The latest version of Blackboard Academic Suite offers several advanced and exciting new capabilities not available in the current system.

Shared Content and File Management System
Now you will be able to share the same content and files with multiple courses in a central file managment area. This will allow you to manage, reuse, and share without the need for duplication.

Role-based Information Delivery
This new capability allows users to customize the information they receive through tabs, modules, channels, tools, courses and organizations. Customization can be based on institution roles, allowing for targeted delivery of content.

e-Portfolios
Students and faculty can have their own e-portfolios. The e-portfolios will allow users to assemble, present and share information online for documenting academic growth, career evaluation and course preparation.

Virtual Classroom / Collaboration Tool
This environment allows enables live, synchronous interaction by supporting a text-based Chat environment and a full Virtual Classroom.

Discussions (additional capabilities)
Discussions can now be graded for a participation grade and also peer rating may be enable as well. There are also specific statistics that report on each user’s participation level.

Group Projects
To support peer collaboration, instructors can use the Groups tool to form multiple groups of students. Each group can be given its own file exchange area, Discussion Board, Virtual Classroom and a Group Email tool to send messages to all group members.

Collaborative Web-enabled File Storage
This capablility provides dedicated file and content storage areas for individual users, courses, organizations, the library and constituent groups within the institution.

Versioning
Allows users to automatically archive, track and access previous versions of their files.

For more complete descriptions and list of capabilities, see the Blackboard Quick Tutorials page: http://www.blackboard.com/products/quicktutorials.htm