Introducing our new UST Cloud Campus BB Ultra Interface

Education isn't easy, but your online learning environment should be. The Ultra experience is simple, comfortable, and elegant and goes beyond the course.

Instructors: Get ahead with BB Ultra

Welcome to the new Blackboard Learn -- a learner-centered environment designed to improve user efficiency and satisfaction in a modern, comfortable, and simple interface. This overview will help you, the instructor, become familiar with the new interface. The streamlined navigation and workflows are designed to allow you to get in, get done, and get out.

Be on Top of What's Happening in Your Course

After your initial introduction to the Ultra experience for Blackboard Learn, the Activity Stream is this first page any user will see. This stream posts all the changes that have occurred since you last logged in, any upcoming events, and other important messages from your institution. You can also be notified of assignments ready to be graded, any responses from a discussion, and filter any content that you want to focus on in the stream. This tutorial will show you how to access the Activity Stream, and how to access additional details through the stream.The up-to-the-minute activity stream lets you jump directly into course actions. Activity stream items are grouped into four categories to make the list easier to scan. Students will find important information at the top. These could be notifications about past-due course work.

Ultra Course Preview in Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Experience

When your institution enables the Ultra experience, you may be allowed to have a mix of courses in the Ultra Course View and the Original Course View. Choose the course view that works best for each of your courses. Both course views appear seamlessly in your course list. You can fully explore your Original course in the Ultra preview before you switch to the Ultra Course View. You can also review a list of features and functions that change or won't carry forward if you convert.

Edit Your Profile in Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Experience

Your profile is the place to edit information attached to your persona. In the list where your name appears, select your name to access your profile. Your profile appears with some information, and you can't delete your profile. Your institution decides what you can customize.

Create Announcements in the Ultra Course View

Announcements help you share important information with others in your course. Unlike messages, announcements appear immediately when a student opens a course. Students are less likely to ignore the information you share in a course announcement because it demands attention before viewing course content.

Notification Settings in Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Experience (Instructors)

You can choose the types of notifications you receive and how they're delivered to you. This video shows you how to customize your notification preferences.

Take Control of Your Class with Course Calendar

Timing is everything, that’s why we’ve added calendar to the base navigation. This global calendar provides events from across the system, showing dates from multiple courses in one convenient location. If you access the calendar with a course, it displays due dates, the course schedule, office hours, and events for that course only. Any events you add within a course are specific to that course.

Access All your Messages in BB Learn

In Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Experience, your messages all have one home—just like a normal inbox, but better. You can access all your messages right from the base navigation, or from your course. This video will take you on a functionality tour of the Messages feature.

Add Content to the Course Content Page in Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Experience

Creating content in your Ultra courses is simple. There are several ways you can add or upload content to your course. You can create new course content items, copy content from other courses, upload files from your computer, add items from your Content Collection, add files from cloud storage, and add content and tools from external sources from the Content Market.

Use the Content Editor in the Ultra Course View

The editor appears wherever you can format text, such as in assignments, tests, and discussions. You can add bullet and numbered lists, and bold and italicized text. Use the Text Style menu to add headings. You can also launch the math editor to embed mathematical formulas in your text. The WIRIS editor opens in a new window.

Create Learning Modules in the Ultra Course View

You can use learning modules in your course as a container for organized collections of content. Modules let students navigate from one content item to the next without distractions or extra clicks. A learning module helps immerse students in the lesson or concept you're teaching.

Enrich Your Course with Third Party Content

Share content and tools with your students from third-party providers. Integration is supported by LTI open standards so students have access based on enrolment, leaving you worry free when it comes to content distribution.

Batch Edit in the Ultra Course View

In the Ultra Course View, you can use Batch Edit to update common settings across all content. Batch Edit lets you control content settings in one place and all at once to save you time managing your course.What's this item about? What makes it interesting? Write a catchy description to grab your audience's attention...

Conditional Availability in the Ultra Course View

With conditional availability, you can withhold assignments from students in your Ultra courses. Assign coursework to appear in a specific order after students have achieved specific criteria you set, such as scoring a B or above on a quiz before they can take a test.

Student Preview in the Ultra Course View

You want to be confident that your course is well-designed and functions as you expect—before your students see it. With student preview, you can review the course content from a student's perspective. You can also validate course behaviors.

Create a Discussion in the Ultra Course View

Discussions are a good way to encourage students to think critically about your coursework and interact with each other. This tutorial will show you how to create a discussion.

Discussion Analysis in Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Course View

Discussion analysis provides an in-depth look at each student’s discussion participation, critical thinking level, and sentence complexity. These performance-based insights show you which students who may need help or are out of the normal range of participation.

Strengthen Students' Critical Thinking with Discussions

Discussions strengthen students' ability to think critically, express their thoughts in a clear way, and communicate with others. With graded discussions, you can assess these abilities as part of each student's course grade. Show a student where their contributions excel and where they can improve by assigning them a grade.

Mark Attendance in Blackboard Learn

Instructors can use attendance data as part of their students' overall grades. Blackboard Learn makes it easy to mark student attendance. This video tutorial explains how to manage the Attendance page and mark student attendance.

Create an Assignment in the Ultra Course View

Assignments allow students to apply course concepts and demonstrate their knowledge in tangible ways. Instructors can create assignments within the course alongside other content. Students access their work next to the content they need, right when they need it.

Create Group Assignments in the Ultra Course View

You can use group assignments to teach students how to effectively work in teams. This type of assignment helps students realize that each team member can contribute something useful to solving a problem and that the group's result can be more than the sum of its parts. Students demonstrate their knowledge while learning to appreciate the perspective of others. ​

Create Course Groups in the Ultra Course View

With a group set, you can create multiple groups around a theme, such as a lesson, brainstorming, studying, or volunteering. You can also pair students based on certain attributes, situations, or tasks.

Foster Collaboration with Grade Assignments in BB Ultra Course View

You can choose where you want to start grading! From the activity stream, you're alerted when student submissions are ready for grading. Select the link to go to the gradebook. Or, access all your courses' grading tasks on the global Grades page. And finally, in a course, you can access the course gradebook on the navigation bar. Or start grading directly from an assignment.

Deter Plagiarism using Safe Assign in BB Ultra

You can use SafeAssign to check for potential plagiarism in student submissions in both tests and assignments. This tutorial explains how to use SafeAssign in assignments.

Create a Test in the Ultra Course View

You can use tests measure student knowledge, gauge progress, and gather information from students. You can create tests alongside the other content students need as they prepare.

Fill in the Blank Questions in Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Course View

A Fill in the Blank question consists of a phrase, sentence, or paragraph with a blank space where a student provides the missing word or words.

Create Matching Questions in the Ultra Course View

With Matching questions, students pair items in the prompts column to items in the answers column. The number of items in each column doesn’t have to be equal because you can reuse answers and add additional answers. Additional answers are distractors that don’t match any of the prompts and increase the question's difficulty. Some instructors use distractors so students can’t guess at answers by the process of elimination.

Use Question Pools in Assessments in the Ultra Course View

When you create an assessment in the Ultra Course View, you can use question pools to be sure each student receives a different version of the assessment.

Import Question Banks in the Ultra Course View

You can import Original Course View question pools or files from outside resources into your Ultra course. This creates a database of questions that you can reuse in multiple assessments. Only ZIP files are supported.

Reuse Questions in Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Course View

In the Ultra Course View, you can reuse questions and other content from all existing tests, assignments, and question banks in your course.

Deploy an Online Test with BB Ultra

You can use tests and surveys to measure student knowledge, gauge progress, and gather information from students. You can create tests alongside the other content students need as they prepare.

Grant Assessment Exceptions in the Ultra Course View

When special circumstances arise, you may allow an exception on a specific test or assignment to an individual student. An exception includes additional attempts or extended access, even if the assessment is hidden from other students. An exception overrides the two settings applied to everyone else for that specific assessment only. Students don't see the exceptions you've added. You might use exceptions for students who have internet issues, disabilities, or technology and language differences.

Timed Assessments in the Ultra Course View

You can add a timer to assessments to help keep students on track and focused. You can only add a time limit before students begin an attempt.

Get Easy with Inline Grading in the Ultra Course View

If allowed by your institution, you can annotate and grade student files directly within the browser. On the assignment submission page, supported file types open in the browser. This tutorial shows you how to annotate an assignment submission, assign and post a grade, and download the original submission.

Streamline Grading in Blackboard Learn

See how streamlined grading in the new Blackboard helps remove interface barriers, allowing instructors to focus on student performance, not the interface. One simple click tells instructors who has submitted, who is late, and what has been graded.

Create Rubrics in the Ultra Course View

A rubric is a scoring tool that you can use to evaluate graded work. When you create a rubric, you divide the assigned work into parts. You can provide clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each part, at varying levels of skill. Students can use a rubric to organize their efforts to meet the requirements of the graded work. When you allow students access to rubrics before they complete their work, you provide transparency into your grading methods.

Associate Rubrics in the Ultra Course View

You can associate an existing rubric to an assignment or test unless you've already graded the assessment. You may associate only one rubric to each assessment.

Grant Student Accommodations in the Ultra Course View

You can set accommodations for individual students. You can exempt students from assessment due dates or time limits. Use accommodations to help students progress in the course even though they may have difficulty with some requirements.

Track Students' Performance in BB Ultra

Holding every student accountable and identifying individuals who are falling behind is made easier in the Blackboard Learn with the Ultra experience. Monitor student progress through the activity panel to to keep students engaged throughout the entire activity.

Gradebook Overview in the Ultra Course View

See what you need to grade in all your courses, or drill right into a course and get started. From the base navigation, you have immediate access to all your courses' grading tasks on the global grades page. You can quickly scan everything you need to grade without navigating to each course. Within your course, you can access the course gradebook on the navigation bar. Wherever you start your grading process, everything you need is just a click away.

Feedback Recording in Blackboard Learn with the Ultra Course View

The Create Recording feature leverages native web browser support for the WebRTC standard to create audio and video recordings directly from the browser without plug-ins or additional software. An instructor or grader can create personalized feedback recordings for individual assessment attempts or manual gradebook items.

Inline Grading in the Ultra Course View

If allowed by your institution, you can annotate and grade student files directly within the browser. On the assignment submission page, supported file types open in the browser. This tutorial shows you how to annotate an assignment submission, assign and post a grade, and download the annotated submission.

Parallel Grading Overview in the Ultra Course View

You can have specific users in your courses grade sets of assessment submissions. Graders can't see other graders' grades, feedback, annotations on student files, and rubrics. They grade in parallel and provide provisional grades. The instructor role is the default final grader or reconciler. The reconciler reviews the provisional grades and determines the final grades that students see. You can assign the ability to reconcile grades to one or more other users with grading privileges and remove your ability to reconcile.

Download Assessment Submissions in the Ultra Course View

From the gradebook, you can download files and text students add to their assessment submissions and review them offline. 

Grade Using a Rubric in the Ultra Course View

After you create a rubric and associate it with an assessment or discussion, you can use it for grading.