Blackboard Data Release Notes

Blackboard Data Institutional Authentication Availability

New Features | Release to Production 08 March 2023

In our March release of Blackboard Data, we have deployed Institutional Authentication for clients hosted in Canada, Singapore and Sydney. This feature offers Single-Sign-On using SAML or Blackboard Learn as identity provider and enables greater control over user access and can be set up through a support ticket.

Find out more in Institutional Authentication

Blackboard Data Access Control

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 21 September 2022

In our September release of Blackboard Data, we are enabling institutional administrators to control who has access to Blackboard Data Developer (Snowflake) and the Settings page (where the service account credentials are managed), or access only to Blackboard Data Reporting.

You can review the full instructions on how to restrict access to Developer and Settings, but, in brief, you need to:

• Adopt Blackboard Login. If you have not already done so, submit a support ticket requesting help. 
• Assign a different system role to users who need access only to Blackboard Data Reporting. We recommend a new role with no other permissions. 
• Submit a support ticket asking for this role to be mapped to the Blackboard Data Report Viewer role. 

We believe this new feature removes a significant barrier to the adoption of Blackboard Data Reporting for some institutions.

Each institution is currently allowed up to 20 seat licenses for Blackboard Data, so we encourage institutions to use these accounts for key institutional decision makers like educational, online learning, and EdTech management.

Blackboard Data Reporting Sydney & Canada Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 June 2022
Blackboard Data, Reporting, New Features

We are pleased to announce another key milestone for Blackboard Data: the release of the Blackboard Data Reporting solution to SaaS clients hosted in the Canada and Sydney AWS hosting regions.

This will provide the same reports on Learning, Teaching, and Leading that were previously available only to clients hosted in the US, EU, and Singapore locations. As in other regions, Sydney-hosted clients may now request up to 20 individual accounts to support institutional leaders.

Blackboard Data Reporting May 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 10 May 2022
Reporting, Updated Features, New Features 

The May 2022 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes improvements to two reports in the Learning reporting area.

Enrollment-level detail added to:

•  The “Grade Boundary” report (Learning > Student Performance and Grades).
•  The “Course Access” report:  (Learning > Student Engagement).  

Each of these reports now includes a table containing one row per student course enrollment, and appropriate metrics for the context of the report. This will therefore list all students on all courses within the filters you’ve selected.

The student listing includes features developed directly from feedback gathered in our Blackboard Data Insiders user group:

• First and Last Name separation for easier sorting. 
• A “mailto” link that will address an email to the chosen student in your default email application with one click. 
• A comparative indicator on the “Course Access” column that indicates whether the student’s course accesses are below, within, or above the typical range for the course: 
  • 1 bar – Low – in the lowest quartile. 
    
  • 2 bars – Normal – within the interquartile range (middle two quartiles). 
    
  • 3 bars – High – in the top quartile. 
    

Enhanced course listing:

The course listing has been enhanced and now includes all appropriate courses within your filter selection, where previously it included only the top/bottom 10 courses. 

Visual filtering:

To make it easier to find actionable information, these reports also use visual filtering, where your selection within a visualization will further filter the student table.  

Examples:

• In Course Access, you can select the “Inactive” segment of the donut chart, and the student table will only list inactive enrollments.  
• You can also select a course in the course listing and its enrollments will be displayed in the student table. 

Visual filtering walkthrough video

Visual filtering is additive, so if you select both prior examples, the student table will list inactive enrollments in your chosen course only. You can reset visual filtering by selecting the funnel icon in the contextual menu of the visualization and either selecting the “X” to remove an individual filter or “Clear” to remove all visual filtering. Visual filtering is also used in the existing Course Administration report (Leading reporting area). 

As with all visualizations, you can maximize them to take up all available space, and export to CSV, using the contextual menu that appears in the top-right corner when you hover over the visualization. 

Continuous feedback

We'd like to hear your feedback on these reports or any other reports.

You can submit, comment upon, and vote for new features in the Feature Requests tab of “What’s New”.

Blackboard Data Reporting Singapore Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 05 April 2022
Blackboard Data, Reporting, New Features

We are pleased to announce another key milestone for Blackboard Data: the release of the Blackboard Data Reporting solution to SaaS clients hosted in the Singapore AWS hosting region.

This will provide the same reports on Learning, Teaching, and Leading that were previously available only to clients hosted in the EU and US locations. As in other regions, Singapore-hosted clients may now request up to 20 individual accounts to support institutional leaders. 

Blackboard Data March 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 March 2022
Blackboard Data, Reporting, Developer, Updated Features, New Features

• The Blackboard Data user interface found at data.blackboard.com has been updated to provide a better experience for first-time users, including introductory information about Blackboard Data and an explanation of the new reports now available. 
• A new Blackboard Data Developer area contains the existing Settings page for management of the Service account, as well as a convenient link to your Snowflake instance. 

New Blackboard Data Reporting March 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 March 2022
Reporting, Updated Features, New Features

We’re pleased to announce the release of Blackboard Data Reporting, a new suite of reports to help institutional leaders to make data-informed decisions about policy and practice within the EdTech platform. 

This solution includes three reporting areas: 

• Learning: relating to learner activity, engagement, and performance. 

• Teaching: relating to instructional practice and course design.

• Leading: relating to institutional success and tool adoption. Includes improved versions of the adoption reports previously in Blackboard Reporting. 

These reports comprise 21 dashboards and more than 100 visualizations and insights, and our question-focused user experience makes it easy to understand the purpose of each insight. 

Blackboard Data Reporting is included as a standard for Learn SaaS clients in eligible locations.

As this is an early release of this solution, there are some known issues relating to the accessibility of the reporting content, for which we’re working closely with AWS QuickSight,the business intelligence tool we use to develop these reports, to resolve as a matter of urgency. The reports are currently only available in US English, but we’re working on localization and expect to have the reports localized in 14 languages within Q2. 

We'd like your help in improving these reports and generating new ideas, and to support this we'll prompt users with targeted questions in the What’s New panel in the reports, where you will also find a new Feature Requests panel to enable submission and voting on new ideas. 

In order to support broader usage of these reports across your institution, we’re increasing the number of individual accounts you can request from 5 to 20, and we would encourage you to use these for institutional leaders such as: 

• Provosts 

• Deans 

• Heads of eLearning/Curriculum Development 

• Heads of Distance and Online Learning 

• Student Success leadership 

Learn more about the Blackboard Data Reporting