Faculty Portal Updates Coming!

Derek Nichols
Derek Nichols Blackbaud Employee
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog
Today, we're highlighting some of the exciting features coming soon to Blackbaud Learning Management System and Blackbaud Student Information Management.Hello, Hello, Hello!

My name is Mike and I’m one of the Product Managers behind Blackbaud’s K-12 education management portfolio.



In today’s blog, I want to highlight some of the exciting features that will be introduced to the Blackbaud Learning Management System and Blackbaud Student Information Management soon. These new features replace older pages and update workflows for students, faculty, and parents. The older experiences we are replacing will be removed from the product in 2024. We’ll give you more details and timeline information below so you can start planning for the upcoming changes.

Student Assignment Experience

Available now, legacy experience being removed in the Summer of 2024.



When your school is ready, a Platform Manager can turn on the new assignment experience in Core > Settings > Activate new features. Additionally, they can turn this feature off after it’s been enabled, thus allowing users to try out the new functionality during off-peak times for a better sense of how it will impact their database and user workflows.



The new assignment experience comes packed with goodies for students, parents, and faculty, a few of which we’ll highlight below. If you’re interested in learning more about this feature, check out this enablement video. Likewise, if you have feedback on the new experience and would like to relay that directly to Blackbaud, feel free to follow this link to schedule a meeting with one of the Product Managers.



Enhancements included in this feature:
  • Faculty can see a true preview of assignments they create exactly as their students will see them using the See student preview option.
  • Faculty can attach files when submitting feedback to students.
  • Students can see how many points an assignment is worth from the Assignment Center and their class Assignments pages.
  • Students can organize their work more easily via color coded classes and increased task management options.

Faculty End of Term Grade Entry

Available Spring 2024, legacy experience being removed in the Fall of 2024.



A revamped experience for faculty entering end of term grades is currently in the development process. We have a targeted release timeframe of Spring 2024. As with the new assignment experience, this feature will be available for Platform Managers to enable via Activate new features once it’s ready.



If your school would like to participate in the Early Adopter Program (EAP) for this feature, please follow this link to schedule a meeting with a Product Manager to determine if your school would be eligible. Otherwise, be on the lookout for future announcements about this feature as we get closer to Spring.



Enhancements included in the update:
  • Ability for faculty to see previous grades while entering grades for the current grade plan, allowing them to see student progression through the school year.
  • A new narrative grade entry view for standard grades, allowing teachers to see more information on a studentby-student basis.
  • More control over bulk comments, so teachers can choose which students will receive which bulk comments.
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Online Assessments

Available now, legacy experience being removed in the Summer of 2024.



Just over a year ago, we introduced a new assessment experience for faculty and students. Since then, we’ve been making updates to achieve parity with our legacy assessment experience. In the Spring of 2024, we’ll be making our last round of minor enhancements to the experience and introducing an exciting new assessment feature, Question banks.



The legacy experience will not be completely removed from the software. Prior years’ assessments will still be accessible in a view-only state, but faculty will no longer be able to create assessments that use the legacy experience. If you have faculty members that are still using the legacy experience, please fill out this short survey so we can better understand why they are not opting to use the new feature.



Enhancements included in the new assessment experience:
  • Faculty can award points over what a question is worth, so extra credit questions are possible.
  • Faculty will be able to create multiple banks and subbanks to organize their questions as they see best.
  • Faculty can take questions from their existing assessments and move them into banks and subbanks, with no need to recreate what is already done.
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Faculty Class Attendance Entry

Available Spring 2024, legacy experience being removed with release.



How faculty enter attendance is also getting an update. We’ve heard that the existing experience is too small and the existing UX doesn’t always align with how faculty want to enter their attendance. In the Spring, we’ll be releasing an updated attendance modal that will give faculty an enhancement attendance experience.



A couple of features coming with this update:
  • Faculty will have an easier time tracking which students have been marked for attendance and which have not.
  • Faculty will now be able to award the ‘Present’ attendance designation themselves, rather than it being prepopulated.
  • Attendance will be accessible from either My Day or the Schedule tab of the Class page.
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We’re excited to get these new experiences into your hands in the coming months. For more information, be on the lookout in our What’s New communications when these features are ready to be released!

Comments

  • Chris Felinski
    Chris Felinski
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    Thanks for this update. Question - for the part with “present” no longer being pre-populated - will there be an option for faculty to have it pre-populated if they want? I am thinking for some of our study halls that are quite large and teacher verbally take attendance - to select “present” every time would be cumbersome. Or if nothing is selected, will it assume “present”?

  • Jacqueline Koca
    Jacqueline Koca Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    Hi Chris!
    There isn't an option to have it pre-populated, but blanks will be considered ‘Present’ on save. So faculty that like the current method (Present already displays for all students) or that have a large class size won't have to go through any more clicks than they currently do. We will have some info on the modal to help make sure faculty are aware of that blanks will be considered present so they don't go through extra clicks for no reason!
    -Jacqueline
    SIS Product Manager

  • Lori MacConnell
    Lori MacConnell
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    So the only new thing to appear on Tuesday 2/13 will be the new calendar view in the My Day/Schedule & Performance page, and the other changes will happen sometime this spring?

  • Melissa Battis
    Melissa Battis
    Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    Reading through the Attendance update and seeing the screenshot, does this means that we will now manually have to put “attended” next to each student? This seems like we are going backwards rather than forwards. Is there a bulk entry that we can do there?

  • Mitchell We
    Mitchell We
    Second Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    When is the faculty attendance under calendar going live? It says Spring 2024 but that is too general. Is there specific date on the release?

  • Michael Morrissette
    Michael Morrissette Blackbaud Employee
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    Hi Lori - That is correct! Outside of the Assignment experience, which can be activated in Core, and the new Assessment experience, which was released last year, the other experiences will come later this year.

  • Michael Morrissette
    Michael Morrissette Blackbaud Employee
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    Hi Melissa - If faculty leave the box blank, it will count as ‘Present’ for the student when the screen is saved. No additional clicks will be needed from what is already present in the product today.

  • Michael Morrissette
    Michael Morrissette Blackbaud Employee
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    Hi Mitchell - We would love to be able to give a more specific date, but at this time we can't. For now, the release window is Spring 2024. As we get closer to the release, we'll be sure to communicate the update timeline in our What's New communications.

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