Illinois Compass Second Generation
IC2g Service Pack Upgrades
Illinois Compass 2g (powered by Blackboard Learn) will undergo a scheduled upgrade to the latest service pack on May 29, 2013. Driven by input from nearly 640 institutions and more than 1,000 instructors and students during development, Blackboard Learn Service Pack 10/11 (SP11) is designed to improve upon existing features, most notably an updated content editor and improved calendar tool as well as other new functionality intended to make the user experience simpler and more efficient for both faculty and students.
New Global Navigation Menu: This new menu is available all the time in the top right corner of the Compass 2g interface providing one-click access to your Courses, Organizations, Personal Settings, Blackboard Help, and new tools like the retention center and improved calendar. Blackboard Learn Video - Global Navigation and My Blackboard
Improved Calendar: Dramatic improvements to the calendar tool include drag and drop editing, dynamic integration with existing due dates, export to Outlook or Google and more. Blackboard Learn Video - Calendar Feature
New Content Editor: The new and improved Content Editor enables simple content creation through an easy to use interface. The editor reads, writes and renders modern HTML – so the content you created in Microsoft Word and the HTML pages you designed so carefully will render accurately within Compass 2g. The new Content Editor includes an improved equation editor and the ability to expand the Content Editor window for full-frame editing. Blackboard Learn Video - The New Content Editor
Redesigned Discussions: An overhauled interface for Discussions in Compass 2g makes it easier to follow and grade discussion threads and the integration with the Posts tool allows you to keep an eye on the discussion activity across all your Compass 2g courses. Blackboard Learn Video - Interacting in Discussions
Item Analysis: The new Item Analysis feature helps you easily refine your tests and quizzes by evaluating the quality and validity of each question and that question’s ability to discriminate between students who understand the material and those who do not. Ineffective questions can be easily identified, corrected and regraded with the Automatic Regrade feature. Blackboard Learn Video - Item Analysis
Retention Center: The Retention Center provides an easy-to-use data visualization and pre-configured rules for identifying at-risk students in a course. Because it requires no set up on the part of the instructor or administrator, it automatically calls out students who may need the instructor’s attention, making it easy for instructors to catch and respond to risk factors quickly. Blackboard Learn Video - The Retention Center
For more information about Blackboard’s Service Pack 11 upgrade please visit their website at: http://www.blackboard.com/sites/sp10/index.html. Keep in mind that not all functionality listed will be implemented in our Compass 2g environment.
Additional Updates
Section Column in Grade Center
Beginning in the Summer of 2013, Compass 2g will automatically* create and populate section and grade level columns in your course making it much easier to manage the grade center in those courses supporting multiple sections. This new fuctionality is the result of a custom building block developed on this campus to enable the better management of our large classes.
* Students added to the Compass 2g grade center manually, will not automatically be assigned the appropriate section or grade level, but this information can be added manually by the instructor.
Blackboard Mobile Learn
Beginning in the Fall of 2012, The University of Illinois provides a license to all UIUC staff, students and faculty for free download of the Blackboard Mobile Learn app providing access to your Illinois Compass 2g courses on iOS and Android devices. For more information about mobile features please visit: Illinois Compass 2g for mobile.
Known Issues
For a complete list of Illinois Compass 2g Enhancement Requests and Known Issues please check our wiki page at http://go.illinois.edu/IC2g_Enhancements (NetID required).