While fetching a stray wheelchair from Admin 101 (thanks for that tip, Stephanie!) I noticed a bunch of stuff piled at the front of the lecture hall.  There's a very nice lunchbox, a gray ThermoFlask canteen (see photos), another lunch bag, umbrellas, a scarf, etc.  The collection is now up in my office;  Everyone needs a hobby.

If you possibly left something in AD 101, please email me at cfu2@umbc.edu for a joyous reunion.  Thanks.

Hello hello, Retrievers, and happy Friday!

It's once again time for a weekly cleanup, and at long last, Mother Nature is cooperating! We'll be hitting Army Field, so come join us at Commons by the Dunkin at 2:45 and we'll head there together at 3!

The map will be posted into our GroupMe for those of you who can't meet us at Commons.

See you then!
-The Eboard

Our lovely retrievers! Starting today, The Pride Center will be opening at 11am on Fridays! Our new operating hours on Fridays will be 11am-5pm. Monday-Thursday hours will not change. (:

AI is reshaping education, challenging traditional frameworks like Bloom's Taxonomy. This session introduces a reframed Bloom's Taxonomy that expands beyond "Create" to include a new Transform layer, enabling learners to apply knowledge for real-world and social impact. Expanding on the white paper Reframing Bloom's for the Age of AI, we'll share strategies for embedding AI literacy, fostering critical thinking, and driving academic innovation. Read more and join the online session here.

Odyssey of Light is one week away!
April 11th, 2026, 1-5pm
Dionne Warwich Theatre @Bowie State University
14000 Jerico Park Rd, Bowie, MD 20715

There is still time for photography and art students to attend this wonderful educational opportunity for FREE!

The day will include:

• Free morning workshops
• A Free panel discussion
• Free afternoon presentations by two legendary National Geographic photographers

Students need to register and the process is simple:

1. Send MPA, atodyssey@mdphotoalliance.org, the following:

• Students Name
• Student's Email Address
• The Name of the Workshop they want to Attend

It's that simple. All tickets are distributed via email. Workshops are first-come, first-served, and seating is limited.

The Maryland Photography Alliance is proud to offer these valuable educational experiences and look forward to welcoming you!

Contact Steve Sattler, President of the Maryland Photography Alliance, with any questions: president@mdphotoalliance.org

Have you ever wanted students to see exactly what's expected of them in a discussion, without having to navigate back to the assignment details to check? Or needed to recognize that one group member's contribution deserved a different grade than the rest of the team? The April Ultra update delivers a focused set of improvements across discussions, assignments, grading, and AI-supported activities, giving instructors more precision over course structure and students more transparency throughout their work.

Building on December's participation requirements feature, instructors who create discussions with multiple due dates will now see both sets of requirements displayed consistently across the Course Content page, Discussion pages, the Gradebook (in both student and instructor views), and the instructor's Discussion analysis panel. Students no longer need to navigate back to a discussion to recall what's expected of them -- deadlines and requirements follow them through the workflow. This is especially useful in scaffolded discussions and different stages of engagement carry distinct expectations.

Image 1: On the Course Content page, both due dates and participation requirements are displayed. For all entry points for Discussions, both dates and requirements are displayed.

Instructors can now specify the expected submission type when creating or editing an assignment, choosing from File Upload or Text Entry (or both). When a submission type is selected, students see a streamlined workflow tailored to that format, which reduces confusion about how to submit and cuts down on the "wait, how do I turn this in?" questions at the start of an assignment. The selected type is visible in assignment settings and in student-facing details, and instructors can adjust the setting until students have begun submitting attempts, keeping flexibility intact during course setup without creating ambiguity once work is underway. In a future update to the assignment settings, instructors will be able to specify file types (e.g., Word document or PDF).

Image 2: Instructors can choose one or more submission types when configuring an assignment.

Instructors using AI-supported conversations can now set message limits (e.g., 8 messages) to guide the length of these interactions. These controls help students understand when a conversation is meant to conclude, keeping exchanges focused on the intended learning activity rather than drifting into open-ended dialogue. For instructors who rely on AI conversations to scaffold critical thinking or formative reflection, message limits offer a lightweight but meaningful way to design interactions with a clearer beginning, middle, and end.

Image 3: Message limit settings for an AI conversation

Finally, instructors grading group work can now override a group attempt score for individual group members directly from the grading interface. When grades differ across group members, the interface clearly indicates this, and adjustments can be removed at any time by restoring a student's grade to match the group score. This gives instructors the flexibility to acknowledge uneven contribution or effort within a team without having to build workarounds outside the gradebook — a long-requested quality-of-life improvement for courses that rely heavily on collaborative assessments.

Image 4: Instructors can adjust grades for individual students within a group submission.

Additional updates for April include:

• Announcement emails now display images, giving recipients a richer preview of content directly in their inbox. This improvement is particularly useful for visual-heavy announcements where the image itself is part of the message.
• The Discussion analysis pagewill label student posts and replies as Substantive Content and Non-substantive Content, making it easier to scan discussion quality at a glance, especially in large courses or discussions with high post volumes.
• Student names in Flexible Grading are now formatted as Surname, First Name by default, matching the default sort order and making it easier to locate students quickly. When sorting by First Name (ascending or descending), names display as First Name Surname.
• Based on instructor feedback, Blackboard made several refinements to multiple-choice and multiple-answer questions: the default number of selectable answer options for multiple-choice questions is now 1 (down from 4); instructors can now change the number of answer options a student may select when creating or editing a question; and alphabetical labels (A, B, C, D) have been restored to answer choices.
• The file size limit for SafeAssign DirectSubmit submissions has been raised to 25 MB, supporting larger documents that include images, tables, and complex formatting.
• When a course is copied, restored, or imported, any automations in that course will carry over as well. Copied automations are always inactive by default and must be reviewed and activated in the destination course before they will be sent.

When you can expect the update

Faculty should see the latest updates in their Ultra courses around April 2-3, 2026. The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on April 14, 2026]; release notes are posted to the What's New in Ultra page. 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, including the What's New with Ultra page, and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra.

Connect with Instructional Technology

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection 
  • What's new in Ultra? | Known Issues 
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

Thumbnail-image: New to Ultra [decorative]

The Development & Community Engagement Assistant is a part-time (20-29 hours per week) non-exempt employee. Hourly Pay Rate: $20-$24 per hour, commensurate with experience. Location: 8360 Court Ave, Ellicott City, MD 21043.

Agentic Vibe Coding from the Terminal

Prof. Tim Oates, UMBC

1-2:30pm ET, April 3, 2026, ITE 325b and online

LLMs have become surprisingly capable coding partners. Prof. Tim Oates will give a technical overview of why coding assistants work (internet-scale code + documentation pretraining, instruction tuning, and feedback loops), and where they predictably fail (ambiguous specs, hidden requirements, brittle dependencies, and "confidently wrong" outputs). Most of the session is live, terminal-based demos using Claude Code. He will start from plain-English requirements and iteratively produce working implementations: scaffolding a small project, generating tests, debugging failures, refactoring for clarity/performance, and adding documentation. Along the way, he will highlight practical workflows: "spec-first prompting", test-driven prompting, using the assistant to explain unfamiliar code, and using constraints to keep changes small and reviewable. The goal is for faculty and students to leave with repeatable patterns for using coding assistants effectively - without outsourcing understanding or sacrificing correctness.

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Recorded video

Slides

Claude script MD examples

Join us on Monday, April 6 from 7:30–9:00 PM in ILSB 237 for the M&M Mixer! This event is hosted by Investing & Trading in collaboration with the Accounting Club, Economics Council, and Quantitative Financial Analyst Club. It’s a great chance to explore different majors and minors, get real advice from upperclassmen, and learn about classes, internships, and study strategies. Meet new people, ask your questions, and enjoy some snacks.

Attire: Business casual is preferred to help you make a great impression, but casual is also welcome.

We hope to see you there!

Hello COEIT Students!

Your staff advisors hope that you’re all having a great and productive semester! 

We are writing today to inform you that Google Enterprise software is currently flagging Calendly emails as spam despite UMBC’s DoIT whitelisting the contact.

If you are making appointments with a COEIT Staff advisor please be sure to add notifications@calendly.com to your personal contact list and if you have calendly emails in your spam folder please mark them as not Spam.

As undergraduate students, you are responsible for managing your advising requirements each semester. Please be mindful of the appointments that you make with us as we have hundreds of students per advisor that need to have their clearance lifted. Finally, please be sure to schedule your meeting with your assigned staff advisor.