What's New for Faculty

Check out the latest release updates for teachers.

August 2026

Bulk Edit Student Assessment Statuses

Save time and manage assessment attempts more efficiently with bulk status updates from the Proctor tab. Instead of updating students individually, teachers can select Bulk edit, choose the students to update, and then select Allow retake or Allow continue for each selected student.

Only valid Status options are available for each student. For example, Allow retake is only available after a student submits the assessment.

July 2026

New Assignment Creation and Grading Experience Now Available for All Schools

The modernized assignment creation and grading experience is now enabled for all schools. All assignment workflows now use the updated experience, and the legacy workflows are no longer available.

Designed to reduce repetitive steps and streamline common tasks, the new experience helps teachers create assignments faster and grade student work more efficiently.

Create Assignments Faster

The updated assignment setup experience helps you spend less time configuring assignments and more time planning instruction.

Key improvements include:

• A streamlined interface with less scrolling and easier access to settings.

• Faster assignment creation with fewer steps.

• Improved organization of assignment settings.

• Assignment preferences that automatically apply your default settings, such as file submissions, grading methods, and due date options.

  For example, if you typically require file submissions and use Total points grading, you can save those preferences and apply them automatically to future assignments.

Grade More Efficiently

The updated grading experience keeps student work and grading tools together in one place.

Highlights include:

• A side-by-side layout that displays submissions alongside grading tools.

• A larger submission view to help you focus on student work.

• Feedback, assignment status, and rubric grading available on a single page.

• Detailed rubric grading with drill-in views for evaluating criteria.

Consistent Comment Editing

With this update, all assignment grading now uses the same version of TinyMCE for text comments, providing a consistent comment editing experience across assignments.

Check out our New Assignment Creation Experience and New Assignment Grading Experience videos for a closer look!

 

New Class View for Assignment Grading

This release introduces a new Class view for assignment grading, giving teachers a faster grade entry option outside of the full gradebook.

The new Class view provides a gradebook-style experience for a single assignment, allowing teachers to enter grades quickly for multiple students when submission review is not needed. Grading opens in Class view for assignments without file submissions or an associated LTI tool.

Introduced with the new assignment experience in December, the Student view focuses on one student at a time and works best for assignments that require individual review, such as file submissions or LTI tool assignments.

To help you choose the most efficient workflow based on how you need to assess student work:

• Student view opens for assignments linked to LTI tools or online file submissions.

• Class view opens for all other assignments.

June 2026

Enhanced formatting options for assessment essay questions

When students answer essay questions on online assessments, they can now use additional formatting tools to better organize and present their responses.

Essay answers now support:

• Bulleted lists

• Tables

• Subscript and superscript

• Strikethrough

• Special characters

These updates give students more flexibility to structure complex answers, include detailed content, and communicate ideas more clearly during assessments.

May 2026

Easier to find Submitted and Graded columns

In the Assignment Center and the Assignments tab of class pages, the Submitted and Graded columns now appear immediately to the right of the Details column, making submission and grading information easier to find and access.

Classes Menu Always Available for Teachers

Teachers now see the Classes menu in the Faculty persona at all times, even when they have no active classes.

When no classes are active, the menu dropdown displays 0 Classes and includes only the Browse groups option. This allows teachers to prepare upcoming classes between terms or school years.

April 2026

New Proctor tab for real-time assessment management

We’ve added a Proctor tab to assessments, giving teachers a single place to monitor and manage students while an assessment is in progress.

The Proctor tab makes it easy to see which students have started, paused, or submitted an assessment and to take action immediately without searching for student status information. It’s designed to help you respond quickly and confidently during active assessments.

From the Proctor tab, you can:

• View student assessment status in real time.

• See when a student begins, pauses, or submits an assessment.

• Allow a student to continue or retake an assessment.

• Extend an individual student’s due date without changing assessment settings.

• See why a LockDown Browser session was paused (if applicable).

To access the Proctor tab, select an assessment from the Assignment Center or class Assignments tab, then select Proctor.

Use the context menu next to a student’s name to allow a retake, allow a student to continue, or extend that individual student's due date. Available options change based on the student’s current assessment status.

Note: With this release, Allow retake, Allow continue, and Extend due date are no longer available on the assessment Evaluation tab.

For LockDown Browser assessments, a Reason column appears when an assessment is paused, providing details such as swipe detection or the student’s device entering sleep mode.

For more information, see Assessment Proctor.

Assignment List Updates

In list view of the Assignment Center and the Assignments tab on class pages, teachers can now select the number in the Submitted column to open a flyout with student submission details. The flyout lists all students in the class, including those who haven’t submitted their assignment, along with their submission status and timestamps. Selecting a student’s name opens their assignment evaluation page.

Tip: For details on the Status icons, see Gradebook Key.

Teachers can also add three new columns to these list views:

• Publish grade

• Add to cumulative grade

• Mark as extra credit

These updates make it easier to view submission statuses and assignment details at a glance.

Teacher-Managed Proctor Exit Passcodes for LockDown Browser

When enabling LockDown Browser on an assessment, teachers can now set a unique proctor exit passcode for that assessment instead of using the school-wide default. If students become aware of the passcode, teachers can update it at any time in the assessment settings to maintain test security.

Assignment Titles in Reports

Reports that previously showed assignment abbreviations now display assignment titles instead.

Marking Period Grade Calculation Enhancements

Existing Grades Indicator

When calculating marking period grades, teachers now see a green checkmark next to students who already have a grade entered. Students without an existing grade no longer display the red missing icon, making it easier to quickly identify which grades are complete.

Include Previous Section Grades

When calculating marking period grades, teachers who define their own calculations now have an Include previous section grades option. When enabled, this option allows grades from a student’s earlier section of the same course to be included in the calculation if the student transfers sections.

For example, a student completes Semester 1 in English 1 - A and transfers to English 1 - C for Semester 2. If the final grade is calculated as (Semester 1 grade + Semester 2 grade) / 2, enabling Include previous section grades uses the Semester 1 grade from English 1 – A and the Semester 2 grade from English 1 – C.

March 2026

LockDown Browser Behavior Update

When a student uses an application switch gesture (such as a three-finger swipe on Windows touchpad devices or two finger swipe on Mac devices) or the Mac user switching feature during an assessment, LockDown Browser now closes and pauses the student’s assessment.

The teacher must allow the student to resume the assessment before they can continue.

Turnitin LTI 1.3

This release adds support for Turnitin’s New Standard Assignment configuration in the Turnitin LTI 1.3 integration.

The following issues have been resolved:

• Grades entered for New Standard Assignments in Turnitin now pass correctly to Blackbaud’s Learning Management System.

• The correct due time for New Standard Assignments now displays in the Turnitin interface.

• Assignments converted from LTI 1.1 to LTI 1.3 are no longer duplicated when launching the integration.

View Previous Assessment Submissions

Teachers can now review earlier submissions when a student retakes an assessment. From the evaluation page, use the dropdown next to Show only essay questions to select a prior submission. Previously, allowing a student to retake an assessment deleted their earlier submissions.

Teachers can enter grades and comments for the most recent submission only.

Extra Credit Gradebook Icon

In gradebooks, you can now quickly identify extra credit assignments by a blue star icon.