Current System:

• Current Production Version 8.0.307.0 upgraded from: 7.1.467.28

Recent Upgrade News:

• October 6, 2008 - Blackboard 9 Hosted Beta Begins

Upgrade Timeline:

• Not yet determined.

Upgrade History:

GRCC first installed Blackboard CourseInfo 4 back in 1999. We then upgraded to Blackboard 5 Level 1 in April 2001. As our usage grew over the 2001 to 2003 time period, we realized that we needed an enterprise installation. In January 2003, we installed the Blackboard 6 Learning System and Community Portal System. Moving forward, we upgraded to Blackboard 6.2 in the Fall of 2004, and Blackboard 7.1 in August of 2006. Finally, GRCC moved to Blackboard 8 in the Fall of 2008.

The next tentative date for our upgrade of the Blackboard system is yet to be determined. The Bb 9 upgrade is important in order to take advantage of the many resolved issues and new feature sets described in more detail below. Continuous quality improvement requires ongoing and frequent software upgrades, patches, hardware improvements, and overall monitoring of the system.

Why Upgrade?

Simply put, upgrades are part of every software program, and are intended to provide new functionality based on instructor and student feedback. Also of significant importance is that upgrades offer solutions to current issues and problems with the software. The question is not "should we upgrade", but more accurately, "when is our next upgrade".

The Blackboard environment is an enterprise system with high priority here at GRCC. There are many important factors and reasons that upgrading is important. Upgrades provide the opportunity to enhance, improve, address issues, and solve problems that currently exist with one of the key teaching and learning systems we have on campus.

What is Blackboard 9?

Blackboard 9 is the latest release of the Academic Suite and part of a multi-year, multi-release rollout. This release:

1. Builds on the student engagement tools in earlier releases,
2. Improves the performance of the software,
3. Enhances the entire user interface to make it easier to use with drag and dop simplicity, context senstitive menus,,
4. and brings new features such as extended group tools, multiple attempt assignments, new instructor and student notification dashboards, and a new blog tool.

More information is available on the Blackboard Project NG page.

What does this upgrade mean for Faculty?

Faculty will benefit from the enhanced workflows and more effective user interface and an extended tool set of capabilities to improve their teaching with Blackboard.

What does this upgrade mean for Students?

Other than adjusting to cosmetic changes, students should be able to seamlessly move from version 8 to 9 without any significant additional training.