From Monday morning, Blackboard’s homepage will have a new look and feel. The homepage is the first page you see when you log in to the platform and is it allows you to navigate to course sites and Blackboard Hubs. The new homepage design will improve the look and navigation, but not affect any module or course site design within Blackboard.
The University’s Enhancing Academic Support and Delivery project, held focus groups with staff and students to collect feedback on the features and functions they would like to see on the Blackboard homepage. The key themes that emerged from the discussions were:
- Avoid page scrolling and too many colours
- Clean up the homepage and group things together in a more modern fashion
- A clean and uncluttered page
- Accessing my recent module(s) is important
- Would like to access information that is relevant as a user such as quick access to modules, Faculty Hubs, timetable and information from the Programme, School and Library.
These themes were used as the requirements for a student competition to design a new homepage. There were many great submissions, with the winning design created by final year Marketing Student Adrianna Jezierska. Adrianna’s design is simple and clean and greatly improves the way that courses and announcements are displayed.
“I use Blackboard every day and whilst I like some of the functionality, I have always found it really frustrating the way modules are shown. There is no quick access to other Blackboard sites or other University features. I took about two weeks to complete my entry and was really surprised when I found out that my design had been chosen!” – Adrianna Jezierska
The new homepage and functionality will be visible from Monday morning. Further enhancements to the homepage will be delivered over the coming weeks without impact to users.
For further information on project, please contact [email protected]. For questions relating to the homepage functionality, please contact ServiceLine.
