News: Spring 2026
News: Spring 2026
Embedded Files
Upcoming Opportunities to Build your Skills
Upcoming Opportunities to Build your Skills
Blackboard Ultra Workshops: Spring 2026
Quality Matters: Join the April "Improving your Online Course" (IYOC) Workshop! This workshop is being offered via Zoom on Monday and Wednesday, April 6 & 8 from 10 am to 2 pm each day. Quality Matters (QM) is a nationally recognized program designed to help you reflect on and improve your online course. Grounded in research and guided by best practices, this program has been invaluable to faculty in a wide range of disciplines. The Improving Your Online Course workshop explores the 7th edition of the QM Rubric and provides a framework to improve the quality of online courses. Participants use the QM Rubric to review one of their own online courses and develop a course improvement plan. Some faculty take this workshop multiple times focusing on different courses. Please register for the April IYOC. Facilitated by Jenna Creech & Katie Walker.
Asynchronous/Online Training
Asynchronous/Online Training
UAA Faculty Success training courses
Video training resources for faculty and staff
UAA Teaching Academy recordings organized into playlists: Teaching Academy Kaltura Channel
UAA Faculty Success playlists (Accessibility, Blackboard, and more): UAA Instructional Design - YouTube
UAA Disability Support Services videos: DSS YouTube Channel
Blackboard playlist: Instructors: Blackboard Ultra
Blackboard Ultra News
Blackboard Ultra News
New Help site: Links from the old Blackboard help pages are not redirecting to the correct new Blackboard Ultra help pages in many cases. Be sure to check any Blackboard help links that you provide to students. When you use Blackboard Instructor help, be sure to notice if it takes you to help for the Blackboard mobile app which differs from the browser-based Blackboard that instructors primarily use. Go to New Blackboard Ultra Student Help and New Blackboard Ultra Instructor Help .
Limited Time Blackboard hotline: UAA faculty working in Ultra this semester can get 24/7 assistance from a Blackboard help desk. Call 1-844-784-7817 for information and live assistance. If your issue is broader than the help desk technician can resolve, they’ll schedule a longer web conference consultation session with a Blackboard specialist. This service end date is March 29.
Learning Tools Interoperability or LTI is a common way to connect publisher content to Blackboard courses. For new integrations, submit an IT ticket at the same time as you adopt textbooks. UAA IT needs as much lead time as possible. (Tip: IT is more likely to approve the request if it will be used by multiple faculty.) In some cases, IT can't integrate the tool and faculty will have to create a link for students to go outside of Blackboard to access the publisher content and faculty will have to manually create grade center columns and enter scores. Note: UAA core tools are already integrated into Blackboard Ultra under Content Market and/or Books and Tools.
Reminders
Reminders
Student End-of-Course Survey: The College of Health will continue to use the College of Engineering survey tool for student end-of-course evaluations instead of Qualtrics. I encourage you to create a short mid-semester student survey using a Blackboard form, Google Form, or Qualtrics.
UAA's Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) policy requires faculty to clearly explain how RSI is met within each online "no set time" course. Your syllabus should clearly state that the course has no set meeting times and explain how you will provide regular and substantive interaction with students. Go to the RSI page of this site for examples and to learn more. The COH compliance office checks all syllabi for an RSI statement (and student learning outcomes).
Take advantage of our amazing resources and staff at the UAA/APU Consortium Library. See their Services for Faculty & Staff page and reach out for more information. Note that linking to library resources instead of uploading PDF files to Blackboard will often be more accessible.
UAOnline continues to be updated. Visit the UAOnline Updates site for information and watch this video for how to enter final grades.
If you have weird issues in Chrome or Firefox, clear your browser cache (Chrome and Firefox).
Read about file storage options at UAA. This article will walk you through how to Free up Storage Space Google Workspace.
Review these University of Alaska Artificial Intelligence resources, then scroll down this page for more AI resources
Accessibility of Course Content
Accessibility of Course Content
Course content in Blackboard must be accessible. Work on accessibility from the start, not as an afterthought. Your skills will continually improve, making the work easier. It is easy to get overwhelmed so think in terms of continuous improvement. Review COH Accessibility Training to learn how.
How do you know if content is accessible? Use accessibility checker tools like Foxit, Word, PowerPoint, and Ally to help you determine if content is accessible. You can use Ally Accessibility Course Reports in Blackboard to help you find and prioritize needed changes. (To find the Ally Course Report: Go to your Blackboard Ultra course, click Books and Tools, Accessibility Report. ) These tools provide a helpful first step but they are not perfect. Some content needs to be checked manually (see the COH Accessibility Checklist). Be sure that there is more than one way for students to get the information (e.g., podcast with transcript, label content with text and color, provide an accurate description for visuals).
Kaltura is UA's media server. I recommend uploading the videos you make to Kaltura to make them accessible. Access Kaltura from Blackboard Tools outside a course (UAA Kaltura - My Media) or go to UA Mediaspace. To add a Kaltura video to a Blackboard course, use Content Market UAA Kaltura - Browse, Search, Embed. To add a course media gallery, you can find UAA Kaltura - Course Media Gallery on the right side of a Blackboard course in Books and Tools or in the Content Market (click the + to add the media gallery to the course but note that the location of the link in your course will vary depending on which way you do it).
Remember that your Zoom recordings automatically go into your Kaltura account.
Learn more about Kaltura at UAA and Creating Videos.
You can now work on the accessibility of Kaltura videos from within Blackboard.
UA Grackle Docs is used to check accessibility of Google Docs, Slides, etc. See Accessibility @ UAA: Grackle Docs (video).
Accessibility is more than compliance; it is good teaching. Accessible courses have higher student engagement and increased student retention.
Image generated using Google Gemini from the prompt "create an image of a college student interacting with an AI bot on a laptop"
Artificial Intelligence Resources
Artificial Intelligence Resources
It is important to discuss acceptable use of generative AI with your students. Note that Google Gemini and Microsoft Co-Pilot are recommended because they do not share our data if we log in with our UAA credentials.
UAA Guidance
AI in Blackboard
AI Design Assistant can provide a starting point for faculty. These AI tools are most helpful when faculty add detailed descriptions and select course items from their content. AI features in Blackboard Ultra are built on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service
Other AI Resources
AI Role Play (activities for students)
Prof. Ethan Mollick's One Useful Thing blog
Leon Furze: Teaching AI Ethics
Professional Development
Professional Development
Professional Development
Professional Development
UAA Faculty Success Office: Events, Teaching Resources, Learning Technologies, etc.
Upcoming and on-demand webinars from Anthology/Blackboard
Google Workspace: Learn by Product (Gmail, Calendar, Google Drive, Google Docs, etc.)
Microsoft 365 Training (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Copilot, etc.)
Foxit PDF Editor Tutorials (UA's Foxit PDF Editor is equivalent to Adobe Acrobat Pro)
Photo by Anna Shvets https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-writing-on-whiteboard-3727512/
Quality Matters
Quality Matters
Quality Matters provides standards for online course design and professional development to support your course design efforts. Ask me for a copy of the 7th edition rubric workbook. Here is a list of the revised course design standards.
You can log into MyQM to create a QM account and start a self-review and more. (Please do not register for professional development that has an associated cost without first consulting with me.)
You can complete a self-review of one of your own courses. I recommend that you start with just the essential (3 point) standards. (Self-reviews are private to you.)
Sign in to MyQM at https://www.qmprogram.org/myqm/
Select the “Higher Education” tab
Select the CRMS icon
Select the Start a Self-Review link
Enter the title of the course you are going to review
Select the Save Self-Review button
To edit the review, select the Edit Review link
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