The Evaluation tab in the Control Panel has several tools for monitoring student progress, tools that can help you identify students who may be struggling so you can take appropriate action or notify them by email. (Notify them early, notify them often!) In this post, we describe the functions of the Performance Dashboard, describe how to set up and work with Course Reports, and explain how to set up Early Warning System Rules for Grades, Last Course Access, and assignment Due Dates.
The Performance Dashboard. Here you can view a list of students in your course and the last date each student logged in to Blackboard. The columns are sortable and contain links to to assignments or discussion board.
As an example, you can review how many discussion boards your students have posted to, how often, their average position (how many users have posted before they did) and their current grades. Note: you cannot grade from the Performance Dashboard.
You can also check if they’ve met any Early Warning criteria (we’ll get to that in a minute). This example shows that three Early Warning Rules have been set up but this student has met none of the criteria.
Course Reports provide statistics on all user activity. You can choose what type of report you want and in what format to download it.
How do I use it?
Go to the Evaluation tab in the Control Panel and click on Early Warning System.
Choose the type of rule you want to create: Grade Rule, Last Access Rule, or Due Date Rule.
In this example we have created a Last Access Rule. Once a rule is created, it looks like this in the control panel. After creating a rule, check the box in the first column and the refresh button to apply your rule.
It will then look like this.
Notify students. Check the box of the rule you want to review. Select Review Rule Status from the item’s drop down menu. This takes you to the class roster. 
Here you can view the Meets Criteria column to select which students to notify. Select the student names, then click Notify. This takes you to page where you can set up an email message.
Click on Notification History to for a record of notifications you have sent.
Early Warning Notifications. You can choose to receive notifications that a student has met one or more criteria. The notifications appear in the Alerts module in your Blackboard landing page. They can be turned on or off by clicking Edit Notification Setting.
Additional tutorials: http://ondemand.blackboard.com/assess.htm. Scroll down to Student Performance.
The Early Warning System seems to have disappeared from the Evaluation menu with the Bb upgrade, or am I overlooking something?
Hi Greet. Thank you for your comment.
The Retention Center replaces the Early Warning System.