When not selected, students cannot view:

• assessment content such as the title, videos or images, text sections,
• the assessment questions,
• answers,
• automatic feedback, or
• the additional content section at the end of the assessment.

Scenario examples:

1. Scenario. An instructor is delivering a high-stakes exam. Students should not be able to return to the exam questions after they submit their answers.
    
2. Scenario. Students take an exam asynchronously. The instructor wants students to review the questions, answers, and automated feedback after all grades are posted.

For instructors and administrators: The default setting is that students can view the assessment results after submitting. Deselecting this option hides the student submission view. Other feedback options included in the side panel remain visible. This includes the overall assessment feedback, final grade, and originality report (if applicable).

Prevent Grades from Auto-Posting 

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Graders

The option to control if a grade auto-posts supports academic integrity. This new option gives control to the instructor to post grades at the right time. When selected, an assessment grade appears to the student as soon as the attempt is graded. To prevent students from viewing grades, the instructor may de-select this option. The instructor may view this new setting in the assessment settings and assessment preview panels. The workflow to post grades manually is still the same.

When this setting is de-selected, the instructor will need to manually post grades. Students will see ‘not graded’ in the grade pill until the instructor posts results.

When instructor selects the option to auto post, the post grades button will not appear.

For instructors and administrators: The default setting is that grades are auto posted. Deselecting this choice requires the instructor to manually post grades for the assessment.

Calculated Numeric Question Type

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students, Course Builders

Robust and diverse questions better support assessment across various disciplines. The calculated numeric question type is important for math and other STEM courses.

This new question type supports the following:

• Students may enter a number as an answer. The number can be an integer, decimal, or scientific notation. The largest value supported is 16 digits.
• Instructors may combine text and mathematical formulas in the question.
• Instructors may define an answer range. The range value can be an integer, decimal, or scientific notation. The largest value supported is 16 digits.
• The answer field validates only numeric digits.

For administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Download Assessment Results 

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors

Instructors may need to download test results for external analysis and evaluation. External analysis is important for supporting course quality and assessment efforts. Furthermore, institutions often want compiled assessment data for accreditation and program review activities.

With this release, instructors may download assessment results in the Ultra course experience. Instructors may download assessment results from either the gradebook grid or list views.

When downloading results, the following options are available:

• file type - Excel spreadsheet (.xls) or Comma Separated Value (.csv); the default is .xls
• format results by student or by question and student; the default is by student
• download all attempts or only attempts included in the grade calculation. The instructor defines which attempts to include in the grade calculation in the ‘Grade attempts’ settings. The default is to download only attempts used for calculation.

The downloaded report includes the following information:

• Student name
• Username
• Questions
• Answers
• Grading status
• Any content the student may have included with their submission

For instructors and administrators: We improved the readability of the downloaded data by removing extraneous HTML tags. This is the same for reports downloaded in the Original Course View and Ultra Course View.

When using anonymous grading the downloaded results exclude student and score details until grades are posted for all students.

Instructor Reporting for Submission Receipts 

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Original Course View
Impact: Administrators, Instructors, Graders

Learner support is a key part of exemplary course building and instruction. To better enable instructors to support students, we have expanded submission receipt functionality. For each attempt a student makes, the instructor can search for a receipt confirmation number. This helps instructors find student submissions when extra verification is needed. Using this receipt confirmation number, the instructor can find the following information:

• assessment name
• assessment grade
• the number of attempts for an assessment the student who submitted the assessment
• the size of any file included with the submission; this allows the instructor to insight into what a student has attached for marking
• submission date and time stamp

This information appears on the peek panel for all submitted attempts.

The receipt number and size of any attached files appears at the top of the submission view.

For instructors and administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Code Snippet - Content Editor Improvements

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students

Supporting collaboration and assessment across diverse disciplines is important for students and instructors. This includes computing, logic, and math courses where participants discuss programming syntax. Now instructors and students can author and share computer code in the Content Editor using a new Code Snippet tool.

The Content Editor identifies eleven programming syntaxes:

• Python
• Java
• JavaScript
• Kotlin
• R
• PHP
• Go
• C
• Swift
• C#
• HTML

The text style menu in the Content Editor has changed from text to an icon. This improves tool spacing for different screen sizes.

For instructors: This feature is included in the Content Editor in all Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

Improve the display of and access to the Course Activity Related to Grades Report icon

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Instructors, Students

Instructors gain insight into student performance through the Course Activity Related to Grades report. This helps instructors intervene early, if necessary, to improve student outcomes. Students may use this report to review their performance and compare to other members of the class.

The icon to access the report is now always visible to instructors. Students can see their report earlier because we reduced the activity rule. We also made updates to the way the metrics are processed.

Students can always access the "How Am I Doing?" panel from the Course Progress icon on the Grades page.

For instructors and administrators: This feature is available for all Ultra courses. The charts in these reports are based on data obtained from courses. For the Grades chart to appear to instructors and the My Grades chart to appear to students, instructors must set up the course overall grade.

Branded URLs in Scheduled Notification Emails

Blackboard Learn SaaS, Managed Hosting, Self-Hosted
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Original Experience
Original Course View
Impact: All users

Some institutions use domain branding. Different authentication providers (IdPs) can have an association with a specific domain. When this is the case, notification emails reflect the domain in the URL for each individual user. This functionality supplies support for all authentication types for each individual user. When a user clicks into a notification email, they will authenticate to that domain.

Recently scheduled notifications sent daily had correct URLs in links. This release improves links for emails sent because of a user action (e.g., a user may share a portfolio or send an announcement).

For administrators: No action is necessary. This update is structural only.

In-product updates and user engagement surveys

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Original Course View
Impact: Administrators, Instructors, Students

To help users understand changes and effectively use new features, we are introducing in-product updates. Product updates are brief mentions of what is new in the Ultra Course View or Original Course View. Product updates will vary by role. For example, instructors will have different updates from students.

We strive to be data-informed to help make our products better. Feedback and input from those who use our products every day is a critical part of this process. User engagement surveys are brief polls launched to a small sample of users. Each survey has its own purpose. For example, a survey might ask users to rate their overall experience of a feature or workflow. A user can easily dismiss a survey and will not see the survey again. Only a small set of users will see the survey. The collected feedback will help us improve the product and prioritize our roadmap. We will share survey results with our clients.

For instructors and administrators:

• Product updates and user engagement surveys do not support right to left languages.

• These new settings apply to Base Navigation and include Original and Ultra courses.

• Both options are off by default in the April release. In the May release, the options will be on by default. Administrators will be able to opt out if desired.

• Administrators can define the setting for their institution: Administrator Panel | Configure Ultra Experience.

Improvements to permissions

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: System and Course Roles with corresponding permissions

There are several areas where permission checks do not work as expected. This results in “You’re not on the list” errors. We are making improvements over several upcoming releases that address permission issues. These improvements will also remove the need for a quick enroll option. In this release, we have corrected the following issues:

Change course availability permissions for non-instructors

Non-instructor users with permissions to change course availability states may have experienced problems:

• opening a course,

• setting a course to complete, or

• setting a course to private.

We have corrected this.

Student preview access for support roles

Some privileged support roles could not access the student preview mode. The permission is “Course/Organization > Student Preview > Access Preview Account.” We have corrected this.

Fixes to role permissions for accommodations

There are four permissions for course and system roles that relate to accommodations. These were not working as expected. We have corrected this. When granting an “edit” permission, administrators should select the associated “view” permission. This ensures the user can access the settings as expected.

• Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > Edit User's Due Date accommodation

• Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > Edit User's Time Limit accommodation

• Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > View User's Due Date accommodation

• Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > View User's Time Limit accommodation

Manage Gradebook username display by course role

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: Course Roles with corresponding permissions

Instructors can see student usernames even when the username display is off for all other users. At some institutions, this can help instructors distinguish between students with similar names. In the past, this permission was only managed by system role. This restriction created too much management burden for administrators. Now administrators can grant the permission to the correct course roles for teaching staff. The permission is “Show username even when hidden from other users.”

For administrators: Please review course role configurations to decide if instructional roles should have this permission.

Session timeout warning for Original Course View

Blackboard Learn SaaS, Managed Hosting, Self-Hosted
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users

When a user is idle for over three hours the session ends. A user must login again to continue to use Learn. If a user saves a page or selects a button, the session refreshes and stays active for three more hours. There can be times a user is working but considered idle.

This happens because the browser is not sending data to Learn. Some examples are when a user is:

• authoring a Discussion Board post,

• authoring an Assignment submission in the text editor in Learn, or

• creating a Content Item.

With this release, users whose session is ending soon will receive a warning. This warning will appear at least six minutes before the session times out. If the user closes the warning before the session ends, the session will extend for three more hours. This is the primary scenario for this improvement. The goal is to help users who have been authoring for an exceptionally long time not to lose their work.

A user away from the computer for an extended time will receive the warning. Yet the user will not be able to extend their session. When the user closes the warning, they will return to the current page instead of returning to the login page. This allows the user to copy anything authored before it is lost. A user in this situation will redirect to the login page when they select any link or button on the page.

With this release, for a user who was away from their computer for a long time it will be unclear when the warning appeared. Thus, the user will not know if the session renewed or not. We are considering future improvements for session timeout behavior. This release focuses on helping users who have been idle to the server but engaged in authoring content. The goal is to help these users not lose authored content.

For administrators: The user warning will appear at least six minutes before the session ends. Users may have more than six minutes to extend their session because the session cleanup process is a grouped background task.

The most common setting for session duration is three hours. Some institutions have configured other durations. This feature will work with these other configurations, and always give users at least six minutes to extend their sessions.

We are planning to make similar improvements to the Ultra Course View.

Ability to set node administrators via APIs

Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Original Experience
Impact: All clients and partners

Blackboard Learn clients use institutional hierarchy to distribute management tasks to authorized staff. Using APIs, developers can now manage hierarchy level administrators. This is also beneficial for segmenting access to data in Blackboard Data reporting.

For more information about our REST Public APIs, please explore the Learn API at: https://developer.blackboard.com/portal/displayApi

• External Links in Announcements and other Course Tools Fail due to X-Frame Options and Samesite External Website Settings - Article #75882
• Guests Cannot Access Content Items of File Type  - Article #75919
• Korea Language Pack Translation Issue With Visibility Setting - Article #75750
• Match a Pattern Fill in the Blank Question not Reading Regular Expression Language Properly - Article #76179
• Student Activity Details Do not Show the Student's Saved Draft Under the Activity Timeline - Article #7570
• Update Japanese Language Translation Phrase Available for Bb Annotate Translation - Article #59632
• Intermittently Cannot Add Content or Attachments from Cloud Services - Article #75972
• Change Author Tool in Discussion Board is Missing after Course Copy - Article #75332
• Course Events do not Populate in External Calendar Applications from Share Calendar Link - Article #75636
• Embedded Course Videos Stopped Working When Trying to Play Embedded Videos - Article #75586
• Error 500 when Setting Name of a Group in Ultra Course via REST - Article #76354
• An Error is Displayed When Trying to Create New Learning Modules - Article #76189
• Malformed Text for Ally Downloads Link - Article #75697
• Originality Report Not Visible in Ultra Courses When Opened Via Grid View of Gradebook - Article #75617
• Default Font Size not Represented Consistently in New Editor - Article #74943
• Shared Portfolio Snapshot Cannot be Deleted by the User it is Shared With - Article #75465
• Single Staff Names not Aligned on Base Navigation - Article #76073
• Small Boxes are Being Added When Adding Table in Ultra Rich Text Editor - Article #75908
• Students can break Discussion Grading by pasting the GUI into the VTBE of a posting - Article #75496
• The Pronunciation Recording Playback Button is not Available when a Pronunciation Description is not Included - Article #76352
• Timer in the Test Availability Exceptions Dispenses Unhelpful Error if Decimal Used - Article #75662
  • When setting a time exception for a student on a test, the instructor can’t use decimal numbers. If an instructor tries to use a decimal number they’ll be warned to use whole numbers only.
• Wrong Translation of Invalid File to 부적절한 파일 in Korean - Article #76139
• Courses are not Visible After Clicking Upcoming Courses Link From Page 2 of Current Courses List - Article #76126
• Inconsistency on Spanish Translation for Multiple Choice Type Questions - Article #76267
• Manually Added Grades do not Change the Submission Timestamp on Forums, Blogs, Wikis and Journals - Article #76356
  • Forums, Journals, Wikis and Blogs do not have attempts. Instead, rules about post counts will alert the instructor in Needs Grading to review a student’s work. Previously, the date displayed in the task details for a grade would be any change to the grade record. This included the instructor updating the grade. Now, only student activity will update the date each time the criterion for instructor review is met. Only the most recent time the student met the activity criterion for Needs Grading will be shown.
• In Ultra course view, some support roles could not access the student preview mode even when they had the permission, “Course/Organization > Student Preview > Access Preview Account.” We’ve corrected this. 
• In Ultra Course View, users who had permissions to modify the course availability state but were not instructors could have problems opening, completing, or making private courses. We’ve corrected this. 
• There are four permissions related to student Accommodations in Ultra Course View that can be configured for course and system roles. These were not being properly handled, and we’ve corrected this. When granting an “edit” permission, be sure to also select the associated “view” permission so the user can access the settings. 
  • Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > Edit User's Due Date accommodation 
  • Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > Edit User's Time Limit accommodation 
  • Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > View User's Due Date accommodation 
  • Course Outline > Course Roster > Accommodations > View User's Time Limit accommodation