Austin Community College’s Blackboard environment will be unavailable from 8 a.m. Thursday, December 20, until 5 p.m. Friday, December 21. During this time, users will not be able to access the system. The downtime is necessary to install major upgrades.

Things to note in preparation for the upgrade:

• Course Themes are no longer supported in Blackboard. Course sites currently using a Course Theme will revert to the default layout.
• Final grades for the fall semester are due by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, December 19.

The new features available in this upgrade include a number of improvements for users on mobile devices, student submission receipts via email, additional drag-and-drop locations, chemistry notation support, Qwickly Attendance and Qwickly+, and real-time video conferencing via Blackboard Collaborate.