By David Rosenbaum, Senior Solutions Engineer, Blackboard

This past summer during BbWorld^{® ’}07, ProEd users of the Blackboard Academic Suite™ received a first-hand look at the new features of Release 7.3, which contains some exciting enhancements. Since not everyone was able to attend the users conference, in this article I will highlight the new features and discuss their significance.

General Enhancements

1. Discussion Board Enhancements: Responding to feedback from Blackboard users, the Blackboard Product Development team made some significant enhancements, including:
   
   
   • “Tree” view showing post titles and relationships to replies
   • Mark as Read and Mark as Unread action buttons
   • Subscribe and Unsubscribe options for forums (previously only available for threads)
   • New tagging options
   • Collection views now allow users to reply, quote, mark as unread
   • The Thread Detail page now has Subscribe/Unsubscribe, Mark Read/Unread and Quote controls
   
   All of these enhancements are important for instructors and students alike because they provide a better discussion environment. Students will be able to participate more efficiently in discussions, while instructors will be able to navigate through and manage discussions more effectively.
   
   
2. Archive/Restore: Starting with Release 7.3, you have the option, when you back up a course, to include materials stored in the Blackboard Content System™ in your course archive. Previously, items in the Blackboard Content System were not backed up, so this provides you with a way to make courses with shared content more portable, and ensure you can make a complete backup of a critical course at a specific moment in time.
   
   
3. Support for Right-to-Left Languages: Release 7.3 introduces the ability for users to view right-to-left languages in the correct orientation when a right-to-left language pack is applied. This means that users of Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi will be able to create content naturally in their environment. This will be particularly important for multi-national corporations wishing to provide support for these languages, government agencies, and educational institutions teaching these languages.
   
   
4. Blackboard Learning Environment Connector: The Connector provides a means for users of the Blackboard Learning System™ – Vista Enterprise and CE Enterprise licenses to leverage the Blackboard Content System, the Blackboard Community System™ and the Blackboard Outcomes System™. The Connector will be important for users of CE Enterprise and Vista Enterprise who wish to add on the portal services of the Blackboard Community System and/or the content management and portfolio management capabilities of the Blackboard Content System—both of which can add significantly to the capabilities of your current learning environment. The Connector is also required for CE Enterprise and Vista Enterprise clients who want to leverage the Blackboard Outcomes System for institutional outcomes management.

Blackboard Content System Enhancements

1. Metadata Management: Custom metadata templates can now be created by administrators. End-users can now create, modify and search for metadata, and librarians can now import and export content items with their associated metadata. This means it will be more efficient than ever to find and re-use properly tagged content, and that clients can set up custom metadata schemes that pertain to their specific needs.
   
   
2. Recycle Bin: Like the recycle bin on your computer, the Recycle Bin in the Blackboard Content System provides you with a way to un-delete materials you want to recover. Recycle Bins can be searched and items can be renamed and restored. This provides users with a back-up option for mistakenly deleted content and reduces the likelihood of a panicked user who has lost key materials, saving a great deal of time for administrators.
   
   
3. Unique ID for Content Items: Starting with Release 7.3, each item in the Blackboard Content System will be assigned a unique ID, which permits movement of items within the system without losing links which were made previously. Thus, if you move item Z from Folder A to Folder B, all the references to item Z will still be intact. This is very important to all users of the Blackboard Content System because it enables you to re-arrange your content as you grow, and still be assured that courses that leverage it will continue to be able to access the items.

The above is a discussion of the most important updates in Application Pack 3 for clients using Blackboard Professional Education solutions. For a more thorough discussion of all the enhancements and resolved issues, please see the Reference Center on Behind the Blackboard™ and look at the Release Notes for Release 7.3.

You also may want to look at the formal announcements that were made during the users conference, regarding Blackboard Scholar^® and Blackboard SafeAssign™. While not all ProEd clients will have use for these new components of the Blackboard Beyond™ Initiative, they indicate the direction in which Beyond is developing and provide value for many Blackboard users in the K-12 community and higher education.