Blackboard 8 is coming to Queens College!

In January 2009, Queens College will be upgrading from Blackboard 6.3 to Blackboard 8. What can faculty members expect?

+- What will change?

Gradebook will become Grade Center, allowing more robust, informative, and customizable student assessment.
TurnItIn will be replaced by SafeAssign, which works much like TurnItIn but is even more comprehensively integrated into Blackboard.
There will be no more Digital Dropbox. If you'd like to create a space for your students to upload files, you can still do so by creating an Assignment.

+- What will stay the same?

• Despite some small tweaks to the way that Blackboard looks and the way its features are named, by and large the Blackboard 8 experience won't be much different from your current Blackboard experience.
• Courses that you've created in the current version of Blackboard - including syllabi, assignments, handouts, and other course documents - can be imported for use in the new Blackboard 8.

+- What will be brand new?

• Blackboard Scholar allows students to store and share bookmarks related to the content of the course.
• Self and Peer Assessment gives students the chance to evaluate their classmates' work, according to criteria and boundaries set by the instructor.
• Early Warning System warns instructors when a student is falling behind.

+- What should I do?

• Log in and check it out! (You may have to click "NEW Spring '09 Courses - Blackboard 8" under "Blackboard Gateway".) Your Spring 2009 courses have already been loaded into Blackboard 8.
• Your Spring 2008 courses have already been transfered to Blackboard 8. Courses from Fall 2008 are slated to be transferred by January 14, but if you are planning on using material from these courses during Spring 2009, we recommend that you manually export it from Blackboard 6. We have provided an online tutorial to explain this process.
• Between January 12 and January 14, 2009, both the old and the new versions of Blackboard will be unavailable, due to the upgrade process. Please do not attempt to log into Blackboard during this time, as any changes that you make to your courses during this time will not be saved.
• Until CUNY has completed transferring Summer and Fall 2008 courses to the new system, you will still be able to access them within Blackboard 6, for the purposes of exporting, via the Ed Tech website.
• Click here to download a PDF that summarizes some of the steps you might want to take to ease your own transition to Blackboard 8.