News and Updates (2/11/25)

IT News and Updates:


Posted 2/11/25

Artificial Intelligence Functionality in Academic Technology


FeedbackFruits Presents Acai: Pedagogy Driven AI for Enhanced Learning and Teaching 

Feedback Fruits has introduced new artificial intelligence features under its Acai platform. Available in the Automated Feedback tool, Writing Coach, provides real-time, AI-powered writing feedback, helping students refine their papers and improve their writing skills before submission.  Available in the Peer Review and Group Member Evaluation, Feedback Coach, analyzes peer feedback and provides guidance to aid student skill development and foster a culture of constructive feedback and collaboration. Available in the Interactive Video, Document and Audio tools, Engagement Assistant turns passive learning into active learning by creating pedagogically driven question cards and discussion prompts, saving faculty time and enhancing student engagement across various teaching formats. 

Interested in adding these tools and features to your course? Review the How to Add a FeedbackFruits Activity to a Blackboard course Knowledge Base article.  

Conversations with Intelligence: Using Blackboard's AI Conversation Tool in Your Course

Students are often able to deepen their understanding of a topic simply by articulating their thoughts in a conversation, but who has time for one-on-one conversations with every student about every topic? That's where Blackboard's new AI Conversation tool can help! With this tool, you can create AI Conversations around a topic or scenario to engage your students. AI Conversations include Socratic questioning and role play exercises. Students can explore and reflect on their own thoughts or role play a situation related to their learning or career path. You, as the instructor, can then review these conversations and grade them if you wish. Join this workshop to see how this tool works and to share ideas with colleagues about possible use cases for your courses.

Interested in adding this tool to your course? Review the General Information for AI Conversation Tool in Blackboard which includes resources for using the tool from the faculty and student experience.

Single Sign On Now Available for Qualtrics


To set up an account for Qualtrics, you no longer need to request access through a service request. You can now simply browse to https://qualtrics.sacredheart.edu and log in using your regular Sacred Heart account. If you are already logged into MySHU in your browser, you may not even be prompted to log into Qualtrics. You will simply accept the license agreement and you’re ready to go. For Instructors leveraging Qualtrics in your course, your students can create their own Qualtrics accounts in the same way. Simply provide a link to https://qualtrics.sacredheart.edu in your Blackboard course and they can create their own accounts as needed. Access is automatically granted for the remainder of the academic year.
 
If you have a Qualtrics account with the University that is not single sign on, keep an eye out for communication from Academic Technology to learn more about moving to the new Qualtrics instance. 
 

Blackboard Updates for February 2025

On Thursday, February 6th, Anthology released new features and updates for Blackboard Ultra. These updates expand instructional design, tests & assignments, gradebook, and learner progression & personalized experience.  A full overview can be reviewed on the Technology Tutorials resource page. 

Change Folders to Learning Modules or Learning Modules to Folders

Instructors can now change a folder to a learning module or a learning module to a folder. Benefits of changing a folder to a learning module include: 

  • Thumbnail Images: Learning modules come with thumbnail images, which provide a visually appealing course experience. 
  • Forced Sequencing: Instructors can force students to navigate learning modules in linear paths.
  • Progress bar: Learning modules have a progress bar for students that highlights the number of items that they need to complete and their progression on those items. 
  • Previous and next navigation: Students can quickly navigate to the next or previous item in a learning module. 

Improved Performance for Assignment File Submissions

The latest updates bring significant improvements to assignment submission uploads, ensuring a smoother experience for students:

  • Timed assessments: When a student uploads a file just before the timer runs out, the upload will complete before the attempt is auto-submitted.
  • Re-upload workflow: If a student's file doesn't upload correctly, they can easily re-upload it using the new workflow.

Students can now be confident that their files are successfully attached, received, and stored. They will be notified immediately if there are any issues with their file submissions.

Enhancements to Course Groups

To simplify group management and enhance usability for instructors, we made several improvements to course groups: 

  • Activity-level groups are now course-level: All new groups are now course-level. Instructors can create course-level groups directly from a content item, eliminating the need to manage groups at the activity level. 
  • More warnings and restrictions: To prevent the creation of empty group sets during group assignments, we added restrictions and additional warning messages. This helps instructors make informed decisions and avoid disruptions in group management.
  • Simplified group creation: The option to reuse activity-level groups was removed. This change encourages instructors to focus on course-level groups and reduces confusion.  

Improvements to Grading Interface

To optimize the use of screen space and to give graders a larger view of the student submission, anthology has redesigned the grading interface for assignments and tests.

The following design changes:

  • Relocated the Previous Student and Next Student navigation controls next to the attempt grade pill and removed the gray bar that these buttons were on.
  • Replaced the Previous Student and Next Student buttons with <> arrows. 
  • Moved the avatar, student name, and submission information to the existing black bar and removed the white bar where the information was previously listed. 
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