| eLMS Blackboard Building Block |  |
| 2 New in Version 2 |
| eLMS Blackboard Building Block | |
| 2 New in Version 2 |
The main new feature in Version 2 of the eLMS Building Block is the Record Grades functionality on the eLMS Control panel. This enables instructors to extract grade information from an eLMS courseware assignment and record this information into the Blackboard gradebook. This feature can be globally enabled or disabled by Blackboard administrators as part of the building block's configuration.
In this version, Blackboard is the authoritative source of information for both rosters and courseware assignments. The latter was controlled by eLMS in the previous version. Thus when instructors use Synchronize on the eLMS Control panel, the plugin will replicate the roster and assignment information onto eLMS. With this feature change, no information is ever created on Blackboard as as result of a Synchronize operation.
When an instructor Disables eLMS for a Course, (s)he can decide whether to remove the assignment information from Blackboard (and eLMS) or to make the assignments simply unavailable on Blackboard. Disabling assignments can later be undone by re-enabling eLMS.
Certain problems with the original building block have also been fixed. Noteworthy among these is a problem for institutions using the PeopleSoft administrative backend to Blackboard. When students withdraw from a course, this backend system leaves the student in the roster of the course, but removes the student's role in the Course Membership structure of the course. The building block made the assumption that all users appearing on the course roster had a role defined for the course. This assumption caused failures in synchronizing roster information between Blackboard and eLMS. The building block now considers users appearing in a course roster who do not have a course role to no longer be a member of the course.
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