8/28/23 - Email to Faculty Using Ultra

8/28/2023 - Email to Faculty Who are Using the Ultra Interface in One or More Courses 

Hello,

I hope the first two weeks of the semester have been enjoyable.*

I can see that you are teaching or have at least looked at your course site in the Ultra interface.  *

I have been using Ultra for two years and find Ultra is intuitive, and the students seem to like it, but it is different. There are places where you can make things work, but there might be a more efficient way to manage.

Things that I have found:

• The group tools are fantastic. With very few clicks, I can group my students for discussions. In the gradebook, when I grade, I toggle between groups. The group tool is so much better than original, where a column was added to the gradebook for each group.

• With progress tracking, I can see what content a student has viewed at a glance. This is helpful when talking to students about how they are performing.

• Students like to access content from the course calendar. Using due dates is helpful. Keeping all directions and links to resources in the assignment, quiz, discussion, and journal directions is helpful.

• There are three views of the gradebook, and they are all helpful.

• In the overall grade, The best gradebook display for a points-based gradebook is points. It is possible to create calculated columns to display letter grades and the current percentage.

• If you use the override filed rather than the attempt grade, the submissions show it still needs to be graded (annoying).

• Creating custom grade schemes helps me communicate with students.

• Setting my notifications to Send email right away and deselecting every item helps me only get a notification when messages are sent

• Using learning modules as your top level folder is really nice now that you can add images.

My proficiency with Ultra increased by talking to other people.

If you feel like a review of your course setup is in order, you might contact an instructional designer to discuss it.  They love seeing how people use this new interface and are happy to spend 30 minutes reviewing it."*

Please contact either:

Lee Anne Morris, lee.anner.morris@tulsacc.edu or Christal Strickland, christal.strickland@tulsacc.edu directly if you would like to talk about how you class is going in Ultra.

I hope the new interface is working for you and appreciate any feedback you might have.

Jennifer

Jennifer Campbell, Ph.D.
GKFF Endowed Chair for Online Learning
Professor of Health Sciences
Tulsa Community College
918-595-7018

About Instructor Choice view

New Blackboard courses for Fall 2023 will automatically be added in Instructor Choice view. That means you will be able to choose whether to continue using Blackboard Original for your course or change it to Ultra to preview it. Don't worry--if you don't like Ultra, you can change it back! You can learn about Instructor Choice view in our Knowledge Base article "Using Instructor Choice view to preview Ultra."