Scholar Updates Winter 2025/2026
There have been several updates to Scholar in winter 2025/2026 that will save screen real estate, make test administration easier, and provide new experiences for students. These changes will be effective in two groups. Several are available as of the writing of this article, and others will be available on January 8th, 2026.
Updates Available Now
Instructor Dashboard
Blackboard has converted the Activity area on Scholar into an Instructor Dashboard that allows a unified view of announcements, classes, and activities. Click on Activity on the left.
You’ll then see the full dashboard.
Bulk Change Test Question Points
You can now change the point value for multiple test questions at once. To do so, click on the three dots at the top of the test and choose “Bulk Edit Points”
You can select certain question types with the dropdown at the right.
Fill in the points that you want each question to be worth in the “Points” box. You can check the box next to individual questions, or just check the Select All box at the top to select all questions of a particular type.
Click Update at the bottom of the screen, and the points will be changed.
Automated Student Communications
You’re now able to have Blackboard automatically contact students based on their grades. To do so, click on the Automations link on the right side of the course.
Then, click New Automation.
You can choose a congratulatory or supportive message.
Choose the assignment or gradebook column that you’d like to determine whether to send the message, and the grade that the student needs to achieve to trigger the message.
Click the pencil to edit the message you’d like sent, and click Save to turn the automation on.
You can then edit or delete the automation with the three dot menu.
AI Conversations
You can now assign AI chats to students. These chats can either have students take a position and then ask Socratic questions, or can allow students to role-play with a chatbot. These chatbots are created by faculty, and are only available if specifically assigned to the students. As with all other AI tools in Scholar no instructor or student data is used to train the AI.
You can set up the chatbot with a specific scenario, role and personality.
You can then ask the students to reflect on their conversation.
Once your students have completed the activity, you can see and grade both their conversation and reflection.
For full information on setting up and grading AI conversations, see our help article.
Updates Available January 8th
The next major update to Scholar will take place on January 8th, and will have the following changes.
New Look and Feel for Classes
You’ll notice a new look and feel for classes which will save you some screen space.
The only real changes to how you do anything are on how you navigate away from your current class. To return to your course list, click the Home button.
You can also switch to another recent class with the Courses dropdown.
Test Question Updates
Multiple Choice/Multiple Answer
Multiple choice questions have two updates. The first is that they will now default to 4 potential answers.
Additionally, you can specify a maximum number of options that a student can select for the question. It defaults to allowing students to select all of the options, but you can reduce it. If there is only one correct answer and you set it to only allow one to be selected, the checkboxes will change to radio buttons.
Expanded True/False Options
True/False is the most common type of question where there is an either/or choice. However, you may want to also have yes/no, agree/disagree or right/wrong for the answer.
To select an alternative set of answer choices, select one from the Answer Choices dropdown.
Then, set the correct answer with the Correct Answer option.