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• New Features and Enhancements in the NEW Illinois Compass
• The NEW Illinois Compass
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Read Newsletters & Articles :: Feature Articles

New Features and Enhancements in the NEW Illinois Compass

Student Contributions

The Web Links and Media Library tools have been enhanced so that instructors have the option to let students contribute their own web sites and library entries to their courses. For example, students can contribute relevant articles or share some of their favorite resources. Students are more engaged and everyone benefits from the collective knowledge in the class.

Grading Forms

The Grading Form tool enables instructors to specify multiple grading criteria for a learning activity and define performance levels for each criterion. The instructor or designer can create one or more grading forms in a course and associate the form with Assignments, Discussions, or Grade Book columns. Grading forms let instructors provide very clear performance expectations to students, as well as objective guidelines for other graders in the course (such as teaching assistants). Grading forms make grading easier and provide students with a much richer insight into their performance - far beyond grades alone.

Peer Review

The new Peer Review feature can be used in the Discussions tool. It allows students to rate each other's posts based on criteria set by the instructor - promoting active engagement and quality interactions. Instructors can create either custom linear rating scales for students so that they can rate their peers' posts or they can associate a Grading Form with the discussion topic that students can use to provide richer feedback to their peers. Instructors can choose to make ratings anonymous and control whether students see ratings for all posts or only their own posts.

Class Blogs

Instructors now have the ability to create Class Blogs in the Discussions tool, giving their students new ways of expressing themselves and collaborating with their classmates online. Students can read their classmates' entries or jump into the discussion by posting entries and comments of their own. Blogs provide a great way for students to stay connected and share ideas.

Journals

Journals, in the Discussions tool, provide a private space where students can reflect on their experiences, chronicle their learning, or record their reactions to a class lecture or discussion. Journals are designed so that instructors can automatically assign a journal to each student and then efficiently review the entries made. Instructors can change a setting to allow student journals to be shared with the rest of the class.

Date Rollover

With the new Date Rollover feature, instructors and designers can streamline term-to-term transition by automatically updating all dates for the items in their course. All content and learning activities, such as Assignments, Discussion topics, and Assessments, can be simultaneously set forward by a specified number of days. Instructors can then make date adjustments to individual items through a centralized screen that is easy to navigate.

My Profile

This new feature allows all users to create a personal profile that can be shared with other users. Once the administrator defines which information can be included in a profile, this tool lets users make edits to the information and decide which fields to make public (if the administrator allows it). Users can even upload a photo of themselves to add a personal touch. Students and instructors can view each other's personal profiles from the Roster tool.

Roster

The new Roster tool enables all users enrolled in a course to view the personal profile (including an optional photo) of all instructors, teaching assistants, and students enrolled in their class. In addition, the Roster tool displays all study groups in the course so that everyone can quickly see who belongs to each group. Students and instructors can share their personal interests and extra-curricular activities with the class to foster community building and promote social networking.

Assessments: Custom Instructions and Instant Feedback

An enhancement to the Assessment tool lets instructors or designers add their own tailored quiz instructions to the top of an Assessment, giving specific directions to students. If the Assessment is delivered one question at a time, the instructor can choose to display the instructions only for the first question or for all subsequent questions as students advance through the Assessment. In addition, students taking a self test can now receive immediate feedback after answering a question without having to first complete the entire self test.

Greater Flexibility in Discussion Management

The Discussions tool has been improved to provide instructors more options and flexibility for efficiently managing student Discussions. Instructors can now change many of the discussion settings midstream. For example, an anonymous Discussion can be changed to non-anonymous midway through the Discussion, making all posts non-anonymous after the cutoff date. Furthermore, when creating a gradable Discussion topic, instructors can now specify whether or not grades will be automatically released to students.

Adapted from The Blackboard Learning System – Vista Enterprise License:
http://www.blackboard.com/clientcollateral/100506/Bb%20Learning%20System%20-%20Brochure%20-%20App%20Pack%201%20for%20Learning%20System.pdf (PDF)