Blackboard course shells for FA2019 were created on July 28, 2019.

The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in FA2019 courses to allow faculty adoption during the phased roll-out of Ultra as previously announced. The Ultra Course Preview tool allows faculty to convert an existing Original course and see what it looks like in Ultra. 

• Related FAQ: How do I preview my course as an Ultra course?
• Learn what's new in Ultra for FA2019
• Meet your Ultra Faculty Ambassadors 

About Course Creation

Bb shells for FA2019 are available for all courses (designated as lecture, lab, field or discussion) listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), provided that there is an instructor of record listed. As new course sections and/or instructors are added to the SOC by Department Scheduling Coordinators, corresponding Bb shells are automatically generated overnight. 

• If you are an instructor, and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your Departmental Scheduling Coordinator to resolve the issue. Once you are listed in the SOC, your Bb course shell will be created automatically. 
• If you and your Department Scheduling Coordinator believe you are correctly assigned as the instructor of record in the SOC and you do not see your course shell in Blackboard, please submit a Request Tracker (RT) ticket via my.umbc.edu/help.
• If you need a Bb shell for a research or independent study course, please submit a new course request.

Instructors who teach multiple sections of the same course will find those enrollments merged into one Bb course shell. These sections may be split upon request by an RT ticket, which we recommend submitting at least one week before the semester starts, if not as soon as courses are created in Blackboard.

Student enrollment in Bb mirrors the official registration in SA and updates hourly. However, courses are not accessible to students by default until the instructor of record makes them available.

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

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• What’s new in Ultra? | Known Issues
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Sign up for a webinar & other training 
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff
• Review your course content with Ally

This morning from approximately 8:40am to 9:10am there was an issue with our authentication system that disrupted logins to all web-based services such as myUMBC, email, Blackboard and RT among others. The issue was quickly identified by our staff and corrected as of 9:10am. We have taken steps to augment our monitoring systems so that this type of outage will be flagged by our systems in the future. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at damian@umbc.edu

Damian

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Damian Doyle

Assistant Vice President 

DoIT - UMBC