By Chris Higgins and Sharon Roushdy

By fall 2008, there will be a number of major changes to ELMS (powered by Blackboard). The primary change is that Blackboard will be upgraded to version 8. Version 8 replaces the ELMS “grade book” with an improved “grade center,” giving faculty some greatly requested additional functionality. The grade center tool is designed to be more dynamic, allowing easier access for adding grades manually. “Smart views” in the grade center permit faculty to create different views of the grades. For instance, if someone wanted to see only one section of a course, he or she could create a smart view to show only students in that section. Also in this new grade center are better templates for calculated columns, including many of the types of calculations frequently requested by faculty members. While the grade center is quite robust, it is very different than the current grade book. OIT will be offering training throughout the summer and additional online support materials to help faculty learn about the grade center’s new functions.

Also, you may have already noticed a few new tools already available in your ELMS spaces. With a Student Tech Fee grant, the College of Arts and Humanities funded the purchase of Learning Objects’ Campus Pack. This set of tools gives faculty the ability to create, or to have their students create, blogs and wikis in their ELMS courses. A wiki can allow your students to individually or collaboratively design and edit pages they create in a wiki space. All work in the wiki is tracked and any prior version can be reviewed or restored. In contrast, a blog’s format is more like a journal in that contributors post messages that are presented in a dated sequence. As with a wiki, a blog can be set up for groups or individuals and they both allow reviewers to post comments.

For more information on these features or for other ELMS news, please visit the Announcements section of the ELMS home page at http://elms.umd.edu.