Feature highlights
Updates will be automatically available within your courses, organisations and content menus from March 6th 2025. You’ll find more detailed release notes below.
Due Date notification in Release Conditions
Copy Course banner between courses
Pop-Out rubrics for Blackboard Assignments
Discussion updates for staff and students
Due Date Notification in Release Conditions
Topic: Assessment Content
Feature Details: When using the date release in Release Conditions for an assessment, you’ll be able to see the due date.
What does this mean for you? Adding dates in Release Conditions allows content, and particularly assessments, to be available for a fixed period. Options for a release and hidden date are available, and the due date notification will remind you of the date range. You’ll see an additional notification if your dates are before the Due Date, allowing you to change these before moving on.
Guide: Release Conditions
Copy Course Banner between courses
Topic: Content
Feature Details: You can now copy course banners to a new course in the Copy Content options.
What does this mean for you? If you’ve spent time choosing and editing the perfect banner for your Blackboard course, you’ll be pleased to know that you can now reuse it effortlessly when copying course content. Instead of searching for and re-editing the banner each time, the new Copy Banner option (found in Copy content > Settings > Copy Banner) ensures that your chosen design carries over.
Guide: Copy Content within Blackboard Courses
Pop-Out Rubrics
Topic: Tests and Assessment
Feature Details: Rubrics now can be used in a pop-out format, allowing markers to see the whole grid.
What does this mean for you?: Markers have been asking for a long time for the rubric in a Blackboard assignment to be able to pop out. This allows a marker to view the rubric with all descriptors, selecting the relevant cell, and then Save and Close to apply it to the assignment. You can now mark on multiple screens with a better view of the assessment material – either zooming in to a document, or watching a video submission in a larger screen.
Show/Hide Calculated Calculated Columns
Topic: Tests and Assessment
Feature Details: Instructors can hide calculated columns within the Gradebook in the settings area. This hides the columns for all instructors on the module (not students).
What does this mean for you? A previous update allowed you to hide assignment columns in the Gradebook for yourself and other instructors. This cleans up the view for instructors and markers in the Markable Items and Marks view of the Gradebook. You can now also hide calculated columns. This means you can hide those columns marked IC, where the students submit to a different submission point (Turnitin, Gradescope, Tests).
There is a numerical indicator which notifies you of hidden columns. This does not hide the columns from students, and you will therefore need to continue to hide assignments from students, using the availability, if needed.
Guide: Gradebook Settings
Discussion updates for Staff and Students
Topic: Discussions
Feature Details: Discussions in Blackboard are now even easier to manage for both staff and students. When editing a discussion topic, you can quickly make changes by clicking the edit icon
When you’ve written a longer post, you can now view it in one continuous section—making it easier to read and navigate. Posts now also have a grey background to improve readability, helping you and your students engage with discussions more comfortably.
You can now see improved student participation metrics in discussions. The number of posts and replies is listed directly on the discussion home page, replacing the total response counter—making key information easier to access at a glance.
There is also the option for revealing students names within an anonymous post if you have concerns regarding inappropriate content or student wellbeing. This has to be requested to TEL via dts@reading.ac.uk and processed based on the specific need.
If you have an idea for a Blackboard feature or improvement, please raise a ticket with the TEL Team.