Blank Page? Quoi?

What is this Blank Page content type that we can add to content areas? How does it differ from items, folders, etc.? Hmm.

Course menu behavior

When a content area on a course menu is completely empty, its link on the course menu is hidden when edit mode is off. Students won't see course menu links that go to "Empty" areas. Instructors need to go into Edit mode to see the content area in the menu. This will be a training point for instructors.

Content Collection?

Has anyone looked into the Content Collection / Course Files feature? It's new and it looks like a big deal.

Assignments tool settings

The Assignments tool is now more flexible:

Instructors can allow students to submit once, unlimited times, or a specific number of times.

And instructors can set up an assignment so that it will accept late submissions but mark them in the grade center as "LATE."

Two thumbs up!

"Recycle Course" now "Bulk Delete"

The "Recycle Course" feature is now called "Bulk Delete." I don't see the term recycle anywhere. Hard habit to break?

Speaking of things we want to prevent faculty from doing, we need to adjust the instructor role permissions in BB9 to mimic the changes we made to the instructor role in BB7.

Discussion Forum descriptions

In BB9, descriptions of discussion forums appear to the right of the forum title, instead of below the forum title as in BB7. This isn't a big deal, except that long forum descriptions may clutter the page.

Labels

By labeling your posts, you let others discover what you have to say. Let's use the following labels:

• cool
• questions
• questions-answered
• admin
• instructor
• student
• new-features
• training
• headscratchers
• problems

Any other ideas? Let me know by posting a comment.

Images in posts

Look Ma! Blogger lets me upload images! We can easily include screen shots with our posts.

Our purpose

"Why use a blog?" This blog will help us figure out Blackboard 9 together. On this blog we'll record our findings, observations, questions, and answers. We'll document cool stuff, odd stuff, things to be aware of, and warnings we'll have to communicate to faculty and students.

Why document our work on a blog instead of on a white board or wall of post-its? Because we work at different times in different locations! This blog will let us contribute information from wherever we are. Plus we won't overwrite one another's work like we could in a file on the COSC network.

Questions? Thoughts? Leave a comment via the Comment link below. C'mon, try it out. You know you want to.