The skinny on the Blackboard 9.1 upgrade coming in January 2012

by Jamie Gonzales  |   

UAA will be upgrading to Blackboard 9.1 in December/January. Faculty members will not have to do anything special with their Blackboard courses for the upgrade. All files will still be there and still work in the new version (with the exception of wikis and blogs, which will not transfer, but new wiki and blog tools will be available).

Key Features of Blackboard 9.1:

  • Friendlier interface --less clicking
  • Quicker access to control panel
  • Drag and drop reordering of announcements, navigation menu and content
  • New "Mashup" tool allows easy addition of YouTube videos

A focus group of UAA faculty members tested Blackboard 9.1 this summer and their response has been positive -- though they recognize that the changes to the interface take getting used to.

Here's the timeline for the upgrade:

  1. IT Services will create the Spring 2012 shells in mid-October in Blackboard 8. Users will be able to copy all content from their previous Blackboard shells to the Spring 2012 shells just like they always do. The work users do on those shells will migrate to Blackboard 9.1. One caveat: blogs and wikis will not upgrade to Blackboard 9.1.
  2. Blackboard will be unavailable from Dec. 23 through Jan. 8 for the upgrade. Plan to work on the spring shells in Blackboard 8 during the fall if there is concern about time constraints between Jan. 8 and the start of class.
  3. When logging in to Blackboard after Jan. 8, 2012, all courses will be there with their content in Blackboard 9.1. Users can do the final polishing and add any blogs and wikis to be ready for classes to start on Jan. 17, 2012.

We will provide the following support:

  • A sample Blackboard 9.1 shell to explore will be available by late Oct.
  • Workshops on Blackboard 9.1 in Nov., Dec. and Jan.
  • Documentation for faculty and students
  • Blackboard shell for student orientation will be available in December
  • More of these updates

If you have any questions or concerns about the upgrade, please use this form.

Creative Commons License "The skinny on the Blackboard 9.1 upgrade coming in January 2012" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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