Blackboard Ultra provides a modern, intuitive and personalised user experience characterised by simplified workflows and an accessible, fully responsive design, giving students the same experience whether they view and engage with Blackboard Ultra sites on a mobile device, laptop or desktop computer.
Blackboard Ultra is a whole new interface and looks and feels quite different to classic Blackboard sites that you are used to, but many features such as announcements, discussions, groups,active release and more still exist in Blackboard Ultra. Most differences are cosmetic, and some tools and types of content will be located indifferent places.
This video guides you through the Ultra interface, introducing key features and pointing out differences from classic Blackboard sites.
Ultra Blackboard sites are accessed in the same way as you currently access Classic Module or organisation sites from the Modules or Organisations page after logging into Blackboard. On opening an Ultra site, you will immediately notice that there is no site menu or module homepage like you see in a classic Blackboard site.
There are three areas on an Ultra site. A single scrollable content page where all learning materials, assessments, and other activities are added.
The top navigation bar where you can open frequently used tools. The different tools allow you to post announcements or send messages, access the grade book, create and respond to class discussions, manage groups, and return to the content page. Students can see most of these too. Only Analytics is just for staff.
The Details and Actions menu for managing your site. Here you will find options to see everyone enrolled on your site in the class. Register to enable progress tracking. To track student progress on content and activities. To add visual elements such as a site banner via module image, open or make private your module site to students. Access key tools such as the Staff Enrollment Tool and your site's accessibility report via My Tools, and Create and Manage pools of questions that you can reuse in multiple assessments in question banks.
Let's focus on the module content page. All Blackboard Ultra Module sites are created with a standard template to help you structure your content and to provide a consistent user experience.Items can be added directly into the content page wherever you see the purple add icon.
All items can be organised into folders, all learning modules including those within the standard template.So if I click on the purple add icon,click Create, the options are Learning Module, folder, Document Link, a test and assignment, and also a discussion and journal.
Learning modules, like folders, are containers for organised collections of content. Unlike folders, Learning modules can provide an immersive learning experience for structuring weekly learning materials and activities.
You can allow students to explore the content in a learning module in any order and at their own pace. Or you can force students to access learning materials in a specified order, walking learners through a guided path.
Optionally, you can turn on tracking to display a summary of a student's progress within each learning module. Meaningful thumbnail images can be added to Learning modules to add visual identity to your content page.
In this Learning module we have 3 ultra documents, a discussion, a link to an external website and also a test. It's important to note that the depth of folder levels and learning modules is limited to two folders in Blackboard Ultra. This is to support and encourage a more organised and accessible approach to content management so that sites are easier to navigate for students.
Blackboard Ultra gives you the ability to create rich documents. You can create a document using a combination of visual or textual elements. A document can be as simple as a single line of text or a combination of elements. For example, as a single document, you can include introductory text for a lesson, an image for your students to interact with, and legs, links to web resources, and also PowerPoints that you can preview on the page itself.
You can also allow class conversations, which are discussions attached to a specific content item or assessment.
When it comes to embedding a Panopto video or setting up Pebble Pad, you need to use the Integrated Tools option where you will find these plus other third party tools in Blackboard Ultra TurnItIn is embedded with Blackboard assignments, so students only need to submit once to Blackboard in order for Turn It in Similarity report to be generated.
To turn on Turn It In, click on your assignment where it says Enable TurnItIn under Originality report, click that, then toggle the button that says Enable Turn it in. It takes a few seconds for the integration to load.Select this correct settings that you want and then click Save.
Copying content to your ultra site has been made easier with an improved site copying tool which is explained in another short video.
There is also a site search function whereby entering keywords you can quickly find content and other materials.
