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What's New

Blackboard 7.3: What’s New

The Early Warning System

The Early Warning System is a tool used to communicate warnings to Students or Observers that a performance problem is beginning to appear or has become more serious. Warnings can be generated based on graded performance, late or missing course work, or attendance within the online course. The Instructor can choose to communicate a particular warning to just the Student, the Student and a parent or advisor that is assigned as an Observer, or just the Student’s Observer. In addition, the Instructor has control over the message each time a warning is communicated. The Instructor can use the default message or modify it to more accurately communicate the seriousness of the situation.

When using the Early Warning System, please keep the following key points in mind:

• The Early Warning System does not continuously monitor the course. The Instructor must check the Early Warning System periodically and click Refresh to discover incidents of Student performance that trigger an alert. The Early Warning System consolidates these incidents and allows the Instructor to easily report problems. The Early Warning System does not automatically detect problems and notify Students and Observers. Remember to refresh rules manually on a regular basis.
• The System Administrator may turn off access to the Early Warning System based on policies at the institution. If the Early Warning System is on at the system-level, the Instructor may still turn it off within the course.
• The Early Warning System keeps a log of alerts sent to users. The log is searchable and can be used to verify that a Student was alerted to a problem.

The Early Warning System is designed to work closely with the Gradebook. Early Warning System rules use gradebook results to create rules and create alerts to student performance based on those rules. In particular, the Early Warning System can trigger an alert based on grades recorded in the gradebook. As well, Assignments or Assessments that are not completed by the deadline may also be used to trigger an alert. Note: You will need to assign a rule for each individual Gradebook item. This system will not calculate mid-semester grades.

The Performance Dashboard includes information about Early Warning System alerts. The Early Warning Column shows the number of warnings and the number of total rules that may trigger a warning. Clicking on the data in this column will open the Early Warning System. The Early Warning System column will only display if the tool is turned on in the course.

Clicking on the highlighted items in the Early Warning system column will display the Review User Status page seen below. Instructors can then Notify students if they have met the early warning criteria.

Manage Early Warning System Rules

Rules determine when the Early Warning System flags student performance. It is up to the Instructor to communicate the warning to the user through the Notification Log. There are three options for rules:

• Grade Rule:
  Identifies when student performance on an Assignment, Assessment, or manually graded item is equal to or below a certain level. It is also possible to set a Grade Rule that identifies when a user exceeds a performance level. This can be a useful tool for positive feedback.
• Due Date Rule:
  Identifies when a Student does not complete course work when it is due. A Due Date Rule can only be used to track an Assignment or Assessment created through the Blackboard Learning System. Due Date Rules cannot be created for manually graded items.
• Last Access Rule:
  Identifies the last time a Student accessed the course online.

Please keep in mind that rules are not constantly running in the background checking for events. Regularly refresh the Early Warning System to run the rules and check for events that will trigger a warning.

Follow these steps to add a rule.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select Early Warning System.
3. Click Add Grade Rule, Add Due Date Rule, or Add Last Access Rule.
4. Enter a name and availability for the rule and then set the rule criteria.

Follow these steps to modify a rule.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select Early Warning System.
3. Click Modify for a rule from the list.
4. Change the rule information and criteria.

It is also possible to change the availability of a rule by selecting it, along with several other rules if desired, from the list on the Early Warning System page and then clicking Available or Unavailable from the action bar.

Follow these steps to remove a rule.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select Early Warning System.
3. Select one or many rules from the list.
4. Click Remove. Confirm that the selected rules should be deleted.

Follow these steps to refresh rules.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select Early Warning System.
3. Select one or more rules from the list.
4. Click Refresh from the action bar. The selected rules will be run and any events that trigger the rule will create a warning.

Review Alerts and Notify Users

The Early Warning System helps Instructors notifies Students and Observers when an alert is triggered. Instructors can view alerts and send notifications simply by clicking on a rule listed on the Early Warning System page.

Follow these steps to view alerts generated from a rule.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select Early Warning System.
3. Click on the name of a rule in the list.
4. The Review Rule Status page will appear.

The Review Rule Status page lists all the users in the course and identifies whether or not their performance meets the criteria for the rule and lists details regarding performance. For example, if the Instructor set a Grade rule to trigger an alert for all users with a score less than 65, those users with a score with less than 65 would show Yes in the Meets Criteria column. The page also shows when the user was last notified regarding their performance. Please keep in mind that communicating an alert to users does not happen automatically. The Instructor can customize the message as well as who receives the alert.

Finally, click on the Username to see a detailed view of the user’s performance against all rules.

Follow these steps to notify users when their performance triggers an alert.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select Early Warning System.
3. Click on a rule in the list.
4. Select the users to notify from the list.
5. From the Notify drop-down list, choose the recipients of the notification. The choices are:
   

Student User Only:	This option will only send the notification message to the selected Students.
Observer Users Only:	This option will only send the notification to those users assigned as Observers to the selected Students.
Student and Observer Users:	This option will send the notification to the Student and any assigned Observers.
Other:	This option allows the sender to enter email addresses for the recipients of the notification.
With all options, the sender can enter additional email addresses as blind carbon copy (bcc) recipients.

6. Click Go. The Send Notification page will appear with the To field populated with the names of those users that will receive the notification.
7. Edit the Subject and Message and click Submit to send the notification. The notification may include attachments. Also, the sender may copy themselves on the message.

The Notification Log serves as a record of Early Warning System communications to users. The log can be used to confirm that Students were made aware of performance problems. Follow these steps to view the log.

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Select Early Warning System.
3. Click Notification Log from the action bar.

The Notification Log lists each notification by individual user. It includes a search function for narrowing the results to locate a particular notification.