Adaptive Release

If you are familiar with Blackboard you remember that in the instructor view next to each piece of content there have been three buttons: Modify, Copy and Remove. In this update they’ve added a fourth: Manage.

The manage button is used to control several of the new features including Review Status and Adaptive Release.

Adaptive release allows an Instructor to created custom learning paths through course content and activities. Content items, discussions, assessments, assignments, or other activities can be released to students based on a set of criteria including: date and time, specific users, group membership, institution role, grades or attempts on a particular test or assignment, or review status of another item in the course.

To create a basic Adaptive Release rule, use the first option: Adaptive Release. This allows for a single rule: Date or Membership or Gradebook Item or Review Status. To use any of these in combination you will need to use the Adaptive Release: Advanced.

To Set a Rule in Adaptive Release: Advanced

1. Click Rule on the menu bar. You will see the Add Rule page.
2. Give this rule a name. Remember rules can be reused so give it a descriptive name.
3. Click Submit. You will now see the Manage Criteria screen.

You can add criteria to this rule to narrow the ability of users to view this content item. Once rules are established and applied to an item, visibility of that item is restricted to those users who meet the criteria of the rules. You can add multiple rules to a single item and once a user meets any of the rules the content will be available.

EXAMPLE 1
You may have a student who knows they will be unable to take a test during the established test time. If you wish to make the test available to only select students you can use the Adaptive Release to achieve this.

1. Locate the assessment within the course and click the Manage button.
2. If this is the only availability restriction you will be placing on the test, select Adaptive Release.
3. Scroll down to the second section labeled Membership.
4. In the Username text box, enter the uniqname for the student OR click Browse to search for the student in your course. If you enter more than one uniqname, they should be separated with a comma.
5. Once you have the users selected scroll to the bottom and click Submit.

Now only the users included in the Membership will have access to the test. You will need to go back and remove this rule if you wish to make the test available for the rest of the class.

OR

Using the scenario above you could use the Advanced Adaptive Release to establish two Rules instead of having to manually make the test available later. The first rule would be to allow the specific users access and the second rule would be a Date rule to open the test to the rest of the class.

EXAMPLE 2
An instructor creates a content folder called Unit 1 and makes the item available in Course Document. The instructor wants Unit 1 to remain unavailable to students until they have marked the Syllabus ‘Reviewed’ AND scored a 10 on a syllabus quiz.

The instructor would need to establish a rule to apply to the Unit 1 folder. That rule would be established in the Advanced Adaptive Release section and would use two criteria: review status and gradebook item. To do this:

1. Locate the Unit 1 folder in the edit view and click Manage.
2. Select Adaptive Release: Advanced from the Manage screen.
3. Click Click Rule on the menu bar. You will see the Add Rule page.
4. Give this rule a name. Remember you can create more than one rule for an item so give it a descriptive name. (I will call mine open Unit 1)
5. Click Submit. You will now see the Manage Criteria screen.
6. The student needs to have reviewed the syllabus first so click Review Status from the Add menu. This allows us to select an item from the course that should be reviewed first. In our case, we select Syllabus from the course map. And click Submit.

   

7. Next we want to set the criteria that the student score a 10 on the syllabus quiz. To do this we Select Gradebook Item. This displays the gradebook item criteria page. From here we select a gradebook item and then the condition that must be met. Click Submit.

   

8. Now you should see that there are two criteria set for the rule called open Unit 1. Notice that the criteria are Review Status AND Gradebook Item. (You can not have an OR in the criteria of a single rule.)

   

9. Click OK. You will see the Rules for this item. Click OK again to return to the Manage menu for this item.