FA2021 Courses Created in Blackboard on July 26, 2021
Blackboard course shells for FA2021 were created on July 26, 2021.
The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in FA2021 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 to compare Original and Ultra tools and check third-party tools are available. 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.
- 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.
- Explore our Panopto folder for a wide variety of recorded webinars on various instructional technologies available at UMBC.
About Course Creation
- 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.
As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:
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Blackboard course shells for FA2021 were created on July 26, 2021. The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in FA2021 courses, which allows faculty to convert a new Original course to...
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Blackboard Announcements
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Tue, 27 Jul 2021 10:06:43 -0400
Gradebook filters, progress tracking, badges ready for Ultra
New course navigation & other enhancements coming in August
This upcoming FA2021 semester features new development in the Ultra gradebook, starting with gradebook filters. This function allows faculty to view data and content in the gradebook by multiple variables including individual student names, groups, gradable items, and categories. Faculty can bookmark their filters to reuse. Ultra gradebook filters mark an important feature parity with the smart view in an Original course's grade center.
Progress tracking is a brand new enhancement to Ultra courses, allowing students to manually mark and track their progress. This feature is especially helpful when learning modules are used in Ultra courses, providing students with both visual cues
to identify where they are in their consumption and manual task to mark complete for course activities. As this is the first phase of progress tracking, this feature can only be enabled if the course has no activity. Please review the FAQ to enable this setting.
The achievements tool in Original courses allows instructors to designate criteria for issuing rewards to students in the form of both badges. The new Badgr integration for Ultra and Original courses replaces the achievements tool and provides a platform for faculty to reward and motivate students for project completion, skill proficiency, experience levels, and more. Watch for updates about an upcoming webinar later in August to learn more about this exiting new tool.
Other new features coming to Ultra include a redesigned navigation menu. The top menu has featured icons since Ultra launched several years ago, and lacked any contextual information. The new menu will be completely text based and relocated to the left side of the page, where it is more responsive for mobile access. Moreover, this location is sticky -- that is, the menu remains at the top even if you scroll down the page, allowing you to easily change your tool and page view. The Student Preview tool will also change its location to the top right corner, which is more consistent with Original courses. Are you ready for the move? At the end of the Spring 2021 semester, DoIT announced that test scoring services were moving to Akindi, a Scantron alternative. During this transition, we will be offering faculty many opportunities to learn more about implementing Akindi bubble sheets when delivering face-to-face, multiple choice assessments.
This training is recommended for all faculty that plan on deploying paper-based assessments in their courses.
Training will be offered on:
- Wednesday, August 18, 12pm-1pm
- Wednesday, August 25, 12pm-1pm
- Monday, September 13, 3pm-4pm
- Thursday, September 16, 1pm-2pm
- Friday, October 1, 9am-10am
Note: Faculty only need to attend one of the above sessions; the sessions are repetitive.
Agenda:
By the end of this session, faculty should be able to:
- Create an Akindi assessment in their Blackboard course shell
- Add an answer key to an assessment
- Generate, download, and print PDF Akindi bubble sheets for distribution.
- Upload completed bubble sheets into an Akindi assessment
- Mitigate errors and flags from assessments that may need manual review (e.g., bubbling two responses, missing ID).
- Locate the scores of Akindi assessments in Blackboard
- Review bubble sheet analytics
- Return the scanned, electronic bubble sheet to students
Attending
To RSVP for the event, please click “Going” on the corresponding myUMBC event (linked above) and be sure to add the event to your calendar!
Next Steps
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Are you ready for the move? At the end of the Spring 2021 semester, DoIT announced that test scoring services were moving to Akindi, a Scantron alternative. During this transition, we will be...
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Wed, 07 Jul 2021 13:43:29 -0400
Tue, 17 Aug 2021 07:56:27 -0400
New Respondus Lockdown Browser Features Auto-Update in July
Students using Win/Mac must install to gain this feature
The July update to the Windows and Mac versions of Respondus LockDown Browser will feature a new Auto Update function that starts when the application opens.
To optimize the test proctoring experience, students must make sure they are using the latest version of RLDB before taking a Blackboard test if the secure browser is required. Prior to this new update, the check had to be manually completed and installed. The new feature will automatically check for updates and install them to ensure students are using the latest version.
NOTE: The July update must be manually installed for students to benefit from the auto-update function moving forward. Students must run the "Check for newer version" tool to download and install the update.
- For Windows users, start RLDB, select the "i" button from the toolbar. The version will be displayed and you can also click on "Check for Newer Version." The new version for Windows is 2.0.7.03.
- For Mac users, start RLDB and then select “About” from the toolbar. The version will be displayed as shown above, and you can click “Check for Update" to see if a newer version is available. The latest Mac version is 2.0.7.04.
Alternatively, students can run a fresh install using the UMBC-specific download link.
As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:
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The July update to the Windows and Mac versions of Respondus LockDown Browser will feature a new Auto Update function that starts when the application opens. To optimize the test proctoring...
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Mon, 28 Jun 2021 16:13:14 -0400
Mon, 28 Jun 2021 16:13:33 -0400
Groups & gradebook enhancements planned for Ultra in July
Improved functionality for groups support larger enrollments
The groups tool in Ultra has been redesigned for the July update to improve overall performance, particularly for large courses. This redesign includes functionality to make it easier to find specific students, filter the display of unassigned students by search criteria, and paginate through a list of students who aren't currently assigned to a group. Batch enrollment of students into groups, however, must still use a separate tool.
Additional functionality supports users with vision impairment to navigate through cards more efficiently and to move to the top of the page when there are enough students shown on the screen.
Since its inception, the Ultra gradebook has only supported a letter grade schema for the overall grade that a student sees. In July, however, faculty will be able to choose between the letter grade schema and a percentage. This selection will appear to both students and instructors in the gradebook.
Faculty who prefer to use a points-based system will continue to leverage the calculated column workflow to display a running total of points earned.
Moreover, faculty can decide to turn off the visibility of the attendance column for the Blackboard attendance tool in the gradebook, grid, and list view. This functionality allows instructors to choose whether or not they want to use Blackboard’s native attendance as a grade or not. While some instructors want or need to track attendance, they don't always need it represented in the gradebook. They can remove attendance columns from the gradebook without affecting the attendance itself. Note: The native Bb attendance tool setting does not impact Qwickly’s attendance total column as Qwickly is a separate third-party tool that must be set up and used separately.
The next update to our test environment will take place on July 6, 2021. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Please watch the FAQs and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra
As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:
6/5 update: The June release is delayed. As soon as we have more information, we will post it.
7/1 update: The June release was rolled into the July update.
Rubrics can be an essential tool for faculty and the assessment grading workflow. In this release for early summer, the rubrics in Ultra courses will now support written feedback by row criteria. This segmented approach offers more flexibility and allows faculty to provide more detail to students when grading.
The updated rubric will appear whenever rubrics can be used in an Ultra course including discussions, anonymous assignments, single attempts, and multiple attempts. However, when using rubrics with parallel grading, while all delegated graders will have this functionality available, only the reconciler's feedback will be visible to students.
The June update also brings increased support for right to left languages including a fully flipped user interface across the user's dashboard and Ultra course experience. Enhancements to the Ultra course's content editor will allow users to write in right to left languages to adjust the text's direction display.
A few smaller updates to Ultra courses include inserting audio or video announcements (up to 5 minutes) and enhancements to the peer assessment tool for notifications and batch edit.
The next update to our test environment will take place on June 8, 2021. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Please watch the FAQs and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra
As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:
During the Summer 2021, DoIT staff and Blackboard will archive our entire instance of Blackboard, which will save individually backed-up copies of every course and organization through SP2021. Courses offered before and including AY17-18 will be retired by the end of FA2021.
Beginning July 1, courses offered from the following terms will be scheduled for retirement:
- Any courses older than five years
- Fall 2015
- Spring 2016
- Fall 2016
- Spring 2017
- Summer 2017
- Fall 2017
- Winter 2018
- Spring 2018
- Summer 2018
The Blackboard system’s overall performance and efficiency will improve by removing files and database transactions from the content server and database. AY18-19, AY19-20, and AY20-21 will remain on the server. Fall 2021 will begin a new academic year of data retention (AY21-22).
FAQs about Course Retirement
Is my content gone forever?
No, Blackboard archived courses captured all course data, files, student submissions, discussions, grades, etc. through SP2021. These archives will reside on a secure drive with the Division of Information Technology.
When will I lose access to courses that are being retired?
Can I save a copy of my own courses?
Yes -- and it is strongly encouraged! Instructors can
export (course content) and/or archive (course content & student data) their courses. You should also
download a copy of your gradebook. We recommend saving these files to UMBC’s cloud storage to ensure long-term access in the event you change computer systems.
Can I restore (regain access to) only course content?
Yes. Course content consists of files and course structure (menu, folders, etc.). Faculty can only
import course content to an existing Blackboard course shell.
Can I restore course data?
Course data consists of student submissions, discussions, and grades. We generally prefer not to restore full courses to avoid reinstating user accounts and confusing students with old content. If you must restore archived course data, please open an RT ticket with justification included.
How long will you keep the retired courses?
We will keep the retired courses for approximately 2 years after Blackboard archives the courses. Faculty who may need content beyond 2 years should plan to save copies of their exported courses to UMBC Box or other cloud storage.
As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology, please consider the following options:
Beginning Fall 2021, UMBC will employ
Akindi for paper-based, bubble sheet assessments. Akinidi is a Scantron alternative that allows instructors to print and score bubble sheets from
any local printer/scanner.
Before UMBC's physical campus closed due to COVID-19, CHEM 101 and CHEM 102 participated in a limited Spring 2020 pilot using Akindi, with approximately 700 students enrolled in each course. Dr. Sarah Bass, Lecturer from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, reflected on her experience with Akindi on a
recent GO Chat:
"I loved Akindi and I never want to go back to Scantrons! The integration with Blackboard made Akindi easy to use. One of the advantages was that I didn't have to take this huge pile of Scantrons across campus and hope that I would get the results back quickly. With Akindi, I had all of the results at my fingertips within forty-five minutes, which let students get their results and feedback as quickly as possible. I was able to review exam material with them the following class period."
How does Akindi work?
- Within a Blackboard course shell, instructors create an Akindi assessment to add their answer key.
- Akindi will generate bubble sheets as a downloadable PDF that instructors will print from a standard printer with standard paper to make copies for distribution.
- Students will use the provided Akindi bubble sheet for their multiple choice, paper assessment.
- Using any standard scanner, instructors scan all returned bubble sheets into a PDF file.
- Instructors upload the PDF file from the scanner into the corresponding Akindi Assessment in Blackboard. Akindi will flag assessments that may need manual review (e.g., bubbling two responses, missing ID).
- Akindi will score the assessments and post scores into the Blackboard gradebook.
Why transition from Scantrons to Akindi?
Scantron Turnaround
The Technology Support Center (TSC) is responsible for scanning and returning completed Scantron assessments. While the TSC's goal is to return assessments within 2 business days, meeting this goal during peak assessment periods for midterm and final exams is challenging. These peak times are precisely when the TSC is most needed for faculty and student support. With Akindi, instructors can more easily and quickly score and return results to students.
Just-in-time Teaching
Immediate feedback improves just-in-time pedagogical strategies where faculty can leverage assessment data to specifically review content at a time in the course schedule that has heightened relevance for students. Some UMBC faculty have used
"Exam wrapper" reflections where they ask students, after receiving their results, to reflect on their strategies to prepare for the exam.
Student Feedback
Immediate feedback gives students performance indicators on assessments that can inform their study habits or outreach efforts for tutoring and support. Additionally, students only have access to the original, physical bubble sheet, which may delay or prevent students from reviewing transcription or other grading errors. With Akindi, instructors can choose to email students a copy of the scanned image as soon as grades are posted to Blackboard.
Analytics and Regrading
Results from scored Scantrons are compiled in a CSV file, where instructors can manipulate the data in order to generate reports within any spreadsheet application; instructors also receive a static PDF report of the data. If there were errors on the answer key, or a question needs to be thrown out, all of the assessments would need to be rescored. Additionally, instructors are unable to run what-if analyses to determine the effects of throwing out a question or answer choice. Akindi provides a dynamic interface for instructors to manipulate and review bubble sheet assessment data.
Bubble Sheet Retention
Scantrons are required to be stored at the TSC until picked up by faculty members; some assessments administered from Summer 2017 still remain unclaimed. Scantron alternatives can offer digital copies of bubble sheets, which only requires computer or cloud disk space instead of physical storage. Further, Akindi can email a copy of the scored exam directly to students for their review.
Integration with Blackboard
Results from scored Scantrons are compiled in a CSV file, uploaded by the TSC into a Blackboard course's Content Collection. The process to take the results from the Content Collection to the Gradebook is not as seamless as it could be, especially when pushing results from Akindi to the Gradebook is only a click away. If instructors wish to regrade a particular question, the CSV must first be downloaded, amended, then re-uploaded into the Blackboard gradebook. With Akindi, instructors can edit the answer key within Blackboard and immediately update results.
Next Steps
Over the next several weeks, we will be announcing training dates with Akindi to prepare faculty for this transition. Follow our
Instructional Technology myUMBC group to stay up-to-date when training dates will be announced. Until then, instructors can:
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Instructional Technology
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Faculty prioritize grading & assessments for Ultra’s future
About 76% of current & planned Ultra aligns with Original
When Ultra was first introduced at UMBC in SP2018, four adventurous faculty opted to use a newly redesigned Blackboard course interface in their courses. Ultra represented a new phase of Blackboard’s development, focusing on student success, responsive design, mobile friendliness, and embedded analytics. Nearly three years later, more than 300 faculty now use Ultra at UMBC across more than 1200 courses throughout the pandemic. Both students and faculty alike praise Ultra’s interface and usability.
Our Ultra adoption is around 40% of the total active Blackboard courses, with most faculty adoption occurring before the pandemic and a substantial surge occurring during the pandemic. A recent plateau in adoption suggested there might be some challenges we needed to confront with Ultra’s progress and discussions to consider. Before we can get to that point, we need to reflect on the last year of teaching online and a longer time of teaching with Ultra.
12 Months of Ultra Updates
Every month, our Blackboard site gets the latest updates, thanks to our cloud hosting. Given the broad scope that Ultra presents to courses, these updates may seem slower when released on a monthly cadence. However, the list of features and enhancements is quite substantial. Key highlights include conditional release of content by groups, new text formatting options including HTML blocks, batch enrolling students into groups, qualitative peer assessments, passcode protecting tests and test feedback/grade release, and 25 videos per page in Collaborate. With the May release, faculty can set up a drop grades rule in the Ultra gradebook.
Prioritizing What’s Needed for Ultra
Now that we know what's been added to Ultra, let's look at what we're still looking to enhance. In FA2019, we gathered 75+ of the requested features and functionality for Ultra and shared this critical information with Blackboard. In SP2021, we sent a survey to all faculty teaching Ultra to prioritize the key features by functional area. The Ultra prioritization survey helped us understand UMBC’s faculty priorities and gave Bb’s developers a strong framework for how our faculty used Ultra for teaching.
Figure 1: Summarizing Ultra tool needs: Shifting priorities between SP/FA2019 and SP2021. We looked at faculty feedback on Ultra from SP2019/FA2019 and FA2020 to compare priorities, noting that key functional areas have shifted. Whereas faculty once placed group management as a major concern in Ultra’s early development, grading and assessment are now at the top of the list.
Where is Ultra Going Next?
Last month, Wade Fields, product manager for Ultra’s development team, met with UMBC’s Ultra Faculty Ambassadors to share details about Ultra’s roadmap. The future of Ultra is planned in several phases, and it’s important to note that software development can change rapidly due to client feedback and other circumstances (like a pandemic). With that in mind, we can share these planned items, many of which are high priority items for our faculty.
Throughout SU2021, Blackboard anticipates releasing rubric feedback by criteria, right-to-left alignment for the content editor, audio/video recording support for course announcements, tables for the content editor, achievement support, and gradebook filtering by groups and other criteria. In the third quarter of 2021, Blackboard plans several exciting enhancements that align to our faculty priorities including point-based rubrics; assignment submission receipts for students; and personal pronouns and pronunciation name guides for all users.
On the longer term roadmap, Blackboard seeks to improve grading and assessment workflows including support for test display and continues to research improvements to the notification and messaging system. Goals include enhancing the course landing page, learning modules, accommodations, and offering deeper integrations for Google and Microsoft.
What Happens Next?
When asked, 56% of UMBC’s Ultra Faculty Ambassadors said they were satisfied that the proposed feature development of Ultra would support their upcoming teaching, and 44% were encouraged by the roadmap enough to keep watching and using Ultra for next year. However, Instructional Technology continues to track Ultra’s monthly development and engage Blackboard developers in conversations about essential features.
Figure 2: Ultra Feature Tracker. Currently Ultra aligns with about 76% of Original’s features, including those in research and development.
Transparency with the UMBC community is an essential part of the Ultra adoption process. Collecting feedback every semester, including the upcoming surveys for both faculty and students, is an essential part of our ongoing evaluation and project tracking. Please follow this myUMBC group for continued updates about Ultra.
As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology, please consider the following options:
By: Mariann Hawken
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When Ultra was first introduced at UMBC in SP2018, four adventurous faculty opted to use a newly redesigned Blackboard course interface in their courses. Ultra represented a new phase of...
https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/instructional-technology/posts/101457
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SU2021 Courses Created in Blackboard on April 27, 2021
Blackboard course shells for SU2021 were created on April 27, 2021.
The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in SU2021 courses to allow faculty adoption with anupdated support schedule of Ultra (see prior announcement). The Ultra Course Preview tool allows faculty to convert an existing Original course and see what it looks like in Ultra.
Ally, an accessibility tool, is also enabled in all new course shells as of SU2019 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.
Check out these 3 PIVOT resources to prepare for summer online teaching.
About Course Creation
- 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.
As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:
]]>
Blackboard course shells for SU2021 were created on April 27, 2021. The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in SU2021 courses to allow faculty adoption with anupdated support schedule...
https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/bbannouncements/posts/101311
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