Back to School: Key Highlights from the Blackboard LMS August release
Fresh off the excitement of Building Blackboard Together, the August Blackboard LMS release features a range of great new capabilities for instructors and students. As the new semester dawns, let’s take a look at the key updates coming to the platform this month.
Major Announcements from Building Blackboard Together
Many of the key updates in the August release were previewed at the event, as detailed in this blog post. These include:
- New Gradebook Grid View: Following a year of collaboration with instructors to fine tune workflows, the new Gradebook Grid View is now live in production environments. We’ve assembled a Gradebook Grid View Resource Hub on the Community with full details and instructional videos.
- Early Access: New Content Editor for Blackboard Documents: As announced at the conference, the new Content Editor provides a simpler authoring experience, more powerful content formatting, and increased accessibility. The August release allows beta access to the new functionality, which can be enabled through a feature flag in Administrator settings.
- Student To-Do List: Our ongoing usability analysis reveals that students are looking for more direction on upcoming tasks. The Student To-Do list provides this in a single, personalized list, drawing in all due dates from the gradebook.
Improved Course Navigation
January’s release introduced significant changes to the course experience for instructors and students, and delivered an immediate uplift in time spent learning. The August release expands on this, introducing:
- Full page content navigation – Learning modules, folders, and individual content items—such as documents, assessments, links, and media—now open as full pages instead of sliding panels layered over the course outline.
- Focus state for tests and assignments (students) – We’ve reduced navigation elements when students are completing a test or assignment, meaning there are fewer distractions on the page.
- Breadcrumbs for contextual clarity – Breadcrumbs are now supported for content pages, making it clear where the user is within the course’s module and folder structure.
- Clearer, intentional exit from content – The purple "X" button previously used to exit content is replaced with a clearly labeled exit option in the navigation banner.
- Updated Home button within courses – This now leads back to the Courses page, rather than the institutional landing page, making it faster to move between courses.
Full Page Content Navigation – now available in the core Blackboard LMS experience
Enhanced Group Management
Group tasks are essential to foster skills in teamwork and collaboration. The August Blackboard LMS release makes managing group tasks far easier and faster for instructors, particularly when managing large courses:
- Drag and drop for Group Membership – Instructors can now assemble groups of students using drag and drop, rather than needing to use menus or selecting lists. Removing individual students is also far simpler with this update.
- Create multiple groups at once – From the Groups Management screen, instructors can create multiple groups in one step rather than building them individually. This reduces repetitive setup and makes it faster to establish a group structure before assigning members.
Instructors can drag and drop students to assign them to a group.
For full details on this and every Blackboard LMS release, please visit our Help site.