Related FAQ - Where is my summer course after the Ultra Experience upgrade?

Blackboard's navigation to courses will be upgraded on Friday, May 25, 2018 beginning at 3 PM EST as part of DoIT’s routine Blackboard maintenance. This upgrade will modernize the overall dashboard with the new Ultra Experience base navigation.

Important: Courses will NOT change in appearance or functionality.

No downtime is expected, but the login page located at blackboard.umbc.edu will be temporarily unavailable while it is also updated by DoIT. Faculty, staff, and students can still log into Blackboard by clicking on the Blackboard icon via myUMBC or going to my.umbc.edu/go/blackboard.

Once the Blackboard upgrade is complete, please clear your Internet browser cache and cookies before logging in using these step-by-step instructions. 

How does the Ultra Experience change Blackboard for faculty & students?

Blackboard will be updated on Friday, January 5, 2018 beginning at 5 PM EST as part of DoIT’s biannual Blackboard update. No downtime is expected: Blackboard should remain online and available, but some tools and services may be slower to respond during this twelve-hour cycle as those backend processes restart across supporting servers.

Prior to the update, Blackboard’s overall look will be refreshed during the holiday break with a new system theme featuring standardized colors, fonts, and spacing for greater consistency between the learning management system, Bb Collaborate, and Blackboard’s mobile apps.

The new theme also provides:

• Support for Mobile Devices - When users log in to Blackboard on a mobile device or tablet, screen elements such as the course menu and control panel compress or change position so they stay visible. As the screen gets smaller, modules and tool tiles stack so you will still have access to everything at your fingertips. 
• Support for Accessibility - The updated theme follows WCAG 2.0 principles and accessibility guidelines for structure, color contrast, and navigation. New ARIA landmarks define the page structure in courses, menus, and content areas to better assist users with screen readers in navigating page elements.

Standardized across the entire Blackboard system and all courses, this theme is also the first step toward the Ultra Experience, which UMBC will begin to explore with a small pilot in SP2018 in partnership with Blackboard.

Two new features will also be available in this release:

• Course Availability Status - An open or closed padlock, located next to the Student Preview icon in the upper right corner of your course, will represent its availability state to students. Instructors can modify the availability of the course with one click within the shell.  
• Chemistry Notations in Content Editor - The math editor will be updated to feature tools specific to chemistry including an embedded periodic table of elements.

Finally, the inline grading tools will be upgraded over the same weekend after the main Blackboard site is updated. The Blackboard update occurring on Friday, January 5, is a requirement before the inline grading tools can transition to the New Box View on Saturday, January 6. Inline grading tools may be unavailable for up to six (6) hours that morning. Faculty will be able to download student submissions during the conversion process, but the inline grading tools within Blackboard will be temporarily unavailable. Please review the FAQs about grading with inline tools during this transition.

In preparation for this downtime:

• Instructors: If you need access to your gradebook during the downtime, please review this FAQ for information on downloading a copy of the Blackboard Grade Center to Excel.

After the Blackboard update is finished, please clear your Internet browser cache and cookies before logging in using these step-by-step instructions.

The UMBC Blackboard team identified a time period that should have a reduced impact on our users. If our Blackboard site is down longer than expected due to unforeseen circumstances, updates will be posted to this news article. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve our systems to bring you a better Blackboard experience.

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• New Bb Features | Known Issues | Updates & Fixes
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

During the grading and evaluation process, Blackboard’s inline grading tool allows instructors, teaching assistants, and graders to embed feedback, such as comments, highlights, and even drawings, directly on a converted view of student assignments in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and PDF file formats.

The current interface for the inline grading tool is powered by a third-party conversion tool called Crocodoc, which will be discontinued by Box on January 15, 2018.  DoIT staff and Blackboard engineers will need to migrate existing documents and grading annotations to a new service,  now powered by New Box View, on the weekend of January 6, 2018. No downtime is expected for Blackboard itself, but the inline grading tools will not be available for up to six (6) hours at a time to migrate all assignment and feedback artifacts. DoIT will make every effort to run the migration process during low peak periods to minimize impact on grading for faculty and teaching assistants. 

If you use UMBC Box for cloud storage, you are likely familiar with how documents render in that web interface. Here is a comparison of the current inline grading tools (left) and the new inline grading tools (right):

What to expect with the change

Blackboard has worked closely with Box to integrate the New Box View into the grading process and to migrate the databases containing submitted student data and documents. The New Box View service will completely replace the existing back-end tools in exactly the same locations within Bb Learn. The overall interface is simplified and contextualized. More file types are supported.

After the transition, faculty, teaching assistants, and graders will not be able change or remove previously created annotations as that feedback becomes “read only.” All assignment feedback saved before the migration will be uneditable and saved as a PDF. As such, we strongly encourage faculty and graders to complete grading BEFORE the document process begins since grading procedures may be affected if a submission is not fully annotated in the middle of the transition. Rubrics are not affected at all by this change. New grading may begin using the updated feedback tools. 

Please review these FAQs on the changes to inline grading