Ultra: What's new in the Ultra Experience?

Functional Category

Feature

About

Ultra Course

Original Course

Engagement

Course Badges (Achivements)

Achievements is a new capability for Ultra courses to help keep students motivated and congratulate them for their participation in a course. With Achievements:

Instructors can create course badges and set criteria for students to earn the badges.
Instructors can view which students earned a course badge.
Students can review the requirements to earn a course badge.
Students can view both earned and unearned course badges.
Leaders can use achievements in Ultra organizations.

Grading & Gradebook

Mastery tab in gradebook

The new Mastery tab in the Gradebook allows instructors and students to see how their activities align with institutional goals. Based on the goal performance scale set byUMBC, the tab displays the mastery of each alignment (e.g., Distinguished, Proficient, Foundational, etc.).

The Mastery tab enables instructors to view the level of mastery per alignment for each student and how each student is performing against those alignments. Students can drill down on the Goals tab to individual content items to see how goals align with their mastery progress.

AI Course Design Assistant

Generate question banks

Instructors can now generate test questions in a question bank using the AI Course Design Assistant. To generate a question bank, select the Auto-generate option from the (+) on the Question Banks page. Instructors can select content items to provide context for the questions and further refine the questions they ask by entering a description of the learning objectives or topic.

Course Design

Usability improvements to Ultra Documents

Blackboard made several usability improvements to Ultra Documents:

• The default of View and Download was restored for uploaded files in the Edit File Options.

• If there isn’t enough space when resizing blocks with keyboard navigation, the option to expand right is hidden.

• The Redo button now continues to display and function after removing an HTML block.

• The cursor function works as expected when dragging a block.

• The Content Collection option is available in the Insert content + in the Content block.

• Instructors can once again generate a question bank directly from a Document.

Grading

Enhancements to student submission review page

The student submission review page makes it easier for students to access instructor feedback on their submissions:

When an instructor selects student preview, they can now access the student submission review page.
Students can now access offline submissions from this page.
Students now have a Read more option for overall and attempt feedback.

Grading

Needs Reconciling added to Overview Page

A Needs reconciling section now appears on the gradebook Overview tab. In this section, reconcilers can easily access all items ready for reconciliation.

Communication & Engavement

Email notifications for Followed Discussions

To encourage participation in discussions, Blackboard expanded notifications to include email. Emails are sent when users opt for Email me right away notifications.

Functional Category

Feature

About

Ultra Course

Original Course

Content Management

Redesigned Course Content page

The Course Content page is redesigned to focus content on the left and course actions on the right. Additional differentiation clarifies learning modules, folders, and content items to improve course navigation.

Open

Content Management

Knowledge check questions blocks

Ultra Documents now includes a Knowledge Check block to enhance the learning experience. Knowledge checks allow students to engage with content and receive immediate feedback.

Only multiple choice and multiple answer questions are supported. The knowledge check includes pre-populated, but editable, correct/incorrect answer feedback. Students can respond to the knowledge check as often as they like. Faculty can access metrics to show the number fo students participating, and various data about attempts, but this data is not granular to show which students and the data does not go to the gradebook.

Communication & Engagement

AI Conversations

The AI Conversation is a Socratic questioning exercise guided by AI, encouraging students explore their thoughts on a topic. The AI Conversation is configured by the instructor by a topic, AI persona (name, avatar, and personality trait) and complexity of responses. Additionally, a reflection question asks the student to share their thoughts on the activity and lets the student flag any bias or errors from the AI as part of Anthology’s Trustworthy AI Approach. Instructors can edit the reflection question, guiding the student on how best to reflect on this activity.

On submission, the instructor can review the AI conversation transcript and the student's reflection. The AI Conversation is a formative assessment by default, but you’re not restricted to this option.

Grading

Overview Page

To help instructors stay on top of their grading workload, we added an indicator to the Gradebook tab to let you know when there are new submissions to grade. The indicator displays the number that needs grading. If the count goes higher than 99, it displays as 99+.  

We also added a new gradebook Overview tab to improve task orientation and grading efficiency.  This tab contains two sections: Needs Grading and Needs Posting.

Grading

Updated Feedback Page for Students

Ultra intoduces a new student-facing submission review page for assignments. The new page makes all instructor feedback on a submission more accessible.

Students can access all feedback on their submission, even if the assignment is hidden by a release condition.

Course Management

Student Activity Log

Instructors often need to review student activity. Student activity helps inform decisions in academic disputes and aids in troubleshooting. You can also analyze the course participation of students at risk. Now the Student Overview page has a student activity log. Instructors and other higher roles can use the report to check what a particular student did in a course. 

The Activity log can be filtered by event type and can look to the past 140 days. Any information older than that won’t be stored in this report. The following events can be found in the report: 

• Course Access 

• Assessment Started 

• Assessment Draft saved 

• Assessment Submitted 

• Assessment Auto-submitted 

• Discussion Access 

• Discussion Draft saved 

• Discussion Edit 

• Discussion Reply 

• Discussion Response 

• Document Access 

• Journal Access 

• LTI Item Access 

• SCORM item Access 

Functional Category

Feature

About

Ultra Course

Original Course

Content Management

Content Designer (Enhanced Ultra Documents)

Instructors can create appealing layouts by dragging and dropping visual elements into columns and rows. The Content Designer is fully responsive and mobile friendly, accessible using a mouse, trackpad, or the keyboard.

The first set of block types include:

• Content block: Add content via the content editor.

• HTML block: Add content via HTML or CSS in the Document.

• File upload block: Browse for files on the local machine to upload to the Document.

• Cloud upload block: Login to a cloud service and select a file to add into the Document.

• Content Collection block: Browse the Content Collection and select a file to add to the Document.

• Convert a file block: Browse for files on the local machine. Once selected, the system converts the file into the Document format. Supported file types include PDF, PowerPoint (ppt, pptx, pps), and Word (doc, docx, odt).

All block types can be resized. Within the new Content Designer for Ultra Docs, instructors can use a menu bar to edit, add blocks, undo/redo, cancel, or save the page.

LIMITATIONS: AI generated questions are no longer available from Ultra Docs with the enhanced editing tools. Additionally, third-party embedded tools using the Content Market may break. The HTML block is a good alternative for providing this type of content to students.

Content Management

Image generation improvements

AI generated images will use DALL-E 3 to generate higher quality, higher resolution images for learning modules, documents, announcements, assessment questions, and journal prompts.

Content Management

Multiple rules for release conditions

Instructors can now create multiple rules for release conditions based on multiple criteria – date, time, grade range performance criteria. You can also create rules for specific individual learners, groups, or for all members.

Rules and criteria now copy from Original adaptive release settings. The supported criterion types are date, time, grade range, and memberships (individual or groups). Only supported criteria types are copied from Original to Ultra courses. These criteria types are removed automatically during a copy:

• Attempt for a gradable item (student submitted the assignment or test)

• Student marked an item reviewed

Assessments

New Assignment Interface

To create a better experience, the new Assignment page includes these improvements: 

• A new Instructions box where instructors can use the full content editor to craft assignment instructions.

• There are no options to add questions to an assignment. 

• The Settings panel now includes only options relevant to assignments. 

• Blank attempts are no longer created when students view assignment instructions. The system only creates an attempt when students add content to the file drop zone / content editor. Note: Group or timed and proctored assignments continue to create attempts when students view the instructions.

NOTE: The New Test page remains unchanged. Instructors can access all the same question types and settings options. Attempts are still automatically created when students view the test questions. 

Assessments

Anonymous setting for Forms

Instructors can now collect anonymous submissions in Forms. Please note: Anonymous forms cannot be administered to Groups and class conversations are not supported. Additionally, exceptions, exemptions, and accommodations are not supported to ensure anonymity.

Communication

Follow discussions

Users can follow select discussions and receive notifications for new contributions from peers or instructors. Follow discussions replaces the subscribe to discussions in Original courses.

In August, the first release of Follow Discussions, notifications are delivered through the Activity Stream. New notification options for the Activity Stream settings allow users to manage notification types for discussions: 

• Activity on my responses 

• Activity on responses I have replied to 

• Responses from instructors 

• Responses for followed discussions 

• Replies for followed discussions 

Communication

Send messages to groups from Group Spaces

Students can now send a group message from the members page of a group space to encourage collaboration on content that they have been assigned. 

Assessments

Convert underplayed tests to question banks

When an Original course is converted, underplayed tests will now be converted to question banks. This will help to declutter both the course content page and the gradebook, making it easier for instructors to manage their course materials. 

NOTE: During the conversion process, any random blocks, question sets, and linked questions included in undeployed tests will be removed. Question Banks do not support those features. This ensures that the resulting question banks preserve original questions without duplication.

Assessments

IP Address Filtering

Instructors can restrict an assessment by location in Ultra Course View. This restriction prevents students from taking tests outside of proctored locations or taking tests on another’s behalf. To restrict by location, select Test Settings, then Assessment Security. Select the Location restriction. No restriction is the default value.

NOTE: Locations must be created by Blackboard system admins. At this time, UMBC is evaluating this functionality, pending additional settings to support accessibility and accommodations.

Functional Category

Feature

About

Ultra Course

Original Course

Assessment

Printer-friendly assessments with answer key

Instructors can now print an answer key for their assessments. A printed answer key is helpful for grading any printed assessment. The print option is available in Forms, Tests, and Assignments with questions.

Printing is not yet available for question pools and mobile.

Communication

Send copy to email when scheduling announcements

Instructors can schedule an announcement for a future date and select that it will send an email copy. The announcement tool will send the email copy on the day and time the announcements are posted.

Grading

Needs Grading improvements

The Needs Grading filter on the Student tab will now only display students with ungraded attempts that count towards Needs Grading.

The Needs Grading filter on the Questions tab will now only display questions with ungraded responses from attempts that count towards Needs Grading.

Grading

Audio & video feedback per question

When grading by student or question, instructors can now provide contextual feedback as recorded audio and video. Instructors can add recorded feedback to all question types.

Functional Category

Feature

About

Ultra Course

Original Course

AI Course Design Assistant Tools

Output Language Selector

To support multi-language use cases, the AI Design Assistant now includes a language selector. Instructors may use the language selector to set the desired language for generated content. This feature is especially beneficial for courses with multi-language requirements.

Assessment

Printer-friendly assessments

Instructors can now print assessments. Printing provides a convenient solution for a variety of use cases:

• Accommodating students with specific needs or limited technology access

• Providing a printed assessment for testing in designated centers

• Backup and record keeping

• Conducting offline assessment

• Documentation and compliance

• Maintaining security and integrity

The print option is available in Forms, Tests, and Assignments with questions. Printing also provides the option to save as PDF. Support for question pools and answer keys is in development.

Grading

Show or Hide Graded Responses

The Needs Grading filter now filters out graded student responses by default. Filtering this way helps instructors to focus on any remaining ungraded responses for a given question. If instructors want to include graded responses, they can select Show graded responses. This selection preference is now stored per course and it persists across assessments in each course.

Grading

Private grading notes

Instructors can now add private grading notes to student grades. After a score is assigned, the new Feedback & Notes menu option is available. Grader notes form an important part of the academic record. These notes may serve as documentation for a grading decision or grade adjustment.  Grader notes are private to graders and not visible to students.

Grading

Improved visibility of new grades & feedback to students

To ensure that students are aware of any new grades in the course, Ultra added an indicator to the Gradebook tab. When there are new grades, the number of new grades appears on the tab. After selecting the tab, items with new or updated grades appear at the top of the student gradebook and display a purple indicator. The purple indicator disappears and the count on the tab reduces when the student selects the item or reviews their submission.  

Additionally late assessments are marked with a "(Late)" label to reduce stress rather than a red label.

Course Management

Redesigned Courses landing page

The carousel for navigating between terms is removed. There is now a term selector and filter you can use on its own or with other filters. Users can set filters, make term choices, and add text searches. All of these are clearly displayed below the search box. Remove these search settings or filters to see more courses or organizations. Remove them by selecting the close icon “x” on each.

Selections and filters are remembered automatically even if you log out or switch devices. Set up the pages the way you like, and we’ll keep it that way until you change it.