One of the major advantages of Ultra is that it is receiving constant updates, and this summer was no exception. This article will give you the highlights of the changes in Ultra over the summer, and those coming in September so that you can take advantage of them in your classes. There are a lot of changes, so refer to the table of contents below for full information.

Currently in Scholar

These changes are available NOW. You should see them in your courses.

Course Message Replies Now go to E-mail

Previously, when you sent a course message to students and they attempted to reply to the e-mail that the course messages generate, the replies would go to ITS. As such, we historically have recommended that you not use the Course Messages tool.

Now, student e-mail replies to your Course Messages will go to your e-mail. Therefore, you can now use Course Messages without any problems.

Assignments Now Different from Tests

Until this summer Assignments and Tests functioned identically on Ultra courses. Now, Blackboard has begun the process of making Assignments and Tests work differently. Whether you choose Assignment or Test as the tool when creating the item is determined by what you want students to do; you can call either a test or an assignment a test, quiz or anything else you want:

• Assignments are used when you want students to submit a file.

• Tests are used when you want to create a list of questions for students to respond to.

As a first step, the Assignment creation interface has been simplified. Instead of asking you to create questions, Assignments simply have an “Instructions” text area for you to enter in instructions, attach documents, or anything else that you need to communicate with the students.

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Students will be able to click a button to view the instructions. This will not count as starting the attempt for purposes of display in the Gradebook.

Additionally, you’ll notice that a lot of the settings that involve questions have been removed from the assignment settings.

Stay tuned for additional improvements to Assignments as Blackboard continues to separate assignments and tests.

New Ultra Document Tool

The Ultra Document tool (the tool that allows you to add content for the students in your course) has been greatly expanded. You now have several options of content blocks.

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• Content will open up the standard content editor box.

• File upload will allow you to add a document or picture from your computer

• Don’t use Cloud upload or Content Collection; they really don’t apply to our setup.

• Convert a file changes a Word or PowerPoint document that you upload into an Ultra document that’s editable on Blackboard.

Now, content blocks don’t have to go completely across the page. The page is now divided up into four columns, and you can control how many columns a content block takes up with the arrows at the side.

This allows you to have things next to each other instead of above one another.

You can add more content blocks by clicking the plus sign at the top right.

As with Assignments, there is a lot being added to Ultra Documents in the next few months. Watch your e-mail for additional changes.

Multiple Rules in Release Conditions

Previously, when you used Release Conditions, you could only have one possible set of criteria that determined if students could see the content. This can be problematic if you need to set up multiple sets of criteria, for example, if a test needs to display at different times for different sections.

Now, you can set up multiple rules for an item, giving different possible sets of criteria that would allow students to access that piece of content. Once you’ve set up your first rule (or set of criteria), you’ll see it on the left side of the Release Conditions panel.

You can add a second rule by clicking on “Add new rule.”

To keep track of your rules, you can click the pencil to give it a name.

You can edit a rule by clicking on it on the left side and changing the criteria. To completely delete a rule, click the three dots next to the rule name and choose Delete.

This article won’t cover setting up an individual rule; you can view our help article for Document/Test/Assignment Visibility for full information on that.

Minor Gradebook Changes

There are two minor changes to the Gradebook. The first is a small reorganization of the tabs on the top. Instead of two different controls, they’ve been combined in to one set of three tabs.

• Gradable Items is a list of everything in your course that receives a grade. Clicking on any of those items will take you to the Submissions page for that item.

• Grades is a grid of students and item grades, similar to what you’d see if you made your gradebook in Excel or if you used the Grade Center in Original courses.

• Students will display a list of all of the students in your classes and their overall grades. Clicking on a student’s name will take you to a list of that student’s grades.

The other change is that in the grading view for tests and assignments, you will now be able to page through students with “Previous Student” and “Next Student” buttons.

Changes Coming in September

UPDATE 9/6/2024: Anthology has delayed this update. More information will be added here as we receive it.

September promises to be an exciting month for updates to Ultra courses. You’ll notice an updated look-and-feel to courses, knowledge check questions in Ultra Documents, a new Needs Grading indicator, and the rollout of the Ally accessibility tools. These tools will be available by September 6th.

New Look for Scholar Courses

You may notice a new look for Scholar courses. Functionality hasn’t substantially changed, but things have moved around a bit to increase the visibility and functionality of courses.

The thing that you’ll probably notice first is that the menu has moved to the right side of the page.

This is mainly done because on screens too small to show both columns, the items on the left display first. If you’re using a mobile device, you’ll probably need the course content before the menu items, so that’s why they switched.

The plus signs to add new content are also visible at all times in the new look, making it easier to tell where content can be added.

The background color has also changed, making it far more clear where the folders begin and end.

Knowledge Check Questions in Ultra Documents

You can now include one or more “Knowledge Check” questions directly in Ultra Documents. These allow students to quickly see whether they’ve understood the material in the question. You can see overall statistics for the Knowledge Check questions, but currently cannot see individual student answers to questions or use them as a graded item. More features are coming to Knowledge Checks in the near future.

To add a Knowledge Check to an Ultra Document, click on the plus sign at the top left.

Then, choose Knowledge Check.

You’ll be asked to create a Multiple Choice question. For full information on Multiple Choice questions, see our documentation on tests.

You do need to leave feedback that students will receive when they answer correctly or incorrectly.

When students see your document, they will see and answer the questions directly as part of the document.

When they answer a question, they’ll get immediate feedback, and be able to repeat the question until they’ve gotten it correct.

You will see overall statistics for your Knowledge Check, but you won’t see full details on individual student responses.

Gradebook Changes

Next to the Gradebook indicator, you will now see how many items in your course have been submitted and not graded.

You’ll see an exclamation point if everything has been graded but some things haven’t been posted. Your students will see a number if they have grades/feedback that they haven’t looked at.

There is also a new view in your Gradebook, the Overview view. To see it, click Overview.

This view will show you the things that you need to grade and those you need to post.

Detailed Student Activity Log

To allow you to better know how students are interacting with your course, you can now see the full log of a student’s activity within your course. To view the an activity log, go into your course roster.

Select a student, then click on Activity Log.

You can set up a date range to look at on the top, and the student’s activities will display

Keep in mind that the activity log may be 15-30 minutes old.

AI Design Assistant

Blackboard will provide an AI Design Assistant to allow you to use generative AI to do several things in your course:

• Add stock photos (from Unsplash) to your course anywhere you use images

• Generate a Learning Module structure for your course

• Generate suggested assignments or discussion prompts for your course

• Generate test questions.

Keep in mind that AI is imperfect and you should check any generated materials for correctness and bias.

There are a few things to keep in mind as you use the AI Design Assistant:

• Use of the Design Assistant is optional. It will only work if you click on it.

• Students will not see anything indicating content is AI generated.

• Data in your courses will not be used to train an AI model.

For additional information on the AI Design Assistant, attend a training session. The first one can be signed up for here.

Ally Accessibility Tools

Please note that the Ally Accessibility Tools will be available Wednesday, September 11th. Ally provides two tools that make your course more accessible: an accessibility checker that you can view, and a file converter that students can use.

Once Ally is activated, you’ll see a small symbol next to content that indicates how accessible your document is. Students will not see this symbol.

Clicking on the symbol will bring up an Ally report. There, you can see any accessibility concerns found in the document.

Page through the items at the top.

You can’t fix the accessibility issues in the report; you must go into the software that you used to create the content to fix it.

Students will see the Ally File Converter symbol.

Clicking on this gives them a menu of alternative formats that they can access.

You don’t have to do anything to make these alternative formats available to students; Ally will automatically make them available.