Previous updates to the Ultra Experience

AI Course Design Assistant Tools

Authentic Discussion & Journal Prompts 

Instructors can generate discussion and journal prompts that encourage students to engage in higher-order thinking, apply their knowledge, justify or challenge their beliefs and ideas, and emulate real-world situations.

The generation process allows instructors to enter a discussion or journal description, select a desired cognitive process based on Bloom's Taxonomy, set the complexity, and generate a discussion or journal title.

The instructor can review the generated prompts and select one to add to the discussion or journal. After adding the prompt, the instructor can edit or further refine the prompt as appropriate.

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Content Creation & Management

Image Button on Content Editor (new locations)

The image button was added to the content editor in Announcements, Assessment Questions, and Journal entries/comments. Faculty can upload an image using this icon or generate images via AI (limited to specific tools).

Students can access the image button when answering questions on tests and assignments, creating journal entries, and posting journal comments. Students can only upload an image.Images are limited to uploading a file for image.

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Assessment & Grading

Unlimited Rubric Rows & Columns

In the past, rubrics were limited to 15 criteria and 15 performance levels. These restrictions are removed to allow for greater criteria to support assessment and accreditation.

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Assessment & Grading

Different due dates for groups

Instructors may want to set different due dates for each group working on a group assessment. With this update, instructors can assign a unique due date to each group using the exceptions workflow.

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Assessment & Grading

Goals alignment to question banks

Instructors can align goals to questions within a question bank. Question-level goal alignment ensures that assessment items measure the desired learning outcomes. 

Instructors can currently align goals to:

• assessments (Assignments, Tests (including individual questions), Discussions, Rubrics criterion)

• content (Files, Web links, Teaching tools with LTI connection, Ultra Document).

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Assessment & Grading

Additional sorting controls for grid view gradebook

Sorting controls (ascending/descending) are now available for these column types in the Ultra gradebook: Discussion, Journal, Group Assessment, Group Discussion, LTI, Calculations, Attendance, and SCORM.

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Assessment & Grading

Sorting controls for Flexible Grading

When using the Flexible Grading interface, instructors can apply various sorting options in flexible grading:

• Submission date (oldest - newest) or (newest to oldest) of latest attempt

• Last Name (A - Z) or (Z - A)

• First Name (A - Z) or (Z-A)

• Student ID (ascending or descending)

The grading interface stores the most recently used sorting option. If an instructor stops grading an assessment and resumes grading later, the last sorting option is applied. Also, if sorting the submissions by last name or grading status, the chosen sorting option carries over into the grading interface.

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Content Creation & Management

Image Button on Content Editor

• Upload an image through selection or drag and drop

• Search stock images from Unsplash. With this option, instructors can enter keywords to search for and select high-quality, royalty-free images. When enabled, the AI Design Assistant suggests keywords.

The image button is available to faculty in Ultra Documents, Discussions, Course Messages, and journal prompts.

Students can access the image button for Discussion responses, test question responses, and Course Messages. They will only have access to upload an image.

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Assessment & Grading

Gradebook sorting controls

Additional sorting controls are available in the gradebook grid view:

• Student Name

• Overall Grade

• Tests and Assignments

• Manual columns

Instructors can sort records in ascending or descending and remove any applied sorting. A purple highlight in the column header helps instructors identify where sorting is applied.

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Assessment & Grading

Partial credit distribution for matching questions

Partial and negative credit is turned on by default for matching question. Partial credit is auto-distributed as a percentage across the matching pairs. Instructors can edit the partial credit values if needed to grant some pairs more or less credit. Values for partial credit must sum to 100%.

Additional improvements include:

• The "reuse an answer" and "delete pair" options now appear on the right side of the answer for each pair.

• "Additional answers" was renamed to "Distractors."

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Assessment & Grading

Tabbed attachments for student file submissions

When grading file-based submissions, instructors will find a new tabbed interface. The first tab displays the assessment instructions. After that, there is one tab for each submitted file. The first attached file displays by default.

This new tab-based navigation has several benefits:

• Navigating file-based submissions is more transparent and easy by removing multiple scroll bars. More of the student submission is visible. 

• The number of files the student attached to their submission is clear. The option to download the student-submitted file(s) is more apparent.

• Graders can switch between the assessment instructions and the submitted file(s).

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Assessment & Grading

Late submission indicator in submission receipts

Some instructors use penalties or deduct points for late submissions. Based on direct feedback from instructors, a new "late indicator" was added to the submission receipt. This indicator is present only if a student submits the assessment late.

Students can view the late submission indicator in:

• the confirmation modal displayed upon a successful submission,

• the downloaded version of the submission receipt, and

• the emailed submission confirmation.

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Assessment & Grading

Anonymous grading supported in Flexible Grading

Anonymous grading is now available in the new Flexible Grading experience. Instructors can now complete the following tasks and actions:

• Grade test and assignment submissions by student

• Filter on grading status of choice

• Navigate between students and multiple submission attempts

• Keep track of grading progress

• View both the attempt- and the final grade for each assessment

• Provide meaningful feedback, with or without a rubric

• Grade inline using Blackboard Annotate

• Collapse side panels to view more of the student submission

• Show an originality score if SafeAssign is used

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Assessment & Grading

Edit / regrade in Flexible Grading Question View

Instructors can access the Edit/Regrade workflow when grading by question and by student in Flexible Grading.

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Assessment & Grading

Safe Assign Direct Submit

Direct Submit allows instructors to submit items to SafeAssign outside of the assessment context.

SafeAssign appears as an instructor tool in Books & Tools. Instructors can upload a file (up to 10 MB) or copy/paste text.

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Assessment & Grading

Delegated Grading by Groups

Instructors sometimes distribute the grading workload for an assessment to multiple graders. This is a popular practice in larger classes. Instructors can assign graders to groups of students with the new delegated grading option. Each grader will only see the submissions made by students in the group(s) assigned to them.

Delegated Grading can be used with all available group types. Graders assigned to a group of students will only see submissions for those students on the assignment’s submission page. They can only post grades for their assigned group members. 

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Assessment & Grading

Send Reminder from Gradebook list and grid views

Instructors may want to send a reminder to students or groups who haven't yet made a submission for an assessment. To make this easy, Ultra courses now have a "Send Reminder" option in the Gradebook.

Reminders are sent as a blind carbon copy to non-submitting students or groups as a course message (forwarded automatically via email).

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Assessment & Grading

Copying grading schemas from course to course

Instructors can now copy their custom grading schemas from Ultra and Original courses to other Ultra courses. These schemas are listed in a Grading Schemas folder on the Copy Items panel.

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Assessment & Grading

Sorting controls for manually added gradable Items

Instructors can use sorting controls on the grades page for manually created items. The sorting controls enable sorting in both ascending and descending order. Instructors can sort the following information: Student name, Grade, Feedback, and Post status.

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Assessment & Grading

Partial Credit Auto-Distribution for Correct Multiple Choice Answers

Ultra tests will auto-distribute partial credit across correct answer choices. This distribution provides efficiency and saves instructors’ time. If desired, instructors can edit the values if some correct answer options warrant more or less credit. Values for correct answers must sum to 100%.

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Assessment & Grading

Anonymous Comments in Bb Annotate

To enhance anonymity, graders can now post Bb Annotate comments without disclosing their names. Instructors have the option to mark inline comments as anonymous when creating them or even after comments are added.

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Communication & Engagement

Instructor Defined Message Settings

Messages are available by default in all Ultra courses. However, Bb administrators may allow instructors to customize the Messages options at the course or organization level.

The exact customization will be determined at a later date.

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Reporting & Analytics

Mobile-Friendly Student Activity Report

In addition to a student’s name and grade on the Student Activity report, instructors can view student information on small screens: Late submission indicator, Date opened, Date started, and Attempts.

Instructors can download the report in CSV format from small devices. 

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Third Party Tools

Partner Cloud Settings

Instructors can now edit these settings for a third-party tool on an assessment or tool link. The edit settings include:

• Name/Title

• Description

• Visibility including Release Conditions

• Option to Launch to the tool

• Open in a New Window

• Enable Class Conversation

• Grade information if Partner Content is gradable

• Goals & Standards

If the Partner content is gradable, the due date and grade maximum are read-only. These are only configurable within the specific Partner Cloud tool (e.g., Pearson MyLab, VoiceThread, etc.)

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Upgrading to Ultra

Canvas conversion improvements

Canvas Modules convert to Folders in the Ultra Course View. The conversion created a Document inside the Folder using the same title as the Folder. The Document didn't contain any content. This also created more work for users as they now needed to delete the unnecessary Document. 

Now the conversion process no longer creates unnecessary Documents.

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AI Course Design Assistant Tools

Course structure suggestions

Drawing insights from the course's title, description, and contextual information, the AI Course Design Assistant generates learning modules. The tool allows for the provision of supplementary context, such as descriptive text or keywords. Instructors have the flexibility to add a title prefix (e.g., Topic, Unit) to infuse a personal touch, integrate visual elements, or fine-tune the complexity of their content.

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AI Course Design Assistant Tools

Learning module image integration

Instructors will find two options for integrating images into learning modules:

• Search stock images from Unsplash. With this option, instructors can enter keywords to search for and select high-quality, royalty-free images. When enabled, the AI Design Assistant suggests keywords.

• Generate images with the AI Design Assistant. Image generation leverages insights from the learning module description and other contextual cues in the course. To further empower instructors, they can describe the ideal image and regenerate images.

Images are marked as decorative by default. The instructor can untick ‘Mark the image as decorative’ and add specific alternative text.

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AI Course Design Assistant Tools

Rubric generation

Crafting rubrics can be a time-intensive task. The AI Design Assistant can take the helm in rubric creation, drawing cues from course context. While retaining human-centered authority, instructors can define the rubric. This includes specifying details like descriptions (learning objectives or topics), rubric type (percentage, points, or range), complexity, and dimensions. The rubric remains open to review and refine, guaranteeing the instructor's input at every step.

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AI Course Design Assistant Tools

Test question generation

Crafting test questions from the ground up demands a significant amount of time. The AI Design Assistant steps in to offer test question suggestions, helping instructors reclaim valuable time. This resource is beneficial for both formative and summative assessments.

Instructors can refine the suggested questions by adding a description. The description might be learning objectives or topics. Furthermore, instructors can handpick preferred question types. The innovative "Inspire me!" question type suggests a variety of question types that an instructor might not typically consider. The instructor can specify the desired level of complexity and number of questions.

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AI Course Design Assistant Tools

Question bank generation from Ultra Documents

The Ultra Document is a valuable way to present content. It seamlessly blends text and media components, enriching content presentation. With the aid of the AI Design Assistant, instructors can build question banks to gauge comprehension of the text-based elements within an Ultra Document. This streamlined process saves significant time. It also stands as a robust aid in shaping both formative and summative assessments.

Instructors can select preferred question types or use the “Inspire me!” option. The instructor can specify the desired level of complexity and number of questions. After reviewing the questions, it’s a single click to publish the questions to the question bank.

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Course Management

Search & select course banner from Unsplash stock images

The course banner image provides an important sense of identity for the course. Blackboard expands the image options for the course banner by introducing Stock Images from Unsplash. Instructors can enter keywords to search for high-quality, royalty-free images. Once the ideal image is selected, the instructor can choose the focal point of the image.

The image is marked as decorative by default, but the instructor can untick ‘Mark the image as decorative’ and add specific alternative text.

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Course Management

Batch edit support for items inside folders/modules

With this change, all items are now visible on a single page. Blackboard added the ability to expand and collapse Folders and Learning Modules. Instructors can now perform the following tasks much faster:

• Shift Dates: Select all items and shift the dates forward before you adjust the dates for each item. This is helpful when needing to make sweeping date adjustments.

• Adjust Visibility: Select all items and set them to visible or hidden. This is helpful after course copies, imports, or conversions. In some copy cases, items are hidden by default. Instructors may want to make them visible.

• Remove date/time release conditions: Select all items and set them to visible or hidden. This is helpful when having trouble updating due dates. Due dates must be after the Show On date and before the Hide After date.

Users can select up to 100 items when performing a batch edit action.

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Course Management

Copying Announcements

To support reuse, instructors can now copy specific announcements or all announcements from another course. Instructors can copy Announcements from both Original and Ultra courses. When copied, each announcement will be set to draft.

Instructors no longer need to reschedule or delete announcements immediately after copying. Instructors can take their time reviewing announcements and adjusting as needed.

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Accessibility

Auto-captioning for native video & audio recordings

Video and audio recordings for grading feedback and announcements will be automatically captioned including diverse language preferences.

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Assessment & Grading

Flexible Grading Support for Tablets

When grading using the Flexible Grading experience from a table, only one of the side panels will be open at any time. Accessing another panel will collapse the other.

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Assessment & Grading

Reminder improvements for anonymous grading

Students may sometimes complete an assessment but fail to submit it. Instructors can send email reminders to non-submitters. A banner now informs instructors of the number of students who received the email reminder. Information for any student who did not receive the email due to an invalid or missing email address is also included.

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Reporting & Analytics

Progress Tracking for LTI Third-Party Tools

Accurate course progress tracking is key for both students and instructors. Some instructors include graded LTI content in their course. Now when a student submits their work, their progress status updates to "complete." This change ensures better reporting for instructors and accurate progress tracking for students.

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Third-Party Integrations

Google Workspace: Cloud File Collaboration

Collaborative documents foster active engagement and dynamic interaction among participants. Instructors can now create a Google Workspace collaborative document (Google Doc, Google Sheet, Google Slide). All student members of the course can access the file with permission to edit.

Note: Google Workspace will not be immediately available.

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Assessment & Grading

Flexible Grading

A new grading experience with streamlined navigation, allowing instructors to grade by question or by student. Instructors can also navigate between students and multiple attempts, provide feedback with or without a rubric, grade inline with Bb Annotate, and post all grades when complete.

Flexible Grading supports individual test and assignment submissions, single or multiple attempts, grading with rubrics, and SafeAssign reports.

Future updates to Flexible Grading will support group submissions, peer review, multiple graders, and anonymous submissions.

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Assessment & Grading

Bulk Download of Anonymous Submissions

Downloading submissions for offline viewing provides flexibility and convenience. The Download Submissions option is now available for anonymously graded assessments from the item's menu in the gradebook grid view.

NOTE: To preserve anonymity, the system renames the downloaded files based on the submission receipt number. To map a submission back to a given student attempt, use the Submission Receipt lookup option in the gradebook.

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Assessment & Grading

Blank Cell as Default Status in Grid Gradebook

In the past, the gradebook grid view displayed "Grade Now" in each cell even when no submission had been made. To remove confusion, the default state of a given cell in the gradebook grid view has changed from “Grade now” to a single dash.

This change reduces the cognitive load on users working in the gradebook and makes new submissions more obvious. There is no change in gradebook functionality. Instructors can still select a given cell and enter an override grade.

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Assessment & Grading

Increased Visibility of Move Icon in Gradebook

Instructors may need to reorder items in their online gradebooks to align with the sequencing and structure of their course. Instructors can reorder items in their gradebook from the gradebook list view. In the past, this option was not obvious to instructors. Instructors had to hover over the option for it to become visible.

Now, the option to move an item in the gradebook list view is always visible. To move an item in the gradebook, select the Move icon for the item you want to move and drag the item to the new location. The order you choose is also reflected in the gradebook grid view and in students' view of the gradebook.

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Assessment & Grading

Assessment Submission Receipt Improvements for Students

Based on direct feedback from students, Blackboard added the new information to the existing submission receipts:

• Course name and ID

• Assessment name

• Submission size - only included for file-based assessments and tests with essay questions

• Auto submit indicator - this indicator is present only if the assessment is automatically submitted by Learn as part of a timed assessment or the Prevent Late Submission assessment setting

Students can view the additional submission receipt information in the confirmation display, the downloadable text file, or the automatic email confirmation. This information is also available to faculty when they look up submission receipts.

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Assessment & Grading

Rubrics - Editing Improvements

Instructors can edit any rubric not yet used for grading. In the past, selecting outside of an editable area would save edits and automatically exit out of edit mode. This made selecting text and editing rubrics difficult.

With this update, if users select text inside the rubric edit box and drag out of the edit box, the edit mode does not close.

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Content Creation & Management

Course Banner Image Improvements

The image setting workflow is improved to clearly mark the settings and steps to upload a banner image. The banner image can also be used as the course preview image for the Courses page.

A space is provided to indicate alternative text for accessibility or mark the image as decorative. 

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Content Creation & Management

Learning Module Thumbnail Image

To enhance the visual aesthetics of a course and to aid in content identification, Blackboard now supports the option to add images to Learning Modules. Edit the learning module to upload and crop an image. 

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Content Creation & Management

Google Workspace Link to Files

A new partnership with Google provides a new integration to link to your Google Drive files. Instructors can add Google files to the course content area, Learning Modules, and folders.

Linking to Google Files will allow the owner to edit the file within the Ultra course. Students will have view-only access.

The instructor may need to sign into their Google Workspace account to view and select their files. After adding the Google file, the instructor can allow Class conversations to the file and align Goals and Standards. The instructor can also add a description before saving. Instructors can view and edit the Google file inline. The instructor can rename the file and control the student visibility.

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Content Creation & Management

Replacing Files in Course Content

Before, when an instructor replaced a file in the course, the system created a new file version. Now, the system replaces the file. The system no longer creates new versions, freeing up storage space.

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Communication & Engagement

Groups Navigation

The Groups tool is relocated to the top navigation bar to improve visibility.

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Communication & Engagement

Groups Space

A new dedicated Group Space is available to users in Ultra courses. The first version of this space provides a list of all assessments by group. The Groups Management page will continue to be the central location for group lists, membership, and other group management tools.

To access a Group Space, select (...) and Enter Group Space.

Future milestones will include synchronous communication and project management tools for students.

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Communication & Engagement

Groups Messaging

An instructor can now send a message to any group or group set. Instructors can also select more than one group as recipients of a message. Students can select their groups as message recipients.

Those in the message can view the groups or group sets that received the message. Recipients can view who sent the message.

The Groups page now includes a message icon that provides an easy means for messaging a group. The message auto-populates the recipient with the selected group. Users can change the recipients as appropriate.

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Communication & Engagement

Unread Message Indicator

The Message tab on the Base Navigation now displays courses with unread messages first. Blackboard removed the terms feature from the Message tab because users often missed messages from other terms. This experience is more aligned with how other messaging applications work. Users can now clearly identify courses with unread messages.

Blackboard also increased the visibility of unread messages within Ultra Courses. The Messages tab now includes an unread message indicator. On the Messages tab, messages are displayed with the newest messages at the top. Unread messages are clearly marked.

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Communication & Engagement

Deep-linking LTI Tools from Calendar

Third-party applications can add LTI deep-linking requests to calendar entries. LTI deep linking is important for third-party applications that require user authentication. The Calendar will display links in the course. Links will also be displayed in the Calendar accessed from the Ultra base navigation. 

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Reporting & Analytics

Student Alert Flags in Course Activity Report

A flag will appear for students in the Course Activity Report based on the number of days a student is inactive in a course or when the overall grade falls below a specific percentage. These settings are determined by the instructor in the Alert Settings on the Course Activity Report. Alerts can be added, edited, or deleted at any time.

The Course Activity Report can be sorted by flag status or filtered by students with or without alerts. A downloadable CSV file provides a column to mark these alerts. Moreover, faculty can send messages to students based on these flags directly from the report. 

This report replaces the Retention Center in an Original course.

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Assessment & Grading

Formative Assessments

Instructors can apply a formative label to assessments and display this label to students. This label is visible on the course outline, within the assessment itself, and in the gradebook. A gradebook filter can sort formative or summative assessments if this label is used.

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Assessment & Grading

Complete/Incomplete Grading Schema

Instructors can select a new complete/incomplete schema in the settings panel from the Grade using  section. When a grade is assigned, a checkmark is displayed on that item for the student in the gradebook. An incomplete is displayed as a dash in a grey-colored pill.

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Assessment & Grading

Partial & Negative Credit

Instructors can turn on partial and negative credit:

• Define a positive percentage value to award credit for a correct answer(s)

• Enter a negative percentage value to subtract for an incorrect answer(s)

• Allow a negative overall score for the question

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Assessment & Grading

Tabbed navigation for Assessments

A new simplified navigation for Assessments provides convenient access to different sections using tabs:

• Content and Settings

• Submissions

• Student Activity

• Question Analysis

This improvement is designed to optimize instructor efficiency.

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Assessment & Grading

Delete grading schema

Instructors can also delete grade schemas that are not used in the course. The option to delete helps instructors maintain the grade schema list.

A Delete button now appears on schemas that are not in use. Schemas that are in use will only display the option to copy.

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Assessment & Grading

Exception panel update

The exceptions panel will now features course, assessment, and student names to help instructors to ensure the accuracy of the exception.

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Assessment & Grading

Add exemptions for anonymously graded assessments

Instructors can grant student exemptions for anonymously graded assessments from the Student Overview  page in the gradebook.

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Assessment & Grading

Send reminder to non-submitters for anonymously graded assessments

The new Send Reminder option is available for anonymously graded assessments, allowing a simplified nudge to be sent to students.

Since instructors do not know which students will receive the message, this nudge cannot be customized like other messaging for known non-submitters.

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Assessment & Grading

Updated assessment instructions for students

To increase clarity for students before they begin an assessment, the assessment start button displays different states based on the student's progress:

• If the student is eligible to make a new attempt, the button displays Start attempt alongside the next attempt number.

• If the student has saved a draft, the button displays Continue attempt along with the current attempt number.

• Once the student has exhausted all possible attempts, the button displays View submissions. This indicates that students can review their completed submissions.

To clarify how a student can attach files or add content to their submissions, the instructions now read as follows: Drag and drop files here or select (click) to add text.

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Content Creation & Management

Visible Progress Tracking Meter for Learning Modules

To provide greater clarity for students, a progress summary for Learning Modules is now displayed at the top level. The summary shows the total number of items in the Learning Module. 

Hovering over the progress bar informs the student of how much content they have completed, started or yet to start. A clear button shows students whether they need to start, continue, or if they have completed the module.

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Content Creation & Management

Resizing image, videos and other media

Users can resize the media by dragging a corner handle or via keyboard navigation. Media types available for resizing include images, videos, and media inserted via URL.

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Content Creation & Management

File deletion in course will remove files from the Content Collection

When a file is deleted from the course, it will now be deleted from the Content Collection when it is not used in other courses or another place in the same course. This will resolve many course quota issues experienced by faculty.

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Course Management

Self-enroll

Ultra courses can now support self-enrollment. NOTE: Only a system admin can edit these settings.

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Upgrading to Ultra

Import Instructure Canvas course package

If instructor use Canvas at another institution and wish to reuse content, they can import Canvas packages directly in Learn courses.

Note: Course structure and tools differ between Canvas and Blackboard. Canvas content is imported as individual HTML pages. Each HTML page must be edited externally. Assignments and tests appear to import well, but should be reviewed. Discussions vary and may be truncated.

After import, instructors or should review all contents and settings. This is to adjust the content so is suited for use in Blackboard. Not all course elements are converted.

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Import questions to tests via CSV

Instructors can author questions offline in a text file. Instructors can upload the file into a test for a more streamlined test building workflow. Each question file must be a tab-delimited TXT file. The file should not exceed 250 records to avoid time-out restrictions.

Yes

Yes

Anonymous grading on tests

Instructors can enable anonymous grading for tests.

Yes

No

Announcements tool relocated

To provide a better user experience, Blackboard moved Announcements from the Details & Actions menu to the top navigation bar. This reduces the number of items within the Details & Actions menu. This change also improves visibility and prominence of Announcements.

Users will be able to access announcements anywhere from within a course. All existing announcements functionality remains the same

Yes

No

Course Link improvements

Users can expand a course link to a folder or learning module as they would a folder or learning module. This allows the user to view the nested contents of the target folder or learning module. The contents displayed are read only. An instructor cannot modify the nested contents displayed for the course link. An instructor cannot move additional content into the folder or learning module course link.

Yes

No

Add exemption via gradebook grid view

Instructors can access the option to exempt students from the gradebook grid view. Exemptions can also be applied from the submissions page and student detail view. 

Yes

Partial

Add questions from tests to Question Banks

Instructors can copy questions between question banks and copy questions from existing assessments into question banks by using the Reuse Questions option.

Yes

No

Send messages from submission page

During an assessment, instructors may need to communicate with students such as sending reminders to non-submitters. To support this need, instructors can message students from the Submissions page.

Since student confidentiality is important, when an instructor selects more than one student as a recipient of a message, the recipients will be on BCC. 

Yes

No

Rubric improvements

Performance level descriptions are now hidden by default to streamline grading when instructors are familiar with these requirements. Instructors can choose to display the performance descriptions if needed for grading.

Additionally, instructors can deselect a performance level if choosing another level of performance isn’t appropriate. Criterion feedback is also collapsible, allowing for a more streamlined view of the grading panel.

Instructors can also navigate between rubric criteria with tab and use up/down arrows to select a performance level.

Yes

No

Drag & drop desktop folder to upload content

Efficiency is key for instructors when creating course content. To assist with this, Blackboard added a drag and drop support for uploading folders with files to the course content page. Instructors may drag and drop a folder from their computer to the course content page.

If an instructor drags and drops more than 25 files at the same time, a warning message appears. This message does not restrict the upload, but it informs the user that it may take a few minutes to complete. During the upload process, the instructor can cancel at any time. If the upload is canceled, the files are deleted.

Yes

No

Instructor notes on Student Overview

A dedicated space for instructors is available to take private notes about students in each course. Only instructors, administrators, and higher roles can access them.

These notes have many possible uses:

• Tracking the evolution of a student's progress over time.

• Noting agreements with a student, such as extensions on assignments or meeting times.

• Noting students with behavioral issues or a history of academic dishonesty.

• Recording considerations for grading, such as student athletes.

Yes

No

Specify how Web Links open

Opening links in a new window is generally considered best practice, especially for external websites to avoid browser security features blocking content from loading. However, there may be situations when an instructor or course author prefers linked content to open in a panel in the Ultra course.

Yes

Yes

Prevent backtracking on paginated tests

Instructors may prevent backtracking in paged tests to ensure that students progress through the pages of an assessment in a predetermined sequence. This option will be helpful when upcoming questions provide hints or reveal answers to questions on previous pages.

Yes

No

Improvements to manage multiple attempts

Managing multiple submissions introduces some complexity for instructors. To help, Blackboard added an attempt selector on the grading page. By default, the grading page displays the most appropriate attempt based on the “grade attempts” setting, which allows instructors to quickly evaluate and grade student work.

Yes

No

Multiple grading schema

Ultra courses allowed only one grading schema per course. Now instructors can add, copy, and edit up to 100 grading schemas per course. Items copied from other courses will keep their grading schemas. When copying, any configured schemas copy even if not aligned to gradable items.

Yes

Yes

Search content in course

Search course content titles and descriptions in your Ultra course and quickly find these items on the course content page.

When a user types a few letters, the course search function displays a list of matching items by title. A user may expand the search results to view more information related to the course item(s).

Yes

No

Hotspot question enhancements

Hotspot questions present an image without any answer options for students to choose. Students must mark a certain area of the image that is within the area the instructor defined as correct.

In this month's update, instructors may now use a circle-shape selector to draw a circle to mark the hotspot.

Additionally, when students select the image, a pin is automatically placed on the selection. The polygon shape selector and selected pins have improved color contrast.

Yes

No

Submission page sorting controls

Instructors can sort student submissions by first name, last name, or grade. The existing sorting options include submission and grading statuses.

Yes

No

Gradable items view usability improvements

Several improvements are available to the list of gradable items including:

• Sort the records of any column on this page to easily find the desired information (e.g., items that need grading).

• Select the assessment name to navigate to the selected assessment.

• Select # to grade to a Needs Grading filtered Submissions page with quick entry into the grading process.

• The new Post column provides instructors with status information for an assessment. This also simplifies the action to post all grades for the assessment.

Yes

No

Multiple access points to Student Overview

Instructors can access the Student Overview page from the Gradebook, Roster, Messages, and Discussions by clicking on a student's name.

Yes

No

Discussion Navigation Improvements

To improve navigation and increase visibility, instructors will find a new tab navigation for Discussion, Student Activity, and Grading & Participation.

Yes

No

Bb Annotate formatting

Improved formatting and editing options for instructors including font colors, bold, underline, and hyperlinks. Instructors can edit already placed comments.

Yes

Yes

Multiple attempts fast switcher

Multiple-attempt assessments can be more complicated for instructors because there are more submissions. To switch between attempts for a student in the past, an instructor would have to close an attempt then select a different attempt. This wasn’t intuitive and required extra clicks. Now instructors can navigate directly between a student’s attempts. If a student has multiple attempts for an assessment, an instructor will see an option to switch attempts which is more efficient.

Yes

Yes

Deactivate discussion post

In an earlier release, discussions could be disabled by defining a due date. With this release, discussions can be turned off manually. When this setting is toggled, students can no longer edit or delete posted in a discussion.

Yes

Yes

Gradebook assessment list view sorting controls

The gradebook list view, which displays all graded items and columns, can be sorted by these contexts:

• identifying students with grades at a grade boundary

• ordering students from highest to lowest grade, or vice versa

Yes

No

Gradebook student list view sorting controls

Instructors can sort the Gradebook Students list view on the Overall Grade column by these contexts:

• identifying students with grades at a grade boundary

• ordering students from highest to lowest grade, or vice versa

Yes

No

PDF version of SafeAssign Originality Report

The SafeAssign Originality Report is a valuable teaching and learning tool. Instructors use the report to ensure students express original thoughts and cite sources. Some instructors allow students to view the report. This is helpful for teaching students how to cite their work.

In the past, users could download the report as PDF. However, users could not open the sources from the PDF. Now, users can open matched sources from the PDF. 

Yes

Yes

Anonymous submissions sorting controls

Record sorting provides a more efficient grade review experience. Instructors need to sort students by grade to identify submissions at a grade boundary. This helps instructors make any changes necessary before posting grades.

Yes

No

Rescheduling announcements

Instructors have not had the ability to reschedule announcements. If the show on and hide after date fields were set for the future, a pop-up window would not generate. Instructors prefer a pop-up window because it helps students see the announcement. If there is no pop-up, a student may not know there is an announcement for them to view.

Some instructors were recreating announcements from scratch to generate these pop-ups. With this update, instructors can now reschedule announcements without having to recreate them. They can do this by changing the show on and hide after fields to a future date.

When users first enter a course, the rescheduled announcement will trigger a pop-up.

Yes

Yes

Course Activity Report enhancements

The course activity page helps instructors understand students' performance. With this information, instructors can:

• Identify struggling or high performing students based on their grade, hours in course, or days of inactivity.

• Message students who have a low grade and/or have not accessed the course recently.

• Receive alerts when a student has not accessed their course in a while or if a student's grade has dropped.

With this update, Blackboard have made the following improvements:

• New Table - Updated to be more consistent with other features. Those who use progress tracking will find the feel of the new table should be familiar. The new table makes it easier to select and message students.

• New Days of Inactivity Column - the number of days since a student last accessed your course. Instructors can use this information to identify students that might be falling behind.

• Access Student Overview - click or tap a student's name to see their grades, progress, and activity over the weeks. Instructors can use the Student Overview to get a full picture of a student's performance and engagement in a course.

• More Student Information. Accommodations, name pronunciation, and pronouns are now visible. Instructors can use this information when drafting messages to students.

Yes

No

Assessment exemptions

In this update, instructors can provide exemptions for an assessment. When exempted, a student is not expected to complete an exempted task.

Instructors may exempt any gradebook item from an assessment's submission view by selecting the student's name or from a student detail view. When exempting an item, the item will not be included in the overall grade calculation, marked late for students who do not make a submission, or assigned an automatic zero.

Yes

Yes

Extra credit questions on assessments

Instructors can assign one or more questions as extra credit in an assessment. A correct answer results in adding the extra credit question points to the points earned for the assessment. Students are not penalized for incorrect answers to an extra credit question. If a student answers extra credit questions correctly, it may be possible for the student to earn a score greater than 100% on the assessment.

Students can discern how many extra credit points are available on the assessment. While students are taking an assessment, they can identify questions designated as extra credit. Students can also filter the test to find extra credit questions if present.

Yes

No

Polygon shapes on hotspot questions

Ultra courses have two enhancements to the hotspot question type:

• A new polygon shape selector can be used to draw more complex shapes.

• Improved keyboard controls. Instructors can now create and place new hotspot shapes on the image canvas directly via the keyboard.

Yes

No

Sorting grading status in gradebook

Instructors can sort items that need to be graded in the Gradebook from the list view. The sorting controls provide temporary changes to the sort order for all columns in the Gradable Items view. The grade post status is also located in a dedicated column.

Yes

No

Sorting grades in student view

Students can sort items in their Gradebook by due date or grades to temporarily change the order for all columns in the Gradebook.

Yes

Yes

View members of a group

Instructors and students need to see group memberships when there are group sets. In the past, there was not an obvious way for instructors and students to see the members in a group.

From the Course Groups page, users may expand a group set to see an alphabetized list of group members in each group. Users may also search for a specific group member. A future release will provide profile cards and options for messaging group members from the search results.

Note: Students see only the groups and members for groups where they have membership.

Yes

Partial

Progress tracking improvements

Two updates to how and what Progress Tracking includes:

• Instructors can change the Student Progress tracking view to see a student’s progress against everything on the Course Content page. This view includes the items not visible to the student. This helps instructors better understand students’ progress considering all course content.

• Any Ally alternative format accessed by a student will reflect in their presented course progress. Instructors will see the progress made by each one of their students based on access to the original file or an alternative format. Students will be able to mark an item as complete after accessing any alternative format.

Yes

No

Model essay response for grading

Instructors can include a model answer for essay question, visible to instructors and graders, to ensure that they grade students’ work fairly and consistently. 

Yes

No

Randomize test pages

Instructors can randomize questions in a test that contains page breaks. Questions randomize within their assigned page. If a page contains non-question elements, the questions randomize between those elements.

When there are pages for the test, instructors can also randomize page order. If instructors randomize the page order, they can also lock the first page into position. This is useful when the first page is a cover page or contains test instructions.

Yes

No

Improvements for test question randomization

Instructors randomize test question to improve academic integrity. In the past, instructors couldn’t randomize questions if the test contained text blocks, files, or images. Now instructors can enable randomization when the test has text blocks, files, or images. The non-question elements are locked in place. The test randomizes questions between those non-question elements.

Yes

No

Lock discussions after due date

Instructors may lock the discussion after the due date has passed. When selected, students can’t create, reply to, or edit posts after the due date. Students with a due date accommodation can continue to create, reply to, and edit posts after the due date.

Yes

Some

Send messages to specific course roles

Students can send messages only to all instructors OR selected course members – they can no longer send messages to the entire class.

Instructors can send messages to all course members, all instructors, all students, or selected course members.

Yes

Yes

Grading workflow improvements

A variety of improvements to grading workflows and displays include:

• Instructors can view grades on the Submission page before they post grades. Student anonymity is still preserved until the grades are posted. To edit a grade, an instructor can open the attempt.

• Instructors can more efficiently navigate directly between a student’s attempts. If a student has multiple attempts for an assessment, an instructor will see an option to switch attempts. 

• Display submission status and grading status on group assignment page

Yes

Some

Display third-party tool icons in gradebook

Third-party tool icons will display in the gradebook view (grid and list), gradebook items, student grades overview, and grades tab on the Ultra dashboard.

Yes

Some

Include non-posted grades in grade history

Grade history provides a log of changes to grades in a course. This is important in situations such as grade challenges and ensuring grading errors were not made. The grade history now includes non-posted grades. Including non-posted grades supplies greater insight into grade changes in the course.

Yes

Yes

Drag & Drop improvements

In this release, drag-and-drop has been greatly improved, increasing efficiency. Instructors can grab items more quickly. When moving an item, it’s clearer to instructors where it will go when dropped. Instructors can also use keyboard commands to reorder the content:

• tab to navigate to an item

• enter to select an item

• up/down arrows to move an item

• enter to drop the item

NOTE: This feature may not be immediately available our site is updated – please allow up to 2 days for the feature to appear.

Yes

No

Course Links

Instructors may need to reference information contained in other sections of the course. For example, an instructor may want students to revisit an earlier activity to reinforce their learning. Course links provide access to content without excessive scrolling and reduce clicking. This new feature allows instructors to:

• Insert a link at the desired location on the Course Content page

• Browse the elements of a course to select an item

• Rename the link that will appear on the Course Content page

• Move a link on the Course Content page independent of the target item

Exceptions:

• You cannot create course links using the Content Editor.

• You cannot create Course Links for Folders, Learning Modules, Discussions, and Web Links.

• You cannot create Course Links with Learning Modules where force sequence is enabled. This is because links could allow users access to something they should not yet access. If a Course Link exists in a Learning Module, it will not be possible to enable forced sequence.

• You cannot copy Course Links for Documents and third-party content (LTI).

• When copying or converting from an Original course, the copy process will exclude Course Links for Folders, Learning Modules, and Web Links.

Yes

Yes

Single Student Progress Report

Instructors often desire insight into the progress students are making in their course. This information helps instructors to engage early with students or adjust the course content. We have created a new single student progress report. This report focuses on the path each student is taking on the course. In this new report instructors can view:

• The content they have created for their students

• The progress the student has made with relevant date/time stamps

• The current visibility status of each item

Instructors can access this new report:

• By selecting a single student from the Student Progress report on a content item

• By selecting a single student from the gradebook list view, Students tab, Student Progress tab

• By selecting a single student from the gradebook grid view, Student Progress tab

NOTE: This report is only available when progress tracking is turned on in the course.

Yes

No

Course Copy improvements

With this update, instructors will find significant enhancements to the Ultra course copy tool:

• A larger item selection page shows selected items and items that can be selected at the same time. In the past, instructors would need to switch between two views.

• Tabs now separate courses and organizations. This makes it easier for instructors to find the correct source location.

• Breadcrumbs make navigation easier. Using breadcrumb links, instructors can return to a higher level of the course or organization structure. This prevents instructors from having to start again from the top level.

• The course and organization lists are displayed in alphabetical order. This makes it easier for instructors to find the correct one.

Yes

No

Descriptions for question banks

Instructors can now add descriptions to question banks, which are displayed with the question bank title on the Question Banks page.

Yes

Yes

Search titles & descriptions of question banks

To help instructors search for and locate a specific bank in the course, we added a search bar. The search functionality queries both the bank title and description.

Yes

Some

Needs grading for 1st and last attempts

When the instructor selects “first attempt with a grade” or “last attempt with a grade” sometimes the "needs grading" count was inaccurate or confusing. Blackboard updated the way that the "needs grading" count increments when more than one attempt is allowed. The "grade attempts" selection is honored for the following:

• last attempt with a grade - when the instructor grades the last attempt, previous attempts do not increase the "needs grading" count

• last attempt with a grade - if the student makes a new attempt after the instructor grades, that attempt does increase the "needs grading" count

• first attempt with a grade - when the instructor grades the first attempt, attempts that follow do not increase the "needs grading" count

Yes

No

Enhanced Student Grades Overview

Instructors often want to view the assessments and performance of an individual student. This is a common task, so it should be easy and accessible from the gradebook. Blackboard enhanced the Student Grades Overview by:

• surfacing the last access, username, and accommodations;

• adding the Student Activity report; and 

• surfacing accommodations.

Yes

No

Hot Spot Question Type

Instructors may want to assess a student’s knowledge of visual content. With the hot spot question type, students must mark a certain area of the image that is within the area the instructor defined as correct.

Yes

Yes

Assessment Page Breaks & Pagination

Page breaks are helpful in assessments for a few reasons. Page breaks allow for easy creation of sections within an assessment. Page breaks also make it easy to group related questions. Students can easily navigate from page to page. If the instructor activates ‘Display one question at a time’ or ‘Question randomization’ all pages will be merged.

Yes

No

Improvements to Gradebook History

New user interface allowing instructors to 

• Select which gradebook items to include in the download,

• Include deleted items, and

• Select timeframes to optimize the amount of information downloaded.

The download file report will include additional information:

• Student username

• Grade category

• Submission receipt: The submission receipt number

• Submission attempt: The number of the submitted attempt

These changes make it easier to access and search the log of changes to student grades.

Yes

Partially

Enhanced auto-save for students

Blackboard further improved how students are informed about connectivity issues. Assessments will detect if a connection is lost. If this happens, students are warned. If the connection is not restored, another warning informs the student that their most recent progress is not saved. When the connection is restored, the system alerts the student and confirms that progress is saved.

Yes

No

Rich feedback editor for manually created columns

Student feedback is a crucially important part of instruction. To better support instructors, Blackboard expanded the content editor options for manually added columns. Now instructors can give robust feedback that includes formatted text, lists, links, attachments, and media.

Yes

Yes

Add files from course Content Collection

Many faculty enjoy using the Content Collection so that they can easily reuse content across courses. In the past, instructors could only add content from the Content Collection on the Course Content page. Now instructors may include content from the Content Collection in Ultra Documents.

Yes

No

Course Activity Report

Instructors identify struggling students based on their performance and engagement within a course. The course activity page allows instructors to:

• Identify struggling students based on their grade and hours spent in the course. This data is a snapshot taken weekly that allows instructors to compare.

• Act by messaging students who have a low grade and/or have not logged in recently.

• Focus on a student to see how their engagement and performance has changed each week.

• Receive alerts when a student has not accessed their course in a while or if their grade has dropped.

• Notify students when their course activity or grade in the course is below average.

The Course Activity page is located under the Analytics tab in courses. 

Yes

Yes

Unread Messages indicator for courses & orgs

In the past it was difficult for users to know which courses and organizations contained unread messages. Now there is an unread messages indicator for courses and organizations on the Messages tab in the Ultra Base Navigation. This indicator helps users know where to direct their attention.

Yes

Yes

Course Content progress tracking

Instructors need to know how their students engage with course content, which may help them take important actions, such as improving course content or reaching out to idle students. A new report allows instructors to select a piece of content and view:

• Students who have not yet opened content;

• Students who have opened or started viewing content; and

• Students who have marked the content as complete.

The report includes the date and time an action occurred (e.g., when a student started viewing content). Instructors may sort by student name or progress status. Instructors can then send an individual or bulk message with a blind copy to each student.

The following content types are tracked:

• Learning Modules & Folders

• Ultra Documents

• Uploaded files

• Links

• LTI content with no associated grade

The list of students will also include pronunciation and, when enabled by UMBC, pronoun information.

Yes

No

Overview of student grades

An overview of a student's performance is helpful to instructors when working in the gradebook. In the List View of the Gradebook, when an instructor selects a student card an overview of the student’s assessment performance displays.

This experience is now replicated when an instructor selects a student from the Grid View of the Gradebook. 

Yes

No

Auto-save for student assessments

Student responses entered in the content editor will be auto saved two seconds after the student stops typing. The "last saved" time is displayed at the bottom of the assessment and auto updates. If there is a disruption in connectivity, students will receive a "Connection lost" warning. This warning informs students that action is needed to re-establish the connection so that their work is saved.

Auto saving is independent of any browser undo function. When the undo action is used, contents will change according to browser behavior. That content will then be saved automatically.

Yes

No

Screen reader accessibility for math formulas

Instructors and students can use screen readers to access math formulas when creating, editing and viewing content. This update helps people who use a screen reader independently access math formulas. This new functionality also supports easier content creation since no added effort is needed to make the math formulas accessible.

Key considerations:

• Users should confirm that their device and Learn Ultra course have the same language configuration.

• Languages supported depends on WIRIS library. As of October 2022, WIRIS supports Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, English, French, German, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish.

• If the Learn Ultra course is configured to use a language not supported by WIRIS, math formulas are read in English.

• Math formulas can be added in content editors using the math editor or by typing LaTeX equations. Both formats are accessible with screen readers.

• LaTeX equations display as text in the content editor. When users save the text, the LaTeX equations render as images. The screen reader reads the equations as text in the content editor and reads the math formulas when rendered as images.

• Content editors that have the math editor option also render LaTeX equations.

• LaTeX equations are not rendered inside code snippets because LaTeX equations are treated as part of the code format.

Yes

No

Course name in browser tab

The course name is added to the browser tab. When a user is in the following areas of a course, they will see the name of the area and the name of the course: Analytics, Calendar, Content, Discussion, Gradebook, or Messages.

Yes

N/A

Copy Rubrics between courses

Save time and easily copy rubrics between your Ultra courses. Use the Copy Content tool and select only the Rubrics folder to copy all rubrics, or click the Rubrics folder to select one or more specific rubrics to copy into your course.

Yes

Yes

Sort question banks

With this update, you can sort question banks by name, number of questions, or last edited date.

Yes

Yes

Respond to discussions from grading

Instructors can now post a reply to student discussions within the context of the grading interface.

Yes

Yes

Set points for manually added grade items

When creating a manual grade column, instructors can edit the maximum point value regardless of how the grade is displayed to students.

Yes

Yes

Test Timer Notifications for students

It's important for students to be aware of how much time they have when taking a test, but sometimes this can be stressful. Ultra now provides multiple options, which can be reviewed in this FAQ.

Yes

No

Student Access to Instructor Feedback

Students will have access to grade feedback, regardless of how an instructor grades, including grade overrides

Yes

No

Summary of Grading Annotations

A new side panel is available when providing inline feedback for student assignments. This panel summarizes all comments in one list, making it easier to view feedback in a student's submission.

Note: This functionality will be rolled out over time, separately from the main updates in September.

Yes

Yes

Microsoft Immersive Reader for Ally 

Ally now features a new alternative format to download. Microsoft Immersive Reader helps students improve their reading, comprehension, and grammar skills.

Yes

Yes

Send messages in private / unavailable courses

Instructors can send messages to students enrolled in private and unavailable courses. When a course is private, instructors will see a banner in the course inbox or when drafting a message. The banner states that students cannot access the messages in the course when the course is private but will receive an email copy instead.

Students will receive an email copy of any message sent. They will be able to access the message from within their course once the instructor opens the course.

Yes

No

Prevent duplicative content of an entire course 

Copying content within a course is an important feature to quickly deploy reusable structures. Ultra now includes functionality to help prevent accidental copying of an entire course within a course.

Yes

No

Manage question banks

With this enhancement, instructors will be able to:

• Create new, empty question banks in their Ultra courses,

• View and search for questions within a question bank, and

• Add, edit, and delete all aspects of a question within new and existing question banks

Yes

Yes

Due date exceptions

Currently, instructors can add additional attempts or change an item's visibility. With this update, you can allow due date exceptions for a student per assignment. 

Key considerations:

• Due date exceptions support is for individual tests and assignments only.

• If an assignment or test does not have a due date, an exception cannot be set.

• If an instructor wishes to remove the due date on an assignment or test, the instructor must first remove all due date exceptions.

• To find students with the due date exception, instructors may access the submission list view page. Students with the clock icon next to their name have the due date exception.

• Instructors may grant due date exceptions in combination with other exception types.

• Automatic zeros respect due date exceptions. Automatic zeros are only applied if students with the due date exception do not submit on time.

• The “prohibit late submission” and “prohibit new attempts” options respect due date exceptions. These settings only apply if students with the due date exception do not submit on time.

Yes

Yes

Create, import, export groups and memberships

Instructors can create group sets and add group members by importing a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file. This feature also supplies the ability to export group sets and members to a CSV file.

Instructors can create a group set by importing a CSV file from the course group set page or the groups view page. When assigning an assessment to a group set, instructors can import a CSV file. This allows the instructor to assign an existing group set or create a new one while creating an assessment.

A template is provided. Instructors receive an email after the import is processed.

Yes

Yes

Improvements to submission filter

Instructors need clear information about the status of student progress in a course. The submission page for an assignment presents information in two columns now: Submission status and grade status. This change provides instructors with greater clarity while grading and supporting students. A new filter also provides additional ways to sort and view what needs to be graded or what has already been graded on the page.

This update applies to tests, assignments, and discussions. It does not apply to anonymous grading, journals, or group assessments/tests.

Yes

No

Advanced calculation for Overall Grade

In addition to points and weighted options for calculating the Overall Grade in your Ultra gradebook, you can also use a bespoke formula to create a customized column for greater flexibility and evaluation needs.

Yes

No

Collaborative document creation

Collaborative documents provide students opportunities to engage with one another and course content. Instructors can now create a Microsoft OneDrive collaborative document in the Ultra and Original Course Views. Supported file types including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. 

Instructors can select an existing document or create a new file for collaboration. All student members of the course will be able to access the file. The students may select Edit Document to begin collaborating on the file.

NOTE: Users may need to sign into Microsoft OneDrive / Office 365 to use this feature.

Yes

Yes

Delete preview student user and/or data

Instructors have a choice when exiting student preview:

• save the preview student and data

• delete the preview student and data

The delete option removes the preview user and data from the roster, gradebook, messages, discussions, journals, and conversations. A new exit icon appears instead of the (...) icon.

Yes

Yes

LaTex equation support

Instructors and students can create and edit LaTeX equations in the content editor. LaTeX equations display as text in the content editor. Users can edit the equation using the Math formula option. When users save the text, the LaTeX equations render as images. 

Special notes:

• Essay questions and the "Additional Content" section in Assessments do not have a save option in the text editor. In these areas, LaTeX equations will render as images after submission. Students can verify that the formula will render by opening the equation using the Math editor option.

• Formatting such as italics or bold must be in the LaTeX code. Users can add the code formats in text or when editing using the Math editor. If a user chooses the bold format in the content editor, the image will render without that format. Example:

  • Code without format: $$axˆ2+bx+c=0$$

  • Code with format: $$\style{font-size:72px}{axˆ2+bx+c=0}$$

• LaTeX equations are not rendered when they are inside code snippets because LaTeX equations are treated as part of the code format.

Yes

No

Send messages in private / unavailable courses

Instructors can send messages to students enrolled in private and unavailable courses. When a course is private, instructors will see a banner in the course inbox or when drafting a message. The banner states that students cannot access the messages in the course when the course is private but will receive an email copy instead.

Students will receive an email copy of any message sent. They will be able to access the message from within their course once the instructor opens the course.

Yes

No

Course copy status in logs

Content reuse is an important aspect of building out and updating courses. Instructors will now have access to the status of all the course tasks that they start including copy, Ultra course conversion, archive, export, import, and restore.

Logs are available for all course tasks. Instructors will be able to view the conversion report, view/filter, and download logs. These logs will help instructors triage any issues that may arise.

Yes

Limited

Unified mobile app for both instructors AND students

Blackboard consolidated the mobile app for both instructors and students rather than have separate apps. The user experience will change based on the user’s role within a course. Instructors can use the updated Blackboard app for both Original and Ultra courses.

The user experience in the Ultra Course View will be the same between the Blackboard mobile app and a web browser. This new Blackboard mobile app will be available August 8, 2022, from the iOS and Android app stores. Students using the current Blackboard app should simply update. Instructors, assistants, and graders should remove the Blackboard Instructor app and download the Blackboard app.

NOTE: Support for the Blackboard Instructor iOS and Android apps ends in September 2022. Instructors, Assistants, and Graders should download the Blackboard app for iOS or Android.

Yes

Limited

Calculate gradebook using points

Some instructors prefer to define the overall grade calculation based on points. Now the Overall Grade supports a points-based calculation. This new calculation gives instructors greater flexibility and supports varied evaluation practices. The setup wizard guides the instructor to select points or weighted calculation, and includes examples of each calculation type.

Yes

Yes

Display gradebook as points

The instructor may choose to display the overall grade as points. This display option supports the new points-based calculation for the overall grade. With the points display option, instructors and students see the overall grade as a fraction. For example, 745/800.

Yes

Yes

Copy question banks between courses

Instructors spend a great amount of time building and refining assessment questions. Reusing these questions across courses is of utmost importance. Now instructors can copy question banks from Original and Ultra courses. This saves time and provides greater efficiency.

From the Copy Content menu, instructors may select the Question Banks folder from the desired course. To copy all banks the instructor may select the checkbox for the Question Bank folder and select the checkbox for each bank to copy. Copied Question Banks appear in the Question Banks area under the Details and Actions menu of the course.

Yes

Yes

Prohibit backtracking of test questions

Robust assessment settings are key for supporting a range of instructional scenarios. Building on the one-question-at-a-time feature, instructors can now prevent backtracking. This option allows instructors to force a sequence through questions in an assessment. A sequence is important when upcoming questions provide hints or reveal answers to earlier questions.

Once the student answers the question and continues to the next, the student cannot go back. If a student skips a question, an alert informs the student that they cannot go back to the question.

Yes

Yes

Download grade center history

Instructors and administrators need a record of changes to grades in a course. These records are important for addressing quickly student questions and grade challenges. Instructors can download the grade history from an Ultra course as a tab or comma separated file (.xls or .csv).

Yes

Yes

Edit points earned on an assessment question

Instructors can now change the points a student earns on an assessment question. The points field supports negative and positive values with up to two decimal points. The grade on an assessment may change when:

• an assessment posts grades automatically, but then the instructor changes the points earned on a question

• the instructor removes an overridden grade so that changes to points earned reflect on the assessment grade

Students will receive a grade change notification if an assessment grade changes based on their notification preferences. 

Yes

Yes

Improvements to test question filtering

When a student applies a filter, a corresponding filter chip appears below the test header. A student may quickly remove any applied filter from this area by selecting the X on the filter chip. When a student applies a filter, a filter button appears. If a student selects the filter button, the question filter options menu opens below.

Yes

No

Recategorize discussions & journals

Recategorizing assessments is important to instructors who assign weight to categories in the overall grade calculation. An instructor may select a category that does not match the assessment tool used. For example, an instructor may wish to include an Assignment in the Test category. There is now a 'Grade category' selector in the settings panel for graded discussions and journals. The category options include both default and custom categories.

Yes

Yes

Inline file rendering of files in Course Content, Folders, and Learning Modules

Various files will now render inline in Course Content, folders, and learning modules. Instructors can set the behavior of these files for users:

• view and download (default)

• view only

• download only

Please review supported file types. For the file types: .xlsx, .xls, .xlst, .csv, and .tsv, inline viewing is only supported for files up to 10 Mb in size. Files over 10 Mb are downloadable only.

NOTES:

• Non-supported file types will always be downloadable for users.

• Some image, video, and audio file types will now open in a large panel. Users can view or play back media in the browser

• Inline rendering applies to new and existing files in the course. Existing files will be set to ‘view inline and download’ by default. Instructors can change the files to 'view only' or 'download only' if preferred.

• We convert supported content types to PDF on demand when a user accesses them. This conversion provides an improved user experience. We cache these files for 30 days. Files converted to PDF as part of this feature do not count towards your storage quota.

• Hyperlinks in files are disabled.

Yes

No

Original Blank Pages converted to Ultra Documents

When Original courses are converted to Ultra courses, Blank Pages will be converted to Ultra Documents. This conversion will help ensure a smoother transition from Original to Ultra Course View.

Yes

N/A

Accessibility improvements of math formulas

Instructors and students often use math formulas in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses. In the past, formulas might render slowly or lose quality when zoomed. Now we will render math formulas as images in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. This allows users to zoom in or enlarge formula images without losing quality. This change also improves accessibility for users with low vision.

Users can create math formulas using the text editor. Some content types include a description. The description appears on the Course Content page. Some notifications on the Activity Stream also display the description. When a description for a discussion or journal includes a math formula, Ultra replaces the formula image with '[Math formula].' When the user selects the content or notification, the math formulas will render as images.

Yes

No

Larger panel for Message review and composition

Messages will use a larger panel for viewing and composing messages rather than the smaller panel. Two option are moved above the rich content editor:

• Allow replies to this message

• Send an email copy to recipients

Yes

No

Pronoun and name pronunciation settings in Original courses

Institutions can allow users to express their personal pronouns. This fosters greater respect among students and with faculty.

Institutions can also enable name pronunciation. Users can add text guidance to describe the pronunciation of their names for other users. Users can record the pronunciation of their names. The recording tool counts down to when the recording begins. The recording may be up to 20 seconds long. For accessibility reasons, text guidance must be allowed if name recording is enabled. Recordings are compressed and included in storage use calculations.

This setting is targeted for availability in FA2022.

Yes

Yes

Weigh individual assessments and categories for final grade

In the past, instructors could only weight gradebook items or grade categories. Now, in the release, both items and categories can have weight in the overall grade calculation. This allows instructors to weight high stakes assessments while also weighting categories.

Instructors may unlink items from categories to assign weight at the item level. Unlinked items appear ahead of the related category. An instructor may specify the weight and lock it to prevent further changes to the weight. Locking is helpful because the weights auto-adjust to ensure that the weighted calculation sums to 100%.

Please review the FAQs before the release for more information about this important change.

Yes

Yes

Running total in gradebook

In this release, Blackboard adds the option to calculate the overall grade as earned points divided by total possible points. To provide greater clarity to students, dynamic text explains the instructor's calculation choice. Students can see the Overall Grade and calculation details from the information icon in their Gradebook. The student may also select the Overall Grade pill to see calculation details.

Yes

Yes

Attachments render inline for Ultra Documents and Assessments

Currently, instructors can add file attachments to Ultra Documents and Assessments. Students who click on the file attachment link(s) can download the file(s).

With this release, instructors can set the behavior for attachments in Ultra Documents and Assessments:

• view and download (default)

• view only

• download only

The view option renders the file in the web browser without the need to download a file and open it with a specific application. Supported files include: PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OpenOffice. Office files are converted to PDF and will be cached for 30 days.

Yes

No

Multiple attempts for group assessments

Instructors may want student groups to submit work in phases. Other instructors may wish to provide student groups with iterative feedback. With this release, instructors will now have the option to give more than one attempt for group assessments. 

Yes

Yes

Improvements to weighted grade calculation

Some instructors prefer to use category weights to calculate the overall grade. Currently, instructors are unable to assign weight to any empty grade category. This restriction requires each category to have at least one assessment. This is not always practical, especially at the beginning of an academic term. Now instructors can configure a weighted overall grade that includes empty grade categories. This will give the instructor greater flexibility for configuring the calculation.

Blackboard also added options to auto-balance weights and lock values you do not want to change. Currently, there is a warning when the weights do not sum to 100%, but the actual sum is missing. Now categories will auto-balance as the instructor sets the weights. Instructors can lock the weight for any category. A locked category is excluded from the calculation as other category weights are set.

Yes

Some

Test question filtering

The question filter supports common test taking strategies to reduce test anxiety. Students may complete questions they know first and skip harder ones. The filter enables students to quickly return to skipped questions. Students may also use the filter to find essay questions.

If a student submits a test with unanswered questions, a warning will alert the student. The alert shows the number of unanswered questions. The student may choose to submit the test or keep working. If the student chooses to keep working, the unanswered questions filter auto applies. The unanswered questions display automatically.

Yes

No

Hide test timer

In response to student feedback, students can choose to hide the timer in timed tests. This may help to reduce pressure and anxiety during assessments. When students hide the timer, the timer icon stays visible. Students may view the remaining time as needed.

Yes

No

Prohibit late submissions usability improvements

In February, Bb released the Prohibit late submissions & Prohibit new attempts after the due date feature. With this release, there are two enhancements:

• An instructor has selected this setting for an assessment. If students have submitted attempts, the instructor cannot change the due date to a date in the past.

• If the due date has passed, the instructor will not be able to select the "prohibit late submission" setting.

These changes prevent instructors from triggering the submission of in-progress and saved attempts.

Yes

No

Undo & redo in Bb Annotate grading tool

This release adds new functionality for the Bb Annotate grading tool: An "undo" and "redo" option. An instructor may undo a change and then if inclined, redo it.

NOTE: "Undo" and "redo" will not apply to comments. All other annotations are included for this capability.

Yes

Yes

Display more than 50 entries in journals

To better support instructors and students who use journals:

• students may make unlimited entries

• students and instructors have improved navigation with pagination on the entries page

• students and instructors can decide the number of items that appear per page

• instructors have a count of graded journals

Yes

N/A

Session timeout warning for Ultra courses

When a user is idle for over three hours the session ends. A user must login again to continue to use Blackboard. If a user saves a page or selects a button, the session refreshes and stays active for three more hours. There can be times a user is working but considered idle. This happens because the browser is not sending data to Blackboard:

• posting or responding to a discussion,

• creating an assignment submission in the text editor, or

• creating a content item.

With this release, users whose session is ending soon will receive a warning. This warning will appear at least six minutes before the session times out. If the user closes the warning before the session ends, the session will extend for three more hours.

NOTE: A user away from the computer for an extended time will receive the warning, but will not be able to extend their session. When the user closes the warning, they will return to the login page.

Yes

Yes

Display one question at a time

Instructors may enable this setting from the Test Settings panel. This option also appears in Assignment Settings when the assignment includes questions.

Watch a video about displaying one question at a time on Ultra tests.

Yes

Yes

Updated feedback display controls 

Supporting academic integrity and protecting assessment content is important. Instructors need controls and flexibility for sharing assessment results with students. This new choice allows the instructor to decide when assessment results become available.

If selected, the instructor defines when the student can view their assessment submission:

• after submitting the assessment,

• after the instructor posts the individual student's grade for the assessment,

• after the assessment due date,

• after the instructor posts all the grades for the assessment, or

• on a specific date.

When not selected, students cannot view:

• assessment content such as the title, videos or images, text sections,

• the assessment questions,

• answers,

• automatic feedback, or

• the additional content section at the end of the assessment.

Watch a video about how instructors can decide when assessment results become available for students.

Yes

Yes

Post grades automatically

This new option gives control to the instructor to post grades at the right time. When selected, an assessment grade appears to the student as soon as the attempt is graded. To prevent students from viewing grades, the instructor may de-select this option. The instructor may view this new setting in the assessment settings and assessment preview panels. The workflow to post grades manually is still the same.

Watch video about how instructors can control to post grades at the right time.

Yes

No

Calculated numeric question type

Robust and diverse questions better support assessment across various disciplines. The calculated numeric question type is important for math and other STEM courses.

This new question type supports the following:

• Students may enter a number as an answer. The number can be an integer, decimal, or scientific notation. The largest value supported is 16 digits.

• Instructors may combine text and mathematical formulas in the question.

• Instructors may define an answer range. The range value can be an integer, decimal, or scientific notation. The largest value supported is 16 digits.

• The answer field validates only numeric digits.

Watch a video about how to use this new question type within assessments and other student resources.

Yes

Yes

Download test results

Instructors may need to download test results for external analysis and evaluation. External analysis is important for supporting course quality and assessment efforts. Furthermore, institutions often want compiled assessment data for accreditation and program review activities. With this release, instructors may download assessment results in the Ultra course experience. Instructors may download assessment results from either the gradebook grid or list views.

Watch a video about how to download test and assessment results data.

Yes

Yes

Instructor search for student submission receipts

For each attempt a student makes, the instructor can search for a receipt confirmation number. This helps instructors find student submissions when extra verification is needed. Using this receipt confirmation number, the instructor can find the following information:

• assessment name

• assessment grade

• the number of attempts for an assessment the student who submitted the assessment

• the size of any file included with the submission; this allows the instructor to insight into what a student has attached for marking

• submission date and time stamp

This information appears on the peek panel for all submitted attempts.

Watch a video about how to access student submission receipts.

Yes

Yes

Copy content within an Ultra course

Course copy is an important feature for building out and updating courses. This new workflow supplies a way to duplicate content for quicker course building. Instructors can access the Copy Content menu to search for the current course. From there it is easy to navigate content and select content to copy or duplicate.

Supported content types include:

• Folders

• Documents

• Tests, including group tests

• Assignments, including group assignments

• Links to websites

• SCORM packages

• Discussions and Journals

• Learning Modules and individual items within a Learning Module

Watch a video about how to copy content within a single Ultra course.

Yes

Yes

Code snippet added to content editor

Instructors and students can author and share computer code in the Content Editor using a new Code Snippet tool. The Content Editor identifies eleven programming syntaxes: Python; Java; JavaScript; Kotlin; R; PHP; Go; C; Swift; C# and HTML.

Watch a video about how to author and share computer code in the Ultra course content editor using the new Code Snippet tool.

Yes

Yes

Enhancements to Instructor mobile app

The Blackboard Instructor app provides instructors with a way to manage courses on a mobile device. New updates include improvements to managing course content, grading, and engaging students. The new app uses Responsive Web Design (RWD) for Ultra courses. RWD ensures consistency and reduces the differences between desktop and mobile experiences.

Instructors will now be able to complete the following tasks in Ultra courses using the Blackboard Instructor app:

• course building - including creating and uploading content

• grading students work - including updating assessment settings

• communication - including participation in discussions

The enhanced Blackboard Instructor app will be available on April 11, 2022, from the iOS and Android app stores. If you have already downloaded the app then it will be automatically updated if you have this choice enabled on your device or will require a manual update if this choice is not selected.

Yes

No

Updates & surveys within Blackboard

To help users understand changes and effectively use new features, Blackboard will introduce:

• Product updates are brief mentions of what is new in the Ultra Course View or Original Course View. Product updates will vary by role so instructors will have different updates from students.

• User engagement surveys are brief polls launched to a small sample of users. Each survey has its own purpose. For example, a survey might ask users to rate their overall experience of a feature or workflow. A user can easily dismiss a survey and will not see the survey again.

Yes

Yes

Session timeout warning for Original courses

When a user is idle for over three hours the session ends. A user must login again to continue to use Blackboard. If a user saves a page or selects a button, the session refreshes and stays active for three more hours. There can be times a user is working but considered idle. This happens because the browser is not sending data to Blackboard. Some examples are when a user is:

• authoring a Discussion Board post,

• authoring an Assignment submission in the text editor in Learn, or

• creating a Content Item.

With this release, users whose session is ending soon will receive a warning. This warning will appear at least six minutes before the session times out. If the user closes the warning before the session ends, the session will extend for three more hours.

No

Yes

Microsoft OneDrive File Integration

This integration allows instructors to add OneDrive files to the Course Content area, Learning Modules, and Folders. The instructor may need to sign into a Microsoft account to view and select files. After adding the OneDrive file, the instructor may rename the file in the course. The instructor may also set student visibility. To edit the content of the file, the instructor may enter full screen. A new browser tab opens, and the file is now editable.

The student has a read-only view of the file in the course.

Yes

No

Learning Module improvements

When an instructor creates a learning module, all settings appear in a peek panel that opens on the right that lets the instructor:

• name the learning module,

• set the visibility of the learning module for students,

• add an optional description,

• apply forced sequence to the content in the module. Note this option is no longer available on the Release Conditions panel.

An instructor can add more content to a learning module with forced sequence applied. If an instructor adds or changes content, a warning notifies the instructor: "Additions and changes in content can make students who already started the module follow a different order."

Yes

No

Sticky test header for students taking assessments

Test taking can be a stressful experience. We have designed a new test header to improve the student's testing experience. The new header provides students with key information to inform their test-taking strategy. The new header displays the following helpful information:

• a progress bar,

• the number of answered questions out of the total questions in the test or assignment,

• and time remaining if the instructor has set a time limit.

The header is sticky, meaning that it is always visible as a student navigates the test. This header also appears in assignments that include questions.

Yes

Yes

Automatic grades release for third party tools

This feature requires that the third-party tool uses LTI Advantage.

Updated behavior for tools

• Ultra Course View: We now default to auto-post grades for LTI Advantage tools. Instructors will not have to remember to post grades. One exception exists when a tool indicates that grades should not post to students.

• Original Course View: The behavior for LTI Advantage tools remains unchanged. Grades auto-release when the tool sends scores. One exception exists when the Grade Center column is not visible.

New capability for tools

• Ultra Course View: If a tool sets that grades should not auto-post, scores sent to the Learn Gradebook only display to instructors. Instructors can choose to post grades for students, or the tool can auto-release grades later.

• Original Course View: If a tool sets that grades should not auto-post, scores sent to the Learn Grade Center appear behind a “Needs Grading” status indicator. Students and instructors see that students have submitted work but not the result. When the tool releases grades, all students will see their scores.

Yes

No

Automated course archive clean-up

Existing user-generated course packages will be set to expire in 90 days after the March update. Users who can create course packages will receive a one-time email notification about this change. Course packages created after the March update will expire and auto-delete 30 days after the creation date.

Users will be notified about the auto-deletion date in three ways:

• When creating the package, the interface informs the user of this time constraint.

• The notification that a package is ready to download informs the user of the time constraint.

• In the course package list view for the course, the removal date displays for each package.

Yes

Yes

Prohibit late submissions & new attempts after due date

Two new assessment settings are now available to give instructors more control over due dates and time limits.

• "Prohibit late submissions" - Select this setting to enforce a hard deadline and disallow a late submission. In-progress and saved attempts will auto-submit at the due date. Students will receive a submission receipt via email. Specified accommodations are still honored.
  
  

• "Prohibit new attempts after due date" - Select this setting to prevent students from beginning a new attempt after the due date.

Selecting "Prohibit late submissions" auto-enables "Prohibit new attempts after due date." However, an instructor can enable the "Prohibit new attempts after due date" option on its own to allow students to resume any attempt saved before the due date passes in the event there is a technical disruption during the assessment. Students who submit an attempt after the due date will have their submission marked as late.

Yes

No

Granular Course Copy

Instructors can now select content from Original courses when copying content to an Ultra course. Previously, one had to go into the Original course and push the copied content into Ultra, which could be inconsistent in performance. This enhancement to course copy provides efficiencies and greater flexibility for reusing content. This will save time and reduce frustration when building a course.

The course copy procedure and process remain the same. The Copy Content menu now includes both Original and Ultra courses. Instructors may choose to copy all or select content. If the system encounters a problem with content copy an error report will appear. The details will provide more information about why the content failed to copy.

Supported content types are as follows:

• folders

• documents

• tests, including group tests

• assignments, including group assignments

• links to websites

• SCORM packages

• discussions and journals

Yes

No

User name pronunciation

All users can add text guidance and an audio recording of their name to their user profile. Users can use the text guidance to describe the pronunciation of their names for other users. Users can record the pronunciation of their name. The recording tool counts down to when the recording begins. The recording may be up to 20 seconds long.

This feature is released to Ultra first and will come to Original at a later date.

Yes

No

Point-based & point range rubrics

The new point-based rubrics in Ultra offer customized options such as varying scales, ascending or descending ranges, and totals exceeding 1,000 points possible for an assessment. 

Yes

No

Accessibility support for course banner image

Providing visually appealing courses that adhere to accessibility best practices and standards can help engage students and ensure an equitable learning experience. To ensure that all visual elements are accessible, faculty will have the option to include an image description when uploading a banner image in the course or add an image description to existing course banner images. Images can also be marked as decorative whenever they are not used as primary content. 

Yes

No

Hide groups from student view

Groups are also enhanced in the December update. A new choice to hide course groups from the students’ view gives instructors the option to use groups to discretely organize students based on their performance, interests, adopted knowledge, and other criteria. The visibility of the groups can be easily seen when using gradebook filters or conditional release.

Yes

Yes

Granular time accommodations

When adding a time limit accommodation, faculty may specify any percentage of extra time (e.g., 15% or 80%) that is needed to honor a time limit accommodation. Currently, faculty must use a fixed percentage for for the additional time accommodation. This change provides greater flexibility to the instructor supporting both the students’ needs and the instructor’s assessment strategy.

Yes

No

Save preferences for Bb Annotate

Instructors and graders will be able to save common preferences for the Bb Annotate grading tools, which minimizes the need to reset between grading student submissions.

Note: This feature is on a gradual deployment, which means it may be released over several weeks rather than with the update on December 2nd.

Yes

Yes

File Size Upload limit

Individual file uploads in Original courses will be limited to 75 MB to reduce impact on course quotas. The file upload limit applies to both faculty AND student submissions.

Instructional Technology recommends that large files are uploaded to cloud storage and media files (audio/video) to Panopto. 

No

Yes

Pronoun support

As part of planned diversity, equity, and inclusion improvements, this update allows users to express to others their personal pronouns. This fosters greater respect between students and with faculty engaging online by letting others know how best to refer to them in their group activities and discussions.

The first phase of pronoun support will display pronouns to users in Ultra courses. A future release will allow for the display of pronouns in Original courses.

NOTE: Support for pronouns in Blackboard will be announced at a later date. Please follow myUMBC for updates.

Yes

No

Course banner image

As a next phase in Blackboard's work to improve overall navigation and an intuitive course experience, the course card image the Courses page can now be used as a course banner in Ultra courses.

When adding a new course image, instructors can opt to make it visible within the course and are able to easily crop the image to the preferred size and zoom in or out on the uploaded image to select the part they want to focus on. This change also makes it easier for instructors to add a course schedule and for students to identify course faculty members and class meeting days, times, and location.

Yes

No

Tables enhancements

In October tables were released. With the next update, tables have additional formatting options:

• Text Style

• Alignment options

• List Attachment

• Insert content

These options provide greater flexibility for faculty and students, especially in disciplines where the presentation and formatting of data is particularly important.

Yes

Yes

Progress tracking improvements

The first phase of progress tracking required no activity in the course to be enabled. With this release, instructors will be able to enable progress tracking at any time during the term. Enabling this functionality will give students an easy way to keep track of what they have done inside each one of their courses.

When enabling progress tracking later than the beginning of the term, participatory items will be retroactively marked as complete. For example, assessments submitted previously by students will be marked as complete. Non-participatory items, like Ultra documents, will still need to be manually marked by students.

Yes

No

Student receipts for assignments

Students need a way to ensure their work has been correctly submitted into the system. There are times where a student believes they have submitted their work when, in fact, it wasn't sent at all, or it wasn't sent successfully.

This new functionality provides students with a unique tracking number that confirms their academic submission. Students can copy and save this number as proof of their work, and evidence for academic disputes. A modal window with the tracking information will appear to students after they submit their work. They can also receive an email with that information to their UMBC email, and download a similar text file to keep for their records.

Yes

Yes

Increased rows & columns for rubrics

Rubrics are grading tools that help instructors to assess student performance and give feedback in detail. Before, Ultra allowed a maximum of 10 columns and rows. To provide more flexibility for the grading processes, Blackboard will increase the limit up to 15 columns and rows.

Yes

Yes

Tables in content editor

Tables are a common way for instructors and students to align and organize content in a customized manner, better suited to their own preferences. For deeper versatility in the Rich Text Editor, there will be an Add Table functionality.

NOTE: For this initial release, tables will not support:

• Text Style

• Alignment options

• List

• Undo

• Attachments

• Insert content

Yes

Yes

Collapsible grading panel

To help instructors, teaching assistants, and graders have a better view of the content they're grading, Blackboard widened the screen of the submission area. It also includes a collapsible and expandable panel where users can navigate through tabs such as rubrics, feedback, and originality report.

Additionally, instructors and students can navigate the submission view and the panel tabs with different scroll bars. Independent scroll bars allow instructors or graders to scroll up and down the submission content without affecting the side tab navigation or the header. Now, instructors can use rubrics in a more practical way and provide feedback focused on a specific part of the submission.

Yes

No

Partial credit for fill in the blank questions

This improvement will support those instructors who wish to grade student attempts at a more granular level. It will also benefit students based on their associated effort on these complex questions, and provide them with a more accurate representation of their proficiency.

Yes

Yes

Show or hide "Additional Content" section in assessments

At the end of Ultra Assignments and Tests there is section called “Additional Content” where students can add text, images and files to complete their submissions or support their answers. This section was always included by default and could confuse students into thinking they needed to complete this extra requirement. Instructors would like to choose when this should be an option or not.

In this release, Blackboard has added a toggle to allow instructors to show or hide the “Additional Content” section. This gives greater control to instructors over what’s displayed to their students during assessments. If an assessment only has text or support visuals but doesn’t have questions, this section will be the space for the submission and will be activated always. If an assessment has questions, this section will hold additional content, for students to add supporting evidence, and the instructor can enable or disable it.

Yes

No

Notification enhancements

Email notifications are reminders to help instructors and students keep track of important updates in their courses. In this release, we've made an email styling enhancement to the following email areas:

• New announcement

• New message

• Assessment overdue soon

• Assessment overdue

• Daily digest

To provide better context, the course ID appears now above the course name. Message content will now follow the justification that the author selected. This makes messages easier to read and allows greater customization for the author. The footer now explains when notification settings can be managed. Finally, the new general style is cleaner and should align better to user expectations. We're excited because users will receive the valuable information contained in their emails in the best possible way.

Yes

Yes

Peer review assessment enhancements

Blackboard improved the user experience of a peer review assignment when a student is removed from a course (disabled or unavailable), and when a student’s submission is deleted during the peer review process.

When an instructor deletes a student submission containing peer reviews, they'll receive a warning message, as they'll lose those reviews. The list of affected students will be visible. When grading or viewing peer reviews, the submission from a disabled or unavailable student will still be available.

If a student started or completed a review on a student submission that is no longer available (because it belongs to a disabled or unavailable student), they'll see they no longer have access to it. The student can start a different review if they’d like or if asked by the instructor. An instructor can see when a student completed a review that’s no longer available, giving the opportunity to let the student know they don’t need to complete another review if that’s preferred.

Yes

No

Progress tracking

Students can mark and track their progress inside their courses. Progress tracking will be initially limited to only new courses where no activity has taken place. Instructors will need to make a decision before their course has started whether they want to try progress tracking or not. Those who choose to turn the feature on will provide Blackboard with valuable input about how the feature functions to help improve it in future releases.

In this first version, student preview activity counts as activity, so if anything has been done from student preview mode, instructors won’t be able to turn this feature on.

Yes

No

Updated Navigation Bar in Ultra Courses

Ultra Course View is getting a new navigation menu! The top menu will be changed to text based vs. the iconography currently used. The top menu will be sticky – this means that it will remain visible to users even after they have scrolled down the page. In a later release, instructors will be able to add a banner image to their course homepage.

Additionally, the Student Preview tool will be moved to the new header. This will allow instructors access to student preview whenever they are on any top navigation page (e.g. Calendar, Gradebook, etc.)

Yes

No

Gradebook filltering

Gradebook in Ultra Course View is getting advanced filtering options! Filter your gradebook view by multiple variables like users, groups, items, and categories. Navigate back and forth among student submissions that are included in the selected filters. Bookmark frequently used filters to reuse in a course for that term.

Yes

Yes
(smart views)

Badges

Being rewarded is a powerful extrinsic motivator. One of the best rewards is recognition for a job well done. You can reward your students with badges throughout your course to keep students motivated and create a map of what they can learn. You can award badges for the completion of a project, skill proficiency, or levels of experience. Students' badge collections can represent the key learning milestones that they met. Earned badges show a complete view of a person's skills and achievements. 

The Badgr integration replaces achievements currently used in an Original course.

Yes

Yes

Calendar Hyperlinks

Given the rapid shift to online learning, virtual office hours or synchronous collaboration sessions have become quite common. Instructors want the ability to easily link sessions to calendar invitations so students can have the best opportunity to successfully find where they need to be.

The Ultra calendar will support web addresses and hyperlinks in the calendar location field. Instructors can link any virtual tool of their choice in the calendar event, and students can launch the virtual session from the calendar itself.

Yes

Yes

Peer Review Submission Linking

Instructors can access the submissions reviewed by a student right from that student's grading panel. They can easily select a specific submission and grade a student’s review in context.

Yes

No

Embedding Images & Files in Original Courses

Original courses will see increased support for adding files and images to tests. These question types and fields now support attached files and media using the Add Content button in the editor:

• Calculated formula: Question text

• Essay: Answer text

• Matching: Question/Answer pairs

• Multiple Answer: Answer options

• Multiple Choice: Answer options

• Ordering: Answer options

• Short Answer: Answer text

Yes

Yes

Original course Content Editor update

The Content Editor for Original Experience and Original Course View was last updated in November 2020. Since then, there have been inconsistencies in the way content is formatted when editing content and when viewing it. With this release, settings like font, size, color, and spacing are more consistent. When existing content is selected, the editor tool bar updates to display its current font, size, and header settings. This creates a better WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) experience.

No

Yes

MS Teams integration

NOTE: This feature will NOT be available at UMBC until a patch is available to reconcile usernames and campusIDs with our email structure.

The updated Microsoft Teams integration provides enrollment synchronization between Ultra courses and MS Teams class participants for up to 1800 enrollments in a course. 

Yes

TBD

Group enhancements

Bb redesigned the group set configuration page to improve performance and allow large courses to be more stable.

• A search bar now makes it easier to search for specific students and helps filter the display of unassigned students by search criteria. The bar shows predicted results and only unassigned students will be displayed.

• Instructors can paginate through students who aren't currently assigned to a group.

• Users will to move to the top of the page when there are enough students shown on the screen.

Yes

No

Display overall grade as percentage

This enhancement allows instructors to show the overall grade in a way that best aligns to the method in which they currently teach the class. Instructors can select now between Letter (grade schema) and Percentage. The selection will apply to instructors and students in the overall grade.

Yes

Yes

Turn off Attendance column in gradebook

While some instructors want or need to track attendance, they don't always need it represented in the gradebook. With this new feature, instructors can control the visibility of the Attendance columns and choose whether they want to use attendance as a grade or not.

Additionally, instructors can remove attendance columns from the gradebook without affecting the attendance itself. If instructors want to remove attendance, now they can do so from the attendance settings. 

Yes

No

Rubric feedback by row criteria

Feedback by criterion will be available wherever rubrics appear, like discussions, anonymous assignments, single and multiple attempts assignments, among others. With this addition to rubrics, segmented feedback provides more flexibility and detail to feedback provided by instructors grading an assignment.

When using the parallel grading workflow, the option will be available to all graders, but only the reconciler's feedback by criterion is visible to students. The workflow remains around rubrics, and thus, feedback inside rubrics for the delegated workflow will remain the same.

Yes

Yes

Right to Left Support

Full Right to Left language support will be available in Ultra courses:

• A fully flipped Right to Left user interface across Ultra including the dashboard and Ultra Course View. 

• Enhancements for the Ultra Rich Text Editor that allow users who write in Right to Left languages to adjust the text direction display.

• Arabic and Hebrew language support in Ultra courses (requires system admin to configure)

Yes

Yes

Audio/video recording for course announcements

Instructors can insert a brief (5 minutes) audio or video recording into an Ultra course announcement.

Yes

No

Peer Assessment enhancement

Notifications: Students and instructors can learn about relevant changes in submissions via the Activity Stream. Instructors get notifications when new reviews arrive, and students get them when their reviews are graded.

Batch Edit: Instructors can edit peer review items in batches. They can adjust the due date of separate items at the same time by delaying or advancing the date in a given batch.

Yes

No

Drop grades

Instructors and other privileged roles will be able to decide if they want to add additional rules to how their overall grade is calculated when using calculation by categories. They'll be able to drop as many grades as they want (lowest/highest), as long as there are more items inside the category than dropped items, or to choose just the lowest or highest grade to be considered for that category. This feature serves a great variety of use cases, for instance, to help students at the end of the term or to remove outliers (highest/lowest) grades in order to get a better sense of students’ performance.

When rules are in place, students can gain access to their overall grade calculation details and see if some additional rules have been set by their instructors, which gives them clarity on how their grades are calculated and why their calculations might defer from the ones displayed in their gradebook.

Yes

Yes

New message indicator

At a glance, all users will know when they receive new messages through a Blackboard course or organization. The new message indicator appears as a number inside a circle on the Messages tab, which is located on the Ultra dashboard's left navigation menu. This badge changes to a solid circle when users click on the Messages tab to view the list of messages, aggregated by course.

Yes

Yes

Proctoring Services Framework

By leveraging and certifying against the very latest IMS LTI Proctoring standard and combining this open standards based approach with Blackboard’s own Premium APIs, Blackboard developed an extensible framework allowing partners and clients to build and deploy their integrations into the native test settings of the Ultra Course View. 

Blackboard is the first and currently only LMS provider to be certified against this latest Proctoring specification.

Yes

No

Pin Collaborate videos (coming May 13)

With this month's Collaborate update, attendees can pin videos so they are always in view. When you pin a video, it moves the video to the top of the list and pins, or anchors, it there. It doesn't change the number of videos you see, just the order you see them in.

NOTE: Only moderators can see more than 4 videos at a time. 

Yes

Yes

Conditional availability by member or group

Instructors will be able to grant differentiated access to content based on their ultimate goals. As a new option to the conditional availability rules already present in Ultra courses (date/time and performance-based rules), faculty can now allow certain students to have access to specific content while selecting one or both existing rules mentioned above.

This new feature will be an incredible addition to those who want to create remedial paths to certain students, give different content to undergraduate and postgraduate students in a course, among other use cases.

Yes

Yes

Assignment with Peer Review for Qualitative Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is a practice becoming more common because it encourages development of students’ critical thinking abilities, gives them practice in critique of others in a professional manner, and allows for measurement of students’ analysis and communication skills. With this release, qualitative peer review can be enabled for an Assignment in the Ultra Course View. It’s simple for instructors and students to use, and has the following features:

• Set different due dates for the initial assignment submission and the completion of peer review: Instructors can set how many reviews are expected from each student. Peers are assigned randomly and automatically.

• Late submitters and reviewers remain part of the task and can continue to participate: Instructors can clearly see who was late. This is a huge improvement over the implementation in Original Course View and superior to implementations found it other learning management systems where students who are late on anything can no longer participate.

• Tracking: Instructors can track students’ progress toward completion.

• Rubrics: Students can see the rubric that will optionally be used for the grade. Instructors can grade using a rubric.

• Complete, single view: When grading, the instructor can see all this information in a single view: the student’s submission, feedback provided by the students’ peers, and the feedback the current student gave to their peers.

• Anonymous mode for students: The identities of peers are hidden from students but viewable by instructors.

• Censoring: Instructors can hide reviews deemed inappropriate or harmful.

As this is a first release of the Peer Review option for Assignments, there are some relevant use cases that aren’t part of this development, but are planned as future improvements. Please watch the FAQs and myUMBC for additional information.

Yes

Yes

Improvements to the Ultra content editor

In the Ultra Experience, the Rich Text Editor improvements are related to paragraph format change and allow the creation of more rich and customizable pages. These include: Clear formatting, text alignment
, line height
, and undo.

YES

N/A

Embed LTI Content in Original courses via content editor

In Original courses, appropriate LTI course tools will appear for instructors, course builders, teaching assistants, and students in the Add Content menu as additional tools alongside existing mashup tools. Two methods are supported: either the tool can add a link in the editor, or if the tool designates that the resource should be embedded, it will be inserted into an iframe in the Content Editor and rendered automatically.

N/A

YES

Disable notifications for users with high enrollments

Typically, users enrolled in so many courses are support staff or instructional designers. Some faculty course coordinators or department chairs may also find themselves enrolled in large numbers of courses.

With this update, Blackboard improved the timeliness and performance of notifications for all users by no longer generating these notifications for users with more than 500 enrollments. This includes  emails, push notifications, and the Activity Stream.A user with this large volume of course enrollments will still have access to all course resources but won’t receive notifications regardless of their settings.

YES

YES

Formatting tools

Format content in a variety of different ways, including font colors, font sizes, and font style. A redesigned tool base provides a secondary bar that displays additional options, which is helpful on smaller screens. Students and faculty will see these changes everywhere they encounter the rich text editor in Ultra courses.

Yes

Yes

User activity log

Currently, there isn’t an easy way to capture what a user was doing at the time an issue occurred. With this update, users will now be able to capture their most recent session data -- the last 30 actions the taken in Blackboard -- and send it to DoIT staff, which can be used to identify root issues or escalate to Blackboard support. This feature will be available in the Support Panel as well as anywhere the “Oops! Your name is not on the list” message can occur.

Yes

Yes

HTML / CSS support in Ultra documents

Instructors can create, edit, and delete custom HTML/CSS code blocks in Ultra course documents. Instructors can select Add HTML when creating a document to add their own HTML and CSS and fully customize the appearance of their Ultra course documents.

Use of this feature will require that we have some means to host the content, primarily to avoid malicious scripts impacting the entire Learn system.

Yes

Yes

Journal grading improvements

Participation view can now support over 1,000 students at once. Instructors can clearly see when students post new journals and comments, and can view a single submission. Instructors can also use Ultra’s grading tools, including feedback and rubrics, to create and post grades. Both participation and submission views link to the gradebook. By default, students will be allowed to delete and edit their journal entries and comments, but instructors can also now choose to disable this permission.

Yes

Yes

Test Feedback Release Settings

Instructors can enable more granular controls on when and what type of feedback is given to students when taking an assessment. Instructors can set up timed release to automated question feedback, correct answers, and question scores. They can also select when to show feedback: after submission, after due date, at a specific date, or after the assessment is graded. Students will see if and when feedback will be available for a specific assessment after they submit an attempt.

Yes

Yes

Gradebook tweaks

In the Student List View, instructors will receive additional search capabilities, column sorting options, and enhanced page controls for both large and small devices.

Yes

Yes

Content editor update

Original courses will receive an updated, easier-to-use, more powerful Content Editor. Adding content has been simplified, and it works better on both hand-held devices and larger screens. There are new tool icons and some changes to tool behavior. Expanded libraries of special characters and emoticons are searchable and organized by category. The spellchecker is smarter and editing HTML is faster with line numbering and tag colors. Learn more.

See → How does the new content editor compare to the previous content editor in an Original Bb course?

No

Yes

Gradebook improvements

This release introduces several improvements and new functionality for student list view in the Ultra gradebook.

• The gradebook's student list view will let you send messages and add accommodations for a student (in addition to the existing roster settings).

• You can set up activity stream alerts about your students' progress. For example, you can set an alert to notify you which students haven't logged in the last 3 days or which student grades are falling below 65% in the course.

• You can choose whether to show or hide the overall grade column to students.

• The test countdown timer will switch from minutes to seconds when less than 1 minute remains.

Yes

No

Larger icons

In this release, you’ll see new large icons in the Ultra experience. We made these changes to our icons to improve accessibility and differentiation for all users.

Yes

No

Quiz Timer Update

Students will know how much time they have left down to the last second when they take a quiz in the Ultra Course View. The quiz timer will change from minutes to seconds when less than 1 minute remains.

Yes

Yes

Alternative formats for Ultra docs

With this release, instructors and students can download Ally alternative formats for course documents in the expanded view. With Ally enabled at their institutions, instructors and students see the Ally icon in the top menu, next to the conversations icon. They can choose the alternative format that best suits their needs.

Yes

No

Automated test feedback

With this release, Instructors can enter feedback for correct and incorrect answers on auto-graded question types (such as True/False). Students will automatically receive the feedback when they submit the assessment.

For this initial release, feedback will be available at the question level only. While conversion of automated feedback from Original courses is supported, any images, files, or weblinks in the Original course’s feedback will not convert. Future work will add feedback for individual answer choices and manual feedback for test questions.

See → How do I create an Ultra test?

Yes

Yes

Password-protected assessments

Instructors can now add a system-generated password to their assessments in the Ultra Course View. For the initial release, passwords can only be generated randomly (passwords can't be customized) and instructors must provide the password to students. Instructors can also regenerate the password when needed. Test facilitators will be able to see the password, but won't be able to change it.

Students must enter the password each time they start or continue an assessment. They will need to get the password from their instructor or test facilitator, and will not have a way to discover the password on their own. Students will not need the password to access their grades and feedback.

See → How do I create an Ultra test?

Yes

Yes

Send announcement via email

To ensure Ultra course announcements reach as many students as possible, Blackboard added the ability to send course announcements by email. Instructors can also send a copy to their own email. Announcements that are scheduled will not have the option to send in email.

Yes

Yes

Student list view in gradebook

Blackboard added a new view option to improve gradebook performance in courses with very large enrollment numbers. With the student list view option, instructors can see a row for each student instead of a row for each gradebook item.

Additional information is incorporated into this view: Last access date, student, and user ID.

The initial release will allow instructors to view all the gradebook items for a student by selecting their name. From there, instructors can grade and give feedback on submissions for that single student. The next improvement for this feature will include additional filtering and sorting options, messaging, and accommodation options within the student list view.

This view will not affect any current workflows that instructors use today. 

Yes

Yes

Secure recording links in Collaborate

As part of Blackboard's commitment to security and privacy, public access to recordings is now off by default for new sessions. Only session owners and students enrolled in the course can see the recording. Any links shared to the recording will no longer work when the recording is secure. When public access is off, the recording is secure.

Instructors can choose to allow public access in the Recording Settings. When the Public access check box is selected, a shareable link to the recording is available. Anybody with the link can view the recording while public access is allowed. If the instructor clears the Public access check box later, the shareable link will stop working.

NOTE: Only recordings made after the September release have public access turned off by default. All previous recordings have public access on by default. You can change the access for earlier recordings in the recording settings.

See → How do I make a Class Collaborate recording available to my class?

Yes

Yes

Recording reminder in Collaborate

Collaborate will remind moderators to start recording the session before they begin. As soon as moderators join the session, Collaborate presents a recording reminder. The reminder is visible until the moderator starts the recording or closes the reminder.

Yes

Yes

Embed media from external sources

The Insert Video from Web option is now called Insert Media from Web. Users can add media from these sites: Panopto, VoiceThread, YouTube, Vimeo, FlipGrid, SlideShare, Quizlet, VidGrid, Prezi, KhanAcademy, Soundcloud, Spotify, Genial.ly, NearPod

See → Tips for embedding media from external websites in an Ultra course

Yes

Yes

Course announcements enhancement

Instructors can use an enhanced text editor to add and display more types of content, links, embedded media, and file attachments in announcements in Ultra courses.

NOTE: In a future release, instructors will be able to send an email copy of a course announcement to recipients with an email address on record.

Yes

Yes

Journal enhancement

Blackboard added support for Ultra journals in course copy and conversion. Now, journals and their prompts can be copied from one course to another, regardless of the course view. Users can use Copy Content to copy journals between courses. Journals can also be converted from an Original course to an Ultra course as part of the Ultra Course Preview and will be included in the course's export/archive ZIP file. These capabilities apply to journals prompt and entries only and don’t include comments.

Yes

Yes

Profanity filter in Collab sessions

If someone uses inappropriate words in a Collaborate session chat, those words are filtered out and are replaced with a series of stars. The chat profanity filter is off by default. Moderators can turn it on in Session Settings.

See → How do I enable the profanity filter in a Class Collaborate session?

Yes

Yes

Discussion enhancements

Instructors can decide if they want students to generate their own discussions or not. By default, students won't be able to create discussions. When students are allowed to create discussions, a label appears under discussion titles to show they were student-created.

• The Grader role can't modify a discussion by default, but an administrator can grant that permission if needed.

• Students can delete the discussions they created if no one else has responded.

To learn more, please review Blackboard's documentation

Yes

Yes

Share external camera in Collab session

Share your video and share another camera connected to your computer. Students can see you and anything else you want to show. You're only limited by the number of cameras and USB ports in your computer.

See → How do I share an external camera in Class Collaborate?

Yes

Yes

Journals

Journals will be available in the Ultra Course View. Instructors can create a journal assignment on the Course Content page, add them to learning modules, and use conditional release if they want. Journal assignments appear in the Activity Stream, and students and instructors can discuss the entry in comments. Instructors can make a journal assignment count for a grade and add a rubric so students know what they'll be graded on.

NOTE: The initial release includes a basic grading workflow, where instructors enter grades manually in the gradebook. Full grading functionality and support for course copy and conversion are expected later this year. Continued enhancements are also coming for the Participants panel.

At this time, the Ultra journals grading view supports up to 50 students. Future improvements will expand this number.

To learn more, please review Blackboard's Documentation 

Yes

Yes

Score per question

In the Original Course View, instructors use Score per Question feedback settings to control if students see the score they earned for each assessment question. With this release, in the Ultra Course View, instructors can deactivate the default and choose not to show Score per Question feedback in assessments.

To learn more, please review Blackboard's documentation

Yes

Yes

Include discussions in course copy

With this release, Copy Content now supports discussions. Instructors can create a discussion in one Ultra Course View course and copy it to other Ultra courses they teach.

Yes

Yes

Students can embed media from LTI

In the Ultra Course View, students can add links and embed media from integrated tools using the Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) standard. When using the content editor in tools such as Discussion Boards and Assignments, students will now also be able to access a list of integrated LTI Tools, choose resources, and include them in their authored content. This will allow students to add media and resources from tools such as Kaltura, among many others.

NOTE: Bb admins will configure which tool placements are appropriate for student use and access. 

See this example → How do I embed a Panopto video in an Ultra document or discussion?

Yes

No

Enable webinar mode in a Collab session

By default, sessions support up to 250 attendees. You can set up your session to support up to 500 attendees. From the session's settings, select Allow 250+ attendees to join before the session begins.

If you don't see the large session option, check the session length. The session needs an end time and can't be more than 24 hours in length.

To learn more, please review Blackboard's documentation

Yes

Yes

Course-level group enrollment

Previously, self-enrollment groups were limited to assignments and discussions in Ultra courses. With this release, instructors can create self-enrollment course groups that can apply to any graded content within a course. When they create a new course group set, instructors will see Self-enrollment in the Group students menu.

Instructors can add a description for the group set, specify the start and end times of an enrollment period, and set the maximum members per group. After the group set is created, a course announcement is automatically created to inform students of the enrollment period. When the enrollment period ends, students who haven't joined a group will be assigned to one automatically.

Yes

Yes

TBD 

Rich text editor improvements

Blackboard made some improvements to the rich text editor in the Ultra Course View:

• Moved the file attachment function to the top level so it's easier to access.

• Added a strikethrough font style option.

• Updated function groupings so they're easier to read on smaller screens.

• Allowed the browser to control the background of highlighted text to improve accessibility.

Yes

No

N/A

Adjust first day of the week in the calendar

Different global regions have different calendar conventions, including which day displays as the first day of the week. With this release, Blackboard calendars will display the most common convention for the first day of the week based on a user's selected language. Users will be able to see the change in the month and day views of both their overall and individual course calendars. The date picker display will also change in the Ultra Course View and for administrator notifications in the Ultra Experience.

Users can change their language in the user profile. Administrators can customize the first day of the week for their language pack if they choose.

Yes

No

N/A

Calculated formula question type

Calculated Formula questions require students to make a calculation and respond with a numeric answer. In Ultra Course View only, instructors can choose whether to display the formula to students with the text. Instructors can then adjust the answer settings and verify the question. Instructors can convert Calculated Formula questions from their Original courses or add new ones within the Ultra Course View.

Yes

Yes

Review Blackboard's documentation

Discussion improvements when converting Original to Ultra

With this release, a graded discussion in an Original course that allows members to create threads will convert to a Graded Ultra discussion and all of its seed child threads and replies will be removed.A graded discussion in an Original course that doesn't allow members to create threads will keep the current behavior. Group boards, forums, and threads won't be converted.

Yes

Yes

Review Blackboard's documentation 

Word count

Blackboard added a word count to the text editor when instructors create Documents and students respond to Assessment essay questions in the Ultra Course View. This feature will help students meet minimum word count requirements their instructors may have communicated.

Future enhancements will add the word count feature in other areas of Learn Ultra, including instructor grading workflows.

Yes

Yes

N/A

Read-only messages for students

Course Messages can be set to read-only in both Original and Ultra courses. As this is a system admin setting, DoIT will solicit feedback from Ultra Faculty Ambassadors and the campus community before adjusting the configuration.

Yes

Yes

N/A

Groups Enhancement

Blackboard enhanced self-enrollment for student groups, allowing students change self-enrollment groups themselves within the instructor-specified enrollment period. Blackboard also replaced the Number of groups drop-down menu with a counter for instructors to streamline the workflow and reduce confusion.

Yes

Yes

How do I create self-enrolled groups in an Ultra course?

Ally Enhancement

Students and instructors can access Ally’s alternative formats for content directly in the Ultra course outline. Instructors can view Ally’s accessibility meters on the course outline and in Ultra Assessments for content embedded in the rich text editor.

Yes

Yes

About Ally & Accessibility

Assignment connections to Group Sets

In previous versions of Ultra, faculty had to create the discussion, test or assignment first before they could create the groups. With this release, instructors can create groups first and then attach them to course activities.

NOTE: Group Sets still do not have a bulk student enrollment option. Self-enroll is not available for Group Sets. 

Yes

Yes

TBD

Reassigning students in Groups

This updates allows faculty to assign or reassign students in groups. If a student joins a course late or needs to switch groups, the instructor can place the student in a group or move the student to a different group.

Yes

Yes

TBD

Zero point assignments

Zero point assignments will be available: Currently, when you set an assignment to zero, Ultra will reset the points to 100. 

• Current workaround: How do I create an ungraded Ultra assignment?

Yes

Yes

TBD

Ally indicators

Ally alternative formats and instructor accessibility scores are available for embedded files and images in documents, tests, and assignments in Ultra courses.

Yes

Yes

What does the Ally accessibility meter mean?

Iconography

The new icons are darker and appear more prominently now.

Yes

N/A

N/A

Notifications

Ultra administrators can change notifications at the system level, configure digest functionality, and set up default notification settings. DoIT will evaluate the new notification settings to identify the most effective configuration for users.

Yes

Yes

N/A

Document description

Ultra Documents now have a description field that will appear on the Course Content page, which allows instructors to give high-level details about what the Ultra documents contain, reducing unnecessary clicks for students. Descriptions are limited to 250 characters.

UNKNOWN ATTACHMENT

Yes

Yes

(as Item)

N/A

Bulk download submissions

Instructors can download files from the Ultra gradebook or from the submissions list page with the Download all option. Instructors can then choose whether to download all or select specific submissions. Instructors receive an email and a course message when the ZIP file is ready to download to their computers.

Yes

Yes

Review Blackboard's documentation

Decimal point values for assessments

When creating a question in an assessment, instructors can enter values with up to two numbers after the decimal in the Points field. For assessments with no individual questions, the Maximum points field will accept values with up to two numbers after the decimal.

Yes

Yes

N/A  

Delete copied course attendance data

When instructors prepare a course for an upcoming term, they commonly copy all content, including the gradebook, from the last term’s course. For courses that used the attendance tool, the copied attendance gradebook column was difficult to remove in the Ultra Course View. With this release, instructors can delete attendance gradebook columns added during a course copy from the destination course’s gradebook.

Instructors can delete copied attendance columns from the gradebook menu. The attendance column that is correctly associated with the course can be deleted if all students’ attendance records are removed first.

Yes

Yes

Review Blackboard's documentation 

Regrade questions in question pools

This release allows instructors to regrade individual questions within a question pool in Ultra. Questions within pools can be regraded from a student’s submission using the same options available for questions not within a pool. Instructors can also regrade from the assessment panel after selecting View questions in a question pool. When regrading, a message informs the instructor if a question is used in other course assessments. Question updates made while regrading affect all instances of that question in the course.

Yes

Yes

Review Blackboard's documentation

Select / clear all questions for question pools

When adding questions to a question pool, instructors need to be able to select large groups of questions quickly and efficiently. As instructors create question pools for their Ultra assessments, the options to Select all and Clear all question choices now appear on the Add Question Pool page.

Yes

Yes

N/A

Self-Enrolled Groups

Instructors can create self-enrollment groups for students to join to complete group assignments and discussions. Instructors choose the number of groups, can set the maximum members per group, and may allow students to view other members of the groups before they choose a group.

Yes

Yes

Review Blackboard's documentation or UMBC's FAQs

Needs Grading filter

On an item's Submissions page in the Ultra gradebook, instructors can use the new Filter menu to display only those submissions that need grading. At this time, instructors can filter by All statuses and Needs grading. Note: Group and discussion items do not yet appear in the Needs Grading filter.

Yes

Yes

N/A  

Question pools & random sets

To help build assessments quickly and encourage academic integrity, instructors can now create question pools in the Ultra Course View. With question pools, students receive different sets of questions to answer. Instructors can add questions from all existing tests, assignments, and question banks in their courses.

In the Ultra Course View, question pools replace the Original Course View's random blocks and question sets. Instructors can create as many question pools as they want and add, edit, and remove questions in the pools. Edits appear anywhere questions are used. 

Yes

Yes

Review Blackboard's documentation 

Show/hide test answers

In Ultra assessments, instructors can decide if students see the answers to questions that were answered incorrectly. For example, instructors may want students to see which questions they missed on a multiple attempt assessment, but don’t want to show the correct answers. Instructors may also hide answers until all students complete their submissions.

Yes

Yes

Review Blackboard's documentation  

Ultra organizations

New organizations may be created with the Ultra interface. Existing orgs can be converted to Ultra.

Yes

Yes

N/A

Google Suite Integration

Users will be to access their UMBC Google storage from within their profile, from the Tools page, or from an Ultra course.

Yes

No

Review UMBC's documentation

Parallel Marking

For higher stakes assessments, a double marking process is sometimes used in which each student’s submission is evaluated by two graders and a final grader reviews those evaluations to make the final decision on a student’s grade. This approach intends to reduce bias and is often paired with student anonymity. When setting up an assignment in the Ultra Course View, instructors can enable parallel grading and select non-student course members to act as graders and reconcilers. Instructors can also hide student names to prevent unintended bias.

This feature is known as Delegated Grading in an Original course. 

Yes

Already exists

Review Blackboard's documentation or UMBC's FAQ 

Import external calendar to Blackboard

Instructors and students often use calendars to organize and keep track of events. Access to a course calendar is crucial to meeting deadlines and overall success. Having access to all events – both personal and academic – in one place helps keep everyone on track. In this release, users can synchronize external calendars with Blackboard Learn, building on the previously released capabilities.

Yes

Yes

TBD or UMBC's FAQ

Display course banner on Courses page

A new enhancement to the Courses page provides users with an option to view courses in list or grid mode. Stock images randomly display for each course card when grid mode is active. The banner image can be replaced by faculty who would prefer to personalize the course visual.

Original courses with existing banners will find those images are preloaded on the Courses page. The banner images uploaded through the Courses page will NOT pass over to the course regardless of whether it is Original or Ultra.

Yes

Yes

TBD or UMBC's FAQ

Student preview

Instructors want to be confident that their courses are well-designed and function as intended—before their students see them. Instructors can use student preview to review the course content. They can also validate the course behaviors, such as those that control course content availability or require a particular interaction from the students to be triggered. With student preview, instructors can experience their courses exactly as their students do. 

Start student preview from anywhere within an Ultra course. The preview creates user in your course that you can use to view everything as a student would. 

Yes

Already exists

Review Blackboard's documentation or UMBC's FAQ

Question banks

With this release, instructors can now directly import question banks, including question pools that have been exported from Original courses and packages of questions that have been purchased from a publisher. These questions are then available for use and reuse across the assessments in that course.

As with any conversion from Original to Ultra, question types that are not yet supported are dropped during the processing of the imported file.

Yes

Already exists

Review Blackboard's documentation or UMBC's FAQ 

Individual feedback on group assignment

In this update, faculty can provide feedback for an entire group and individual feedback for each student. Group feedback is seen by all students in the group while individual feedback is only visible to the instructor and student.

Yes

No

Review Blackboard's documentation

Share Bb calendar with external services

In this release, users can synchronize their Blackboard Learn Ultra calendars to external calendars. Generate a URL to share course calendar details with an external service. Share the URL only with trusted sources. When you connect your Blackboard Learn calendar to an external calendar, all course events appear one year in the past and into the future.

Yes

Yes 

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Third-party information on Activity Stream

With this release, the Activity Stream more accurately reports on third-party content to keep everyone more up to date. Specifically, LTI and manual grade column notifications will update in the Activity Stream when: 

• The item transitions from due to overdue 

• The item’s due date is updated 

• The item is deleted 

• The item is graded 

• The item’s visibility is changed 

Yes

Yes

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Course Facilitator Role

New Facilitator role for courses, which contains a set of default privileges regarding course calendar, discussions, gradebook, announcements, materials, and groups. Course members can be granted this role to help maintain the pace of the course throughout the term or as needed.

This release also includes two new granular privileges to grant a user the ability to create or delete a discussion in the Ultra Course View.

Yes

Yes

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Assessment exceptions

Instructors can now grant individual students additional time to access an assessment, even if it is hidden to other students. Additional attempts may also be configured, again for an individual student on an individual assessment. In the future, Blackboard plans to introduce due date exceptions so that students who are granted extended access will not be marked late for submissions made after the original due date.

Yes

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Regrade questions

With this release, test questions can be edited in one place. These edits, along with any score adjustments, are automatically performed for all submissions that contain the updated question.

Yes

Yes

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Enhanced discussion analytics

To better inform grading and provide additional insight in to the level of engagement in graded discussions, Blackboard added three new metrics to the Discussion Analysis area of the Ultra Course View. In addition to sentence complexity, critical thinking, and counts of responses and replies, graders can view statistics for the number of substantive posts, lexical classification (counts of content and functional words), and the percentage of word variation in a student’s posts for a given discussion.

Yes

No

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Granular notification settings for Activity Stream

In this release, Activity Stream notification settings are more granular for students and instructors, giving them the option to choose which information they wish to receive. Settings have been reformatted so users can select to receive all notifications at a high level, like notifications for new discussions. Users can also choose to see updates about specific events or activity in their Activity Streams. For example, an instructor can choose to be notified when a blog entry is edited.

Existing settings are carried over and saved in the new format. Visual cues display if all, some, or none of the notification types are selected.

Yes

No

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Granular user privileges for course announcements and calendar

Announcements: Individuals with these privileges can create course announcements in both course views. Additional entitlements allow users to view draft announcements in addition to posted announcements.

Calendar: Individuals with these privileges can add, edit, and delete course calendar events in both course views. In the Ultra Course View, individuals with these privileges can also add, edit, and delete office hours and course schedules.

Use Case: Faculty who have students working with the Supplemental Instruction-Peer Assisted Study Sessions (SI-PASS) program may request a custom role for those students, allowing them to post announcements while maintaining student privileges in all other parts of the course.

Yes

Yes

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Support for Respondus Lockdown Browser in Ultra Courses

The LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard Learn, which means that students are unable to copy, print, access other applications, or visit other websites during an online exam. It works seamlessly with Blackboard Learn and is built in to the assessment settings. When instructors configure an assessment to require the LockDown Browser, students will only be able to begin their attempts if they access the assessment with the LockDown Browser.

After February, 6 2019, faculty can access this tool in an Ultra course by selecting the Settings area in a test or an assignment.

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Search gradebook columns and categories

If an instructor needs to check on the status for a single gradebook column or create a simple, filtered view of a specific gradebook category across all students, there are additional search options to reduce the scrolling and visual scanning required to quickly verify or filter. Begin typing the title of a column or category in to the gradebook grid view search field. Search results include any columns, categories, or even students who match the search term or phrase. We've included a label within the search results to help distinguish among these three types of results.

Yes

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Push notifications to Blackboard App

Push notifications for Learn Ultra will allow students to gain direct insight via this notification modal. Notifications may help students stay on top of new content added to their courses, new grades and feedback that have been created for assessed items, and due date reminders for upcoming assessments that need to be completed and submitted. 

Note: The corresponding functionality in the Blackboard App will be made available in the coming months so Ultra Courses won't push notifications yet. Users in the Original experience are still able to receive push notifications.

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Gradebook search & pagination

The Ultra gradebook currently has the ability to search for students using the grid view. With this release, instructors can go to the submission list and quickly locate a particular student to check the status of submissions or access the submission itself.

Additionally, Blackboard added pagination to the submission list. The default view is for 25 students, but instructors may also set the page to display 50 or 100 users. This setting is sticky, so a selection of 50 or 100 is retained when instructors leave the submission list and return later.

Yes

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Converting learning modules to Ultra

In December, Blackboard brought the learning modules capability to the Ultra Course View. Starting with this release, learning modules are preserved in course copy, export, import, and restore operations.

NOTE: When converting a learning module from the Original Course View to the Ultra Course View, the force sequence requirement is unchecked by default. Additionally, the file and folder structure may be flattened because the Course Content page only supports nested content two folders deep. Student activity in a learning module is removed when converting to Ultra.

Yes

Already exists

N/A

Updated SafeAssign originality report

The new Originality Report uses Blackboard's Ultra design and includes some new information about a submission's overall risk for being copied from another source. This new report interface is also more responsive for mobile devices and more accessible to screen readers than the old design.

Yes

Yes

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Question analysis & report

Instructors who make use of Item Analysis in Original courses recognize the benefit this report provides, specifically for reviewing the quality of assessment questions and improving assessments from one term to the next. However, many instructors are either unaware that this report is available or are not familiar with the term “item analysis” and don’t open the report. In the Ultra Course View, Blackboard updated the title to Question Analysis as a way to raise awareness of this powerful report and encourage its use.

Question analysis provides statistics on overall performance, assessment quality, and individual questions. This data helps you recognize questions that might be poor discriminators of student performance. Question analysis is for assessments with questions. You can also download the report with raw question data to analyze it or keep it for future uses.

Yes

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Batch edit due dates in course content

Building on the previous feature to batch edit visibility of course content, Blackboard added the ability to adjust due dates in bulk.

With Batch Edit, you can update selected course content using a new course start date. Enter the new course start date and the existing start date. The tool calculates the difference between the two dates and uses the number of days to shift dates in all selected course content at once. You don’t have to spend time opening course content and determining new dates. Alternatively, you can shift all due dates backward or forward based on a chosen number of days.

Yes

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Course groups

Previously, instructors created groups of students only in the context of assessments and discussions. This ability is useful and important, but it didn’t account for many other reasons why an instructor would want to create groups independent of assessments.

In this release, instructors can create groups and group sets at the course level, outside of assessments. Group sets help identify students who are paired together based on specific attributes or purposes.

In a future release, instructors will have the ability to apply course groups to graded content.

Yes

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Creating new earning modules

Learning modules are a valuable way to organize and present content in the Original Course View. Modules let content creators require students to access learning materials in a specified order, walking learners through a guided path. In this release, Blackboard brings the power of learning modules to the Ultra Course View.

Use learning modules to organize content for an immersive learning experience. Students can work on content in sequence without needing to close and open content items. Instructors can also enforce a content sequence so students access and complete content in the sequence specified.

Yes

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Additional search criteria in Reuse Questions

Instructors can filter questions by more criteria on the Reuse Questions page for Ultra tests.

In addition to assessments and question banks that come over from the Original Course View, you can also filter by question types and Original Course View tags, such as categories. You can also search for keywords to find questions. The active filter area changes automatically as you select or clear criteria.

Yes

No

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Advanced settings in SCORM

SCORM is a content standard that is used to author and present online learning materials and assessments to students. In this release, Blackboard added a number of enhancements to SCORM in the Ultra Course View:

• Instructors can assign a grade category to SCORM packages.

• Instructors can upload SCORM packages from the Content Collection.

• SCORM due dates appear on the calendar and in the activity stream.

• SCORM packages are supported in Ultra Course Preview and conversion from the Original Course View.

Yes

No

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Batch edit visibility of course content

Instructors often reuse courses and content from one term to the next without major changes. At the start of a new term, instructors need a way to make these changes en masse.

 In this release, Blackboard introduces a new Batch Edit option on the Course Content page. For example, instructor can select multiple pieces of content and edit visibility for each selected piece at the same time.

Along with this feature, instructors and course builders will notice that the Books & Tools link has moved to the Details & Actions menu. In a future release, instructors will also have the ability to adjust dates in course content using Batch Edit.

Yes

N/A 

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Percentage-based rubrics

Instructors give very specific rubric scores with feedback when grading student submissions. A simple rubric with wide gaps between levels of achievement are insufficient for providing the granularity these institutions require. Instructors working under these requirements need to be able to mark both students as Sufficient, but provide more granular scoring within the range of scores associated with this rubric row.

In this release, Blackboard expanded rubric criteria to include more granular levels of achievement, measured with percentages.

Yes

N/A

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Upload CSV data to Ultra gradebook

Offline grading is a valuable and important enhancement. In September, Blackboard introduced the ability for instructors to download gradebook data in the Ultra Course View. The counterpart to downloading grades is the ability to upload them, which is useful for instructors who prefer to work in an application like Excel and load student grade data into the LMS. In this release, instructors have the option to upload course gradebook data in Ultra.

Yes

N/A

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Calendar items & due date notifications for additional content types

The Calendar and To Do modules show the due dates of course items, but this was previously limited to activities and assessments using just Blackboard Learn tools. In this release, the capability is expanded so that other content types, including those from 3rd party solutions, are now incorporated into these Original Experience areas when using a web browser.

All of the following create calendar items and due notifications:

• Assessment items such as assignments and tests

• Interactive tools including graded discussions, blogs, journals, and wikis

• Grade Center columns created manually and not linked to content items such as an observation or offline assignment

• SCORM packages

• Content items generated from building blocks when a linked Grade Center column has a due date

• LTI resource links when a linked Grade Center column has a due date

No

Yes 

N/A 

Enhanced delegated grading

The ability to reconcile grades was previously limited to instructors and users who were granted the permission by an administrator. Now instructors can grant this permission to graders.

The Can reconcile grades option appears when the instructor delegates grading. Instructors can choose to grant the permission to any or all graders who are delegated submissions.

No

Yes

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Search the Ultra gradebook

In this release, Blackboard introduced a search function in the Ultra gradebook to help users locate specific students when the list may be too long to browse.

To search for a student, open the Ultra gradebook in grid view. You can type the student’s name or student ID. Matching names appear below the search box. Select a student to filter your gradebook view and see their attempts and grades.

In the future, Blackboard will enhance the tool to allow searching by gradebook columns and categories.

Yes

Yes

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Download inline grading annotations

Both instructors and students can download certain file types (DOC, DOCX, PDF, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX) with annotations as an annotated PDF.

Students can download the annotated file after their submission has been graded.

Yes

Yes

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Anonymous Grading

Instructors need a way to ensure the anonymity of students (hiding personally identifying information) to avoid bias when grading. Some regions mandate anonymity for high-stakes assessment.

Ultra Courses now support an enforceable means to anonymize student information to instructors and other reviewers. After grading is complete, the information can be revealed. Student identities remain hidden until all grades are posted, at which point names are revealed.

Yes

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Unsubmitted work counts as zero

Instructors may want to set up the gradebook so that unsubmitted, past-due work is automatically marked as zero. For larger courses, it can be burdensome and time-consuming to grade these missing submissions as zeros manually.

This release includes a global gradebook setting to allow instructors to assign automatic zeros to missing work past the due date. Instructors can save the time it takes to go through the gradebook to manually enter zeros for this work. Students can still submit work after an automatic zero is assigned and instructors can grade as normal.

Yes

No

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Improvements to course messages

Global and Ultra course messages pages are updated for more intuitive and easy navigation. You’ll notice the following changes:

• On the global Messages page in the base navigation, courses are grouped according to term, similar to the way they are grouped on the Ultra Courses page. Your current courses appear first when you open the Messages page. You can use the arrows to navigate through the groups.

• The number of messages you've received in each course is displayed with a course card. Select the course card to jump to all of your messages.

• In your Ultra course, you can select the number of messages that appear per page.

• When you select a course message to view, you can use arrows to browse through messages in order.

Yes

No

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Conversation Improvements

Conversations on course content items have been improved in the following ways:

• The Conversations panel has been increased to full-width.

• Students can now respond and reply to each other in conversations the same as they do in discussions.

• Activity indicators are available for new conversation posts.

• A student or instructor can see all conversation participants.

• A student or instructor can search all conversation participants.

Yes

No

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Gradebook Export

instructors can download grade data within their Ultra courses. Instructors can select to download the entire gradebook or select columns, choose to export in a *.CSV or *.XLS format, and save it to the device or the Content Collection for future access.

Uploading gradebook data is not yet available but in development for future release.

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Group Assessments

The following enhancements were added to group assessments:

• New empty state page lets instructors create as few or as many groups as they’d like from the beginning.

• Instructors can edit group names after students begin attempts.

• New Unassign All option appears when creating groups.

• Instructors can edit group membership if a given group hasn’t started working or existing attempts are removed.

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SCORM Support

SCORM is a content standard used to author and present online learning materials and assessments to students. In this release, Blackkboard adds support for selecting, adding, presenting, and using SCORM content in Ultra courses. Instructors can import SCORM packages into an Ultra course and select grading options for the package as a whole or each content item individually.

Yes

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Course Announcements

Instructors can draft, schedule, and post course announcements in the Ultra Course View in this release.

Yes

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Matching Questions

Instructors have many options when creating a matching question in Ultra. There can be more answers than prompts to prevent students from answering by a process of elimination. Additionally, instructors can grade matching questions with partial credit, all or nothing, subtract points for incorrect answers, and even allow negative scoring to discourage guessing.

Yes

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Reuse Test Questions

Instructors can reuse questions from any other assessment within an Ultra course. Select Reuse questions within an assignment or test to get started. Filter questions by assessment or view all available questions to copy. When browsing questions to reuse, instructors can quickly view what type of question it is, as well as the content.

Yes

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Insert recordings via content editor in assessment feedback

Instructors can record video and audio using the editor in assessment feedback.

This feature will launch in mid-June 2015.

Yes

No

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Integrated cloud storage

Instructors and students can now connect to Google Drive and upload content directly into their courses.

Yes

TBA

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Collect external coursework submissions and grade with rubrics

A new assessment setting allows instructors to track external submissions, such as a student's performance in an offline or non-Ultra course context, and use a rubric to grade. Instructors can keep track of all relevant coursework within Ultra and eliminate the need to transcribe grades from items or activities that took place physically. 

Yes

No

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Speed up grading with Discussion Analysis

A new Discussion Analysis feature displays key metrics such as critical thinking, sentence complexity, responses, replies, and average word count. The critical thinking metric is analyzed using a Blackboard-developed algorithm, while sentence complexity uses Flesch-Kincaid readability benchmarks. This allows an instructor to determine a student's discussion participation grade based on many qualitative factors that aren't easy or quick to evaluate but deserve in-depth analysis.

Yes

No 

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Accommodations for timed assessments

Accommodations allow instructors to exempt certain students from high pressure aspects of a course, such as due dates, allowing them to complete coursework and succeed where they might otherwise be at a disadvantage.

Yes

No

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Integrated cloud storage

Instructors and students can connect to UMBC Box and upload content directly into their courses. Google Drive is coming soon.

Yes

TBA

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Curriculum coordinator role

Blackboard introduces new privileges to support departments that need to standardize and lock course curriculum for course facilitators.

Yes

Yes

An RT ticket is required to use this role.

Activity indicators for active Collab rooms

When a course Collaborate room is in session, an indicator appears on the Course Content page to let others know the room is in use. The same icon appears in group assessments when the instructor has enabled conversations and another group member is in the room.

Yes

No

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