This year we heard staff and students saying how much they liked Learning Edge but if there was one thing they could change, it would be how it looks. Well, we are pleased to announce that Learning Edge will be getting a face lift this summer with an upgrade to Service Pack 8.
The work is planned to take place on Sunday 22nd July & Monday 23rd July, during which time the system will be unavailable.
Don’t worry if you’re thinking: *gulp* I’ve only just learnt what all the buttons and tools did in the current version! The tools are the same and they will work in the same way. It is just the interface itself that will change to look more modern and contemporary. Feedback about it has been really positive from Edge Hill colleagues who have taken an early look at it on our Test environment. They are saying that it looks much nicer and is easier to navigate.
So what will it look like?
Your ‘My Institution’ homepage will remain very familiar.
The Course/Module page will look cleaner and less cluttered.
Discussion Forums will be more streamlined and viewing the parent post within a reply will be much more obvious. 
There are other benefits too!
The service pack will fix some minor problems in the current version, and add functionality to existing features. Some of the other improvements you can look forward to include:
A new and improved Visual Text Box Editor which has an option to work in full screen mode – and will allow you to copy and paste from Word documents into discussion, blog, journal posts and other HTML items without annoying formatting problems!
A brand new course-to-course navigation feature which will help you easily switch from one course to another with a click. You’ll be able to jump to a recently visited course and retain your context (ie. move from the discussion board in one course to the discussion board in another).
Teaching staff will be able to personalize the look and feel of courses with pre-designed themes, to make them more attractive.
Teaching staff and administrators will be able to run a wider range of activity reports about how courses and course materials are being used – which will be perfect for helping academic teams with their evaluation practices.
There will also be a number of improvements to the assessment tools. There will be a prominent progress indicator bar on tests, which will turn red when the test time is nearly up, and Instructors will be able to select whether to make a test “auto submit” when the time has elapsed or notify the student that they are now over time.
Guesswork on multiple choice questions won’t be a problem anymore as instructors can set negative points for wrong answers on tests. Also, if an instructor notices an error in a test ‘answer’ they will be able to edit the test, and Blackboard will automatically recalculate the score for all submissions (and future submissions) affected by the change.
These are just a few of the enhancments SP8 will bring. Full details on the changes can be found in the Service Pack 8 Release Notes.
If you would like to take a look at the changes before the upgrade, we have a test server with it installed already. Contact [email protected] if you would like further information about this.
Finally, a note about the timing of the upgrade
In order to implement these enhancements, we do need to make the system unavailable for a short period during the summer break, on 22/23 of July. (Specific timings will be announced when testing has been completed and we know how quickly we can perform this work.)
Finding the right time to perform a system upgrade is difficult, particularly when so many staff and students make daily use of it. However, we trust you will understand how important it is to maintain and improve the system and hope that you will approve of the new more contemporary interface once the upgrade is complete!
We welcome thoughts about the planned enhancements. What do you think about the new look? Do you like it? Let us know what you think by commenting below…
Megan Juss
Learning Technology Development Manager
If you have any questions about this work you can speak to your Learning Technology Development contact or email [email protected].