Blackboard What Is New – 9.1 Q2 2016

We upgraded to Blackboard Learn™ 9.1 Q2 2016 CU5 on 12/26/2016.

Release Highlights

Q2 2016 is primarily a maintenance release. The bug fixes and enhancements in this release are primarily focused on improvements to accessibility, language packs, assessments, grading, and Enterprise Surveys.

Changes

  • Improvements to the Mobile Web Services
  • Announcement Date Restriction Default: When creating an announcement, “Not Date Restricted” is now selected by default.
  • Escaping Special Characters – When a user uploads a file to Learn and the filename contains special characters (such as / \ : ? * ” < > | ), the system replaces the special character with an underscore ( _ ).
  • Browser Support – Learn 9.1 now supports the Microsoft Edge browser. Some new browser releases no longer support NPAPI plugins. Without these plugins, some Learn features may not render correctly.
  • HTML5 Support – The Content Editor now supports HTML5 Audio and Video playback in Chrome and Edge browsers.
    Click the content editor's media button to an HTML5 video
  • Discussion Threads – Users can navigate from thread to thread without having to return to the main Discussions page.
    Thread navigation buttons can be found above the thread

Deprecated Items

  • Virtual Classroom/Chat course tools have been removed – Support for Virtual Classroom and Chat course tools will be ending with this release. At JHU, a supported alternative for synchronous communication would be Adobe Connect.
  • Record from Webcam – Since Google removed YouTube’s Record from Webcam feature, the Content Editor has been updated with the following changes:
    • The YouTube icon image has been changed.
    • The alt text now reads Browse My YouTube Videos.
    • The Record tab has been removed and all users are now defaulted to the Browse tab to search existing videos.