Affected Users:

Staff and students enrolled in a group.

Description:

Blackboard group Journals are visible to all students in a subject by default (not just the students in the related group). This is caused by the Journal setting “Permit all students enrolled in this subject to view journal” check box being automatically selected when the Blackboard Journal in a group is created (see image below):

Instructors may limit access to the journal to the related group (see the workaround below).

Status:

The UTSOnline vendor has acknowledged this issue as a software defect with no scheduled fix.

Workaround:

Go to each group’s Journal and edit the Journal settings. Deselect the check box for the option to “Permit all students enrolled in this subject to view journal“. This will prevent students outside of the group from accessing the journal. Note: It is not possible to change this setting for more than one group at a time.