Blackboard has created some very easy tools to quickly create a group. A group can have a wiki, blog and learning journal added to their group. This means with only a few click many multiple group wikis or blogs can be created.

Group setting in the new tool

Grading and feedback

It’s very easy to give grades and feedback using the tools. A penal, when open, sits next to the content ready for feedback and marks.

New Tool

Group and private blogs are 2 separate tools

The new tools have separated the group blog tool from a private blog tool, now called a ‘learning journal’. The learning journal provides a space for students to privately reflect on their learning. But it also provides the staff member with a single place to view all students’ reflections.

The old way of creating a ‘private journal’.

The new ‘learning journal’

Allow anonymous comments

Staff can choose to allow anonymous comments on any of the new blog tool. This could be used when trying to collect information that the students might feel reluctant to offer in normal circumstances. If you have decided to make this available the student is asked to select anonymous when creating an entry.

How the new tool looks

New menu to view and control all uses of the tools

Sometimes you may have a number of wikis or blogs in a module. The new tool offers a single menu for each tool, to view activity, control access. This will help you see which blogs or wikis are active or inactive. It will also help you turn off access if you want to mark certain blogs or wikis. Single point to control all tools across a module

Full text editing in instruction box

The instruction box allows full text and content embedding.

Functionality lost

RSS feeds

In the old tools you could allow wikis or blogs to send out an RSS feed. This could then be picked up by external services. This will not be available in the new tools.

How the setting looked in the old version

In the old version you could subscribe to a blog or wiki and receive an email every 24 hours to tell you of any changes. This will be replaces by a new system within blackboard that allows you to receive confirmation of updates on all the tools in blackboard.

How the old tool used to look

Revert to old version of a page using the history

The new tools still record a history of changes made to a page, but it can’t revert to a previous version of that page.

The revert button in the old tool

Being able to set students limitations of, read edit delete on comments.

The old tool allowed you to control students’ use of the comments function in 3 different ways.

The old tool

The new Blogs and Learning Journals allow you to choose to allow students to delete their own comments

In the wiki comments are always on, and students can only delete their own comments. Tutors can delete their own and students’ comments.

Comments only

You can create a wiki that is closed to students making any edit. They can only make comments. This was available in both blogs and wikis

Editing restrictions on blogs, only wikis allow students to read content and not edit it.

This function allowed the tutor to set a date when all editing would stop on a blog or wiki. The content would still be viewable, but not changeable. This was helpful to staff who were marking the content at one stage and didn’t want students to change the content.