Blackboard course shells for WT2023 and SP2023 were created on November 29, 2022.

The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in WT/SP2023 courses, which allows faculty to convert a new Original course to see what it looks like in Ultra. 

• Please review the release notes for the latest updates as well as feature parity charts -- more than 30 new updates were added over the last few months including hot spot questions, assessment page breaks, gradebook history, reports for course activity and student progress, points-based gradebook and rubrics, question banks, and more! 
• Learn more about What's New in Ultra for Teaching & Learning on January 9, 2023.
• Have a question about Ultra? Ask an Ultra Ambassador!

Ally, an accessibility tool, is also enabled in all course shells. Ally automatically scans uploaded and created course content, then performs a series of steps to make that content more accessible. Please review the Ally FAQs for more information about the accessibility indicators on course content and alternative formats.

For faculty who will be teaching hybrid or online, the instructional technology team would like to share several resources to support online course development and instruction.

1. Choose from our PIVOT Solo lessons to refresh or enhance your online teaching preparation. Five key topics cover course organization, active learning, community building, assessment, and supporting students. 
2. Explore our Panopto folder for a wide variety of recorded webinars on various instructional technologies available at UMBC.
3. Learn about the Quality Matters Impact program, a new initiative to formally recognize courses that meet Quality Matters standards and demonstrate exemplary online/hybrid course design.

• If you are an instructor, and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your Departmental Scheduling Coordinator to resolve the issue. Once you are listed in the SOC, your Bb course shell will be created automatically. 
• If you and your Department Scheduling Coordinator believe you are correctly assigned as the instructor of record in the SOC and you do not see your course shell in Blackboard, please submit a Request Tracker (RT) ticket via my.umbc.edu/help.
• If you need a Bb shell for a research or independent study course, please submit a new course request.

Instructors who teach multiple sections of the same course will find those enrollments merged into one Bb course shell. These sections may be split upon request by an RT ticket, which we recommend submitting at least one week before the semester starts, if not as soon as courses are created in Blackboard.

Student enrollment in Bb mirrors the official registration in SA and updates hourly. However, courses are not accessible to students by default until the instructor of record makes them available.

After extensive updates to assessments and grading, Ultra is expected to reach 95% feature parity by the end of spring 2023, allowing faculty to migrate their Original courses into the most current version of the Blackboard platform. As more faculty adopt Ultra, students benefit from having a single course delivery system.

"I am pretty much ready to adopt and move into that space," says Sarah Bass, lecturer of the largest Blackboard course, CHEM 101. Bass notes improvements to tests and question banks will help with the transition and adds, "I really don't see why I can't do the conversion during the Fall semester for a Spring launch."

In the last year, Ultra has seen dramatic enhancement across key functional areas, particularly assessment and grading. Now offering points-based gradebooks and points-based rubrics, robust question banks, extensive group management tools, and more, Ultra features a modern, streamlined interface that is mobile-friendly and accessible, increasing opportunities to engage students. When surveyed, 86% of UMBC students expressed satisfaction with Ultra, praising its clean design and ease of use. "Ultra makes everything really easy to find and use," says one student. "It's a major step up from the old Blackboard system."

Much of this new development comes from Blackboard's merger with Anthology, a provider of higher educational software solutions, and their triple investment of resources into Ultra. The accelerated development since October 2021 resulted in more than 100 enhancements across content, engagement, assessment, grading, and administrative areas in Ultra. DoIT tracks and shares new Ultra features each month.

Since 2018, faculty have been able to opt-in to using Ultra, resulting in 46% adoption across the entire campus. Ultra templates are used across all IHU and ENGL 100 courses. Theatre was the first department to fully adopt Ultra and more than 88% of language courses, including first year Spanish courses, and 30% of MATH/STAT courses now use Ultra. 

As Original Blackboard continues to age, Instructional Technology encourages faculty to use AY22-23 to migrate their courses to Ultra for FA2023. In addition to course migration assistance and instructional design consulting, we offer training from an extensive catalog as well as FAQs and technical support to faculty and departments for transitioning to Ultra. Additionally, faculty serve as Ultra Ambassadors, providing peer support, coordinating additional training, and sharing feedback. 

For more information about Ultra, please contact:
Dr. Mariann Hawken
Director, Instructional Technology