Part 2: What's new for students?
By Charles Osborne and Jim Weller
UAA courses will be migrating from Blackboard 5 (Bb5) to 
Blackboard 6 (Bb6) at the end of this year. It's a different product behind the scenes to IT Services and there are a host of new tools for instructors. Thankfully, for students, most things in Blackboard have not changed much, but there are a few differences to be seen.
The first difference any student will notice is the new UAA style on your blackboard pages. Especially look at the new contents and layout buttons on "My UAA" that enable you to custom tailor your portal page. There are a ton of portal modules to choose from: a dictionary, a thesaurus, local weather, even headlines from Time magazine and CNN. You can even choose your own color scheme.
That's just the eye and brain candy. It's still about taking and passing courses. You'll have them all on your "My UAA" homepage like usual. Blackboard will be synchronized with your registration daily. You can also access student clubs and organizations.
Once you click into a course, you will see fewer control buttons on the left. Life got simpler! Blackboard 5 had duplications that were sometimes confusing. Blackboard 6 has eliminated most of these duplications. They work just like in Blackboard 5. Plus, button’s can be text instead of images. That’s good news for people using readers and for people on slow Internet connections.
One change for the better, under the Communication button, is the addition of a Collaboration choice. Once you click this choice, you will find that Blackboard 6 has two virtual communications tools. You might remember the buggy and obnoxious Virtual Classroom from Bb5. Bb6's is a huge improvement. Blackboard 6 has a virtual classroom and lightweight chat that are both implemented as java applets that will run in your local browser. They are a lot faster and a lot more useful.
You might like the new UAA theme, choosing your own color, or other eye candy. You might like the portals of relevant information. Or you might be a more down to earth type that just wants to get into and out of their classes. We think that students will find the changes in Bb6 are improvements. Keep an eye out for the new version when we upgrade during this year’s winter break from Dec 27th to Jan 2nd.
Charles Osborne is a Callcenter Technician in UAA’s IT Services. Charles works directly with customers providing technical support. Charles also designs and leads blackboard training for students.
Jim Weller is a System Engineer with UAA's IT Services Department.Jim works with application/database servers and streaming media servers.
