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March 5, 2020 (v3800.4)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calculated formula question type | Calculated Formula questions require students to make a calculation and respond with a numeric answer. In Ultra Course View only, instructors can choose whether to display the formula to students with the text. Instructors can then adjust the answer settings and verify the question. Instructors can convert Calculated Formula questions from their Original courses or add new ones within the Ultra Course View. | Yes | Yes | TBD |
| Discussion improvements when converting Original to Ultra | With this release, a graded discussion in an Original course that allows members to create threads will convert to a Graded Ultra discussion and all of its seed child threads and replies will be removed. A graded discussion in an Original course that doesn't allow members to create threads will keep the current behavior. Group boards, forums, and threads won't be converted. | Yes | Yes | TBD |
| Word count | Blackboard added a word count to the text editor when instructors create Documents and students respond to Assessment essay questions in the Ultra Course View. This feature will help students meet minimum word count requirements their instructors may have communicated. Future enhancements will add the word count feature in other areas of Learn Ultra, including instructor grading workflows. | Yes | Yes | N/A |
| Read-only messages for students | Course Messages can be set to read-only in both Original and Ultra courses. As this is a system admin setting, DoIT will solicit feedback from Ultra Faculty Ambassadors and the campus community before adjusting the configuration. | Yes | Yes | N/A |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
- The menu option for adding YouTube content to an Ultra course is clarified. Previously, the menu said Insert Web Content, but now it will say Insert youTube Video.
Blackboard added text to the Matching question creation workflow to direct instructors to delete the default additional answer field before saving if it's not needed. They also removed the student-facing text that suggested answers may be used more than once.
- The CourseID will now appear with the Course Name on the Courses page, in the Calendar, and when copying content. This will help faculty more easily identify the course shells they access.
- When creating content in Ultra courses, all options will be open by default. Prior to this release, only the content items would be visible, which meant you would need to expand assessment or engagement to create those items. Now you will be able to see all options at one time.
- Changing the tile image on the Courses page is now part of the overflow menu with making courses available or hiding courses.
- Blackboard changed the way students are sorted in Ultra gradebook views for calculated columns and overall grade. Students now sort by last name throughout the gradebook.
- Blackboard increased the length of the course name in tile view on the Courses page. Unless the course name is exceptionally long, users should see the full course name.
- Original Course View received right-to-left language support. Future enhancements will bring right-to-left language support to Ultra.
- In this release, students won't see overdue notifications for Ultra Assessments that use the Collect Submissions Offline setting.
February 6, 2020 (v3800.2)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Groups Enhancement | Blackboard enhanced self-enrollment for student groups, allowing students change self-enrollment groups themselves within the instructor-specified enrollment period. Blackboard also replaced the Number of groups drop-down menu with a counter for instructors to streamline the workflow and reduce confusion. | Yes | Yes | |
| Ally Enhancement | Students and instructors can access Ally’s alternative formats for content directly in the Ultra course outline. Instructors can view Ally’s accessibility meters on the course outline and in Ultra Assessments for content embedded in the rich text editor. | Yes | Yes | About Ally & Accessibility |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
- Discussion board spacing is fixed to improve the readability of posts.
- Links to Blackboard’s Privacy statement and Terms of Use now appear at the bottom of the global navigation bar in the Ultra Experience.
- Disabled students are removed from the Participants list in discussions
- With this release, Blackboard will remember instructors’ preferences for the Show attempts that don't contribute to user's grade filter on the Needs Grading page in the Original Course View. By default, the checkbox is unselected and student attempts that don’t affect grades won’t show on the Needs Grading list.
In the Ultra Course View, students could change their self-enrollment group after they had been assigned a grade for a Discussion. Blackboard fixed the issue.
- Student Group feedback will not display for individual students in Offline Submissions.
- Assessments requiring conditional availability based on the grade of another assessment will now display properly.
- Blackboard fixed an issue where some users couldn't view inline or download files attached to essay questions in Ultra courses if the file names had certain special characters.
- Users should also be able to view and download files with New Box View in Ultra courses.
- Finally, Ultra assignments submitted through SafeAssign should no longer get stuck in the In Progress status.
There was no update in January 2020 due to the holidays.
December 18, 2019 (v3700.16)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assignment connections to Group Sets | In previous versions of Ultra, faculty had to create the discussion, test or assignment first before they could create the groups. With this release, instructors can create groups first and then attach them to course activities. NOTE: Group Sets still do not have a bulk student enrollment option. Self-enroll is not available for Group Sets. | Yes | Yes | TBD |
| Reassigning students in Groups | This updates allows faculty to assign or reassign students in groups. If a student joins a course late or needs to switch groups, the instructor can place the student in a group or move the student to a different group. | Yes | Yes | TBD |
| Zero point assignments | Zero point assignments will be available: Currently, when you set an assignment to zero, Ultra will reset the points to 100.
| Yes | Yes | TBD |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
In previous versions, the prompt for Multiple Choice questions differed from that of Multiple Answer questions. This difference offered an unintentional clue to students when a question had more than one correct answer. Based on feedback from the community, Blackboard made the prompt consistent across Multiple Choice and Multiple Answer question types.
Blackboard fixed an issue where the Content Editor didn't load correctly for some users.
Some users got an error message when they downloaded student submissions in certain file formats. Blackboard also fixed this issue.
- Students and instructors using the Ultra Course View couldn’t download file submissions. Blackboard fixed this issue.
- Blackboard fixed an issue that appeared in Ultra courses when an instructor graded one assignment and moved on to the next, the first assignment displayed again instead of the next one.
- Instructors can now copy more than 50 questions into a new test in the Ultra courses.
Blackboard fixed an issue where some users got an error message when they downloaded student submissions in certain file formats.
November 7, 2019 (v3700.14)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ally indicators | Ally alternative formats and instructor accessibility scores are available for embedded files and images in documents, tests, and assignments in Ultra courses. | Yes | Yes | |
| Iconography | The new icons are darker and appear more prominently now. | Yes | N/A | N/A |
| Notifications | Ultra administrators can change notifications at the system level, configure digest functionality, and set up default notification settings. DoIT will evaluate the new notification settings to identify the most effective configuration for users. | Yes | Yes | N/A |
| Document description | Ultra Documents now have a description field that will appear on the Course Content page, which allows instructors to give high-level details about what the Ultra documents contain, reducing unnecessary clicks for students. Descriptions are limited to 250 characters.
| Yes | Yes (as Item) | N/A |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
Blackboard updated Assessment Settings to replace the Done button with Save and Cancel.
- The Batch Edit tool is moved to the overflow menu (...) with Course Copy and other bulk management tools.
- Blackboard removed the learning module when you first log in to an empty template as well as the empty module that appeared on the page.
October 4, 2019 (v3700.11)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bulk download submissions | Instructors can download files from the Ultra gradebook or from the submissions list page with the Download all option. Instructors can then choose whether to download all or select specific submissions. Instructors receive an email and a course message when the ZIP file is ready to download to their computers. | Yes | Yes | |
Decimal point values for assessments | When creating a question in an assessment, instructors can enter values with up to two numbers after the decimal in the Points field. For assessments with no individual questions, the Maximum points field will accept values with up to two numbers after the decimal. | Yes | Yes | N/A |
| Delete copied course attendance data | When instructors prepare a course for an upcoming term, they commonly copy all content, including the gradebook, from the last term’s course. For courses that used the attendance tool, the copied attendance gradebook column was difficult to remove in the Ultra Course View. With this release, instructors can delete attendance gradebook columns added during a course copy from the destination course’s gradebook. Instructors can delete copied attendance columns from the gradebook menu. The attendance column that is correctly associated with the course can be deleted if all students’ attendance records are removed first. | Yes | Yes | Review Blackboard's documentation |
| Regrade questions in question pools | This release allows instructors to regrade individual questions within a question pool in Ultra. Questions within pools can be regraded from a student’s submission using the same options available for questions not within a pool. Instructors can also regrade from the assessment panel after selecting View questions in a question pool. When regrading, a message informs the instructor if a question is used in other course assessments. Question updates made while regrading affect all instances of that question in the course. | Yes | Yes | Review Blackboard's documentation |
| Select / clear all questions for question pools | When adding questions to a question pool, instructors need to be able to select large groups of questions quickly and efficiently. As instructors create question pools for their Ultra assessments, the options to Select all and Clear all question choices now appear on the Add Question Pool page. | Yes | Yes | N/A |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
BUG FIXES: These issues were corrected with this update.
Images Inserted into Fill in the Blank Questions in Ultra do not Display Inline for Students
Use of an Apostrophe in a File Name Creating Issues
Ultra Rubric Details Text Overlapped by Percentage
UItra View Documents do not Save if Window is Closed During Initial Creation
Show More Upcoming Activity in Activity Stream does not Work
TA Role has Announcement Link Grayed out if There are no Announcement in Ultra Course
Content Created in Ultra Courses is Added at the Top Regardless of Where the Plus Sign is Selected
September 5, 2019 (v3700.9)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-Enrolled Groups | Instructors can create self-enrollment groups for students to join to complete group assignments and discussions. Instructors choose the number of groups, can set the maximum members per group, and may allow students to view other members of the groups before they choose a group. | Yes | Yes | Review Blackboard's documentation or UMBC's FAQs |
| Needs Grading filter | On an item's Submissions page in the Ultra gradebook, instructors can use the new Filter menu to display only those submissions that need grading. At this time, instructors can filter by All statuses and Needs grading. Note: Group and discussion items do not yet appear in the Needs Grading filter. | Yes | Yes | N/A |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
- Bb Collaborate will be visible in Ultra courses by default, allowing instructors to pre-schedule Collaborate sessions in their Ultra courses any time – even when the course isn't available to students.
August 8, 2019 (v3700.7)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question pools & random sets | To help build assessments quickly and encourage academic integrity, instructors can now create question pools in the Ultra Course View. With question pools, students receive different sets of questions to answer. Instructors can add questions from all existing tests, assignments, and question banks in their courses. In the Ultra Course View, question pools replace the Original Course View's random blocks and question sets. Instructors can create as many question pools as they want and add, edit, and remove questions in the pools. Edits appear anywhere questions are used. | Yes | Yes | |
| Show/hide test answers | In Ultra assessments, instructors can decide if students see the answers to questions that were answered incorrectly. For example, instructors may want students to see which questions they missed on a multiple attempt assessment, but don’t want to show the correct answers. Instructors may also hide answers until all students complete their submissions. | Yes | Yes | Review Blackboard's documentation |
| Ultra organizations | New organizations may be created with the Ultra interface. Existing orgs can be converted to Ultra. | Yes | Yes | N/A |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
- Intermittent loading in Activity Stream on Ultra base navigation (dashboard).
- Assignments submitted by Students are properly rendered in the New Box View for inline grading.
BUG FIXES: These issues were corrected with this update.- Ultra Discussion containing video content from LTI deep link doesn't show the entire video preview - it forces it to be scrollable.
- When accessing Discussion Analysis in an Ultra Course, Analysis shows as pending for all Users.
- Discussion Board post counter is not showing all of a User's posts.
- Cannot view Student attempts for Assessments after submission when the Student is using a different Language Pack than the Instructor.
- When grading an attempt for an Assessment, clicking the oval Rubric button leads to an error message.
- In Essay Questions of a Test, the Points/Save Answer box covers part of the Question Text on lower Screen Resolutions.
July 11, 2019 (v3700.5)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Suite Integration | Users will be to access their UMBC Google storage from within their profile, from the Tools page, or from an Ultra course. | Yes | No |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
- To ensure privacy, only instructor names—not instructor usernames—appear to students throughout the Ultra experience.
BUG FIXES: These issues were corrected with this update.- Tests with exceptions will appear properly to students.
- Rubrics for group assignments in Ultra courses will now be visible to students.
- Disabled students will not appear in group assignments.
- Content items within iFrames should appear properly to students.
- When grading an Item for more than 25 Students, the grades from the second page will no longer show up on the first page.
June 7, 2019 (v3700.3)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parallel Marking | For higher stakes assessments, a double marking process is sometimes used in which each student’s submission is evaluated by two graders and a final grader reviews those evaluations to make the final decision on a student’s grade. This approach intends to reduce bias and is often paired with student anonymity. When setting up an assignment in the Ultra Course View, instructors can enable parallel grading and select non-student course members to act as graders and reconcilers. Instructors can also hide student names to prevent unintended bias. This feature is known as Delegated Grading in an Original course. | Yes | Already exists | |
| Import external calendar to Blackboard | Instructors and students often use calendars to organize and keep track of events. Access to a course calendar is crucial to meeting deadlines and overall success. Having access to all events – both personal and academic – in one place helps keep everyone on track. In this release, users can synchronize external calendars with Blackboard Learn, building on the previously released capabilities. | Yes | Yes | TBD or UMBC's FAQ |
| Display course banner on Courses page | A new enhancement to the Courses page provides users with an option to view courses in list or grid mode. Stock images randomly display for each course card when grid mode is active. The banner image can be replaced by faculty who would prefer to personalize the course visual. Original courses with existing banners will find those images are preloaded on the Courses page. The banner images uploaded through the Courses page will NOT pass over to the course regardless of whether it is Original or Ultra. | Yes | Yes | TBD or UMBC's FAQ |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
- Previously, the Courses page in the Ultra experience listed a user's oldest courses first. The order has been flipped and now the newest courses are listed first. If a user designates any courses as favorites, those courses still appear first in the list.
- The pages for Courses and Organizations are now available in list and grid mode. Instructors/leaders can personalize the banner image that displays with the grid card or use a stock image provided by Blackboard. The banner does not display in the course. Learn more: How do I customize my banner image on the Courses or Organizations page?
BUG FIXES: These issues were corrected with this update.- When a student submit multiple attempts on a test in quick succession, the system's responsiveness will no longer slow or stop.
- Ultra courses with longer names will no longer appear with unexpected symbols.
May 2, 2019 (v3700.0)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Student preview | Instructors want to be confident that their courses are well-designed and function as intended—before their students see them. Instructors can use student preview to review the course content. They can also validate the course behaviors, such as those that control course content availability or require a particular interaction from the students to be triggered. With student preview, instructors can experience their courses exactly as their students do. Start student preview from anywhere within an Ultra course. The preview creates user in your course that you can use to view everything as a student would. | Yes | Already exists | |
| Question banks | With this release, instructors can now directly import question banks, including question pools that have been exported from Original courses and packages of questions that have been purchased from a publisher. These questions are then available for use and reuse across the assessments in that course. As with any conversion from Original to Ultra, question types that are not yet supported are dropped during the processing of the imported file. | Yes | Already exists | |
| Individual feedback on group assignment | In this update, faculty can provide feedback for an entire group and individual feedback for each student. Group feedback is seen by all students in the group while individual feedback is only visible to the instructor and student. | Yes | No | Review Blackboard's documentation |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
The Collaborate link, which previously said Course Room, is now updated to say Blackboard Collaborate on the Details & Action panel of the Ultra Course View.
BUG FIXES: These issues were corrected with this update.
Students will be able to download assignment annotations without error.
The Math editor in Original courses should no longer display broken images to equations.
April 4, 2019 (v3600.0)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Share Bb calendar with external services | In this release, users can synchronize their Blackboard Learn Ultra calendars to external calendars. Generate a URL to share course calendar details with an external service. Share the URL only with trusted sources. When you connect your Blackboard Learn calendar to an external calendar, all course events appear one year in the past and into the future. | Yes | Yes | Review Blackboard's documentation |
| Third-party information on Activity Stream | With this release, the Activity Stream more accurately reports on third-party content to keep everyone more up to date. Specifically, LTI and manual grade column notifications will update in the Activity Stream when:
| Yes | Yes | Review Blackboard's documentation |
| Course Facilitator Role | New Facilitator role for courses, which contains a set of default privileges regarding course calendar, discussions, gradebook, announcements, materials, and groups. Course members can be granted this role to help maintain the pace of the course throughout the term or as needed. This release also includes two new granular privileges to grant a user the ability to create or delete a discussion in the Ultra Course View. | Yes | Yes | Review UMBC's documentation |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
In this release, you’ll notice a redesigned create content menu when you click on the purple (x) to accommodate additional upcoming options in course content, gradebook, discussions, and documents.
Users who subscribe to email notifications will notice Blackboard updated the message format. The Blackboard branding is smaller and the format is optimized for better appearance on more devices and email clients.
Users can receive push notifications when someone responds to their discussion in an Ultra course, someone replies to their posts, an instructor creates a new discussion, or when participation deadlines are approaching.
BUG FIXES: This issue was corrected in this update.
Renaming a course menu link in an Original course will no longer throw an error message.
March 7, 2019 (v3500.11)
Feature | About | Ultra Course | Original Course | To Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assessment exceptions | Instructors can now grant individual students additional time to access an assessment, even if it is hidden to other students. Additional attempts may also be configured, again for an individual student on an individual assessment. In the future, Blackboard plans to introduce due date exceptions so that students who are granted extended access will not be marked late for submissions made after the original due date. | Yes | Already exists | |
| Regrade questions | With this release, test questions can be edited in one place. These edits, along with any score adjustments, are automatically performed for all submissions that contain the updated question. | Yes | Yes | Review Blackboard's documentation |
Enhanced discussion analytics | To better inform grading and provide additional insight in to the level of engagement in graded discussions, Blackboard added three new metrics to the Discussion Analysis area of the Ultra Course View. In addition to sentence complexity, critical thinking, and counts of responses and replies, graders can view statistics for the number of substantive posts, lexical classification (counts of content and functional words), and the percentage of word variation in a student’s posts for a given discussion. | Yes | No | Review Blackboard's documentation |
| Granular notification settings for Activity Stream | In this release, Activity Stream notification settings are more granular for students and instructors, giving them the option to choose which information they wish to receive. Settings have been reformatted so users can select to receive all notifications at a high level, like notifications for new discussions. Users can also choose to see updates about specific events or activity in their Activity Streams. For example, an instructor can choose to be notified when a blog entry is edited. Existing settings are carried over and saved in the new format. Visual cues display if all, some, or none of the notification types are selected. | Yes | No | Review Blackboard's documentation |
| Granular user privileges for course announcements and calendar | Announcements: Individuals with these privileges can create course announcements in both course views. Additional entitlements allow users to view draft announcements in addition to posted announcements. Calendar: Individuals with these privileges can add, edit, and delete course calendar events in both course views. In the Ultra Course View, individuals with these privileges can also add, edit, and delete office hours and course schedules. Use Case: Faculty who have students working with the Supplemental Instruction-Peer Assisted Study Sessions (SI-PASS) program may request a custom role for those students, allowing them to post announcements while maintaining student privileges in all other parts of the course. | Yes | Yes | Review UMBC's documentation |
Miscellaneous Updates & Fixes:
- A word count appears when drafting responses and replies in discussions in the Ultra Course View.
- Instructors can now rename an LTI link from the gradebook in the Ultra Course View.
- Unenrolled users can view announcements in unavailable courses.
BUG FIXES: These issues were corrected with this update.
- The Messages page in the Ultra Course View is now responsive for users on mobile devices.
- When copying an Ultra course using SIS, the new course duration was overwritten by the source course. Bb fixed the issue by excluding a duration on the course copy.
- Group submissions in the Ultra Course View now appear consistently in the gradebook.
- Instructors may have received an error message when saving course reports to the Content Collection. Bb fixed the issue.
- A synchronization issue caused unexpected behavior in custom language packs. Bb fixed the issue.
- Course messages with attachments sometimes resulted in an error message asking the user to contact their system administrator. Bb fixed the issue.
- Users may have received an error message when attempting to connect to OneDrive for Business through Blackboard Learn. The vendor has fixed the issue.
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