Ultra's Progress Tracking Tools Help Instructors Identify, Connect, and Support Learners

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 14:48:04 -0400
biro, fa24, progress-tracking

This article focuses on Ultra's progress tracking tools and strategies for student identification, outreach, and support. It follows Part 1 - Course Design Best Practices in Ultra, which showcased features in Ultra to ensure your course is designed to optimize student learning and ensure they feel welcome and prepared.

As the semester enters week four, there is an opportunity to assess how students are doing in your course when it comes to participating, meeting deadlines, and completing discussions or knowledge checks. Did you know that Ultra offers a variety of reports and analytics that benefit both instructors and students in tracking individual progress?

Progress Tracking

Instructors can monitor student progress through a variety of tools including options that support tracking by content item, submission activity, and test attempt. When tracking student progress in a particular set of content, instructors can filter by student and progress status, or select students and send an individualized message or reminder. In conjunction with early academic alerts, instructors can decide when and how to reach out to students by using details and insights from Ultra’s progress reports.

Student View of Progress Tracking

Students can also leverage Ultra’s progress tracking capabilities to monitor their engagement with content, assignments, and tests. This feature provides visual indicators of student progress, motivating them to stay on track. Students can also see a summary of their progress within learning modules, making it easier to manage their workload and prioritize tasks.

Instructors who have not seen what the Student View of progress tracking looks like may want to go into “Student Preview” mode once the course is open and see how this appears. Each item has a status circle to the left of the item title. An empty circle means the student has not yet accessed content; a partially filled circle indicates the item has been opened or accessed through Ally; and a green check mark appears when the item has been completed. (See image below)

While in “Student View,” instructors can see that students may mark content items “complete” after opening them. This gives students a tangible way to keep track of their progress within the course. Assigned submissions will change automatically to denote completion. (See image below)

Student Overview (Instructor View)

Ultra’s Student Overview offers instructors a single place to access relevant information on a student and personalize outreach. Details such as when a student last accessed the course, overall grade, or any accommodations can be found in the Student Overview.

Student Overview can be accessed in multiple ways including Gradebook on the Students tab, within the course roster, via messages or discussions, or within the table view of the Course Activity Report. Instructors can also contact students through Student Overview by sending a message about grades or progress.

Gradebook Progress & Instructor Notes

Progress tracking features in the Ultra gradebook offer instructors several views including a list of all assignments, a view of students and assignments, or an individual list of students. By selecting the “Progress” tab, instructors can see a list of all content items in the course and status for each item. For students who may be behind or have not opened all content in a module, instructors can select “Send Message” and reach out to a student directly.

In the student view of the Gradebook, instructors have access to a “Notes” tab. This newer feature in Ultra is a dedicated space in the course where you can take notes about students for quick reference as the semester progresses. Instructor notes are private only to you and limited only to the course. Instructor notes do NOT travel to other courses and students do not see them.

Course Activity Report

The Course Activity Report provides an overview of how a student interacts with the course over time. Instructors can observe how a student’s engagement or performance have changed on a weekly basis or over a longer period of time. In the image below, this is the list view of the report and supports instructors who want to filter students based on overall grade, missed due dates, hours spent in the course, or number of days since they last accessed. After filtering the list, instructors can send messages to students from this window and also configure alerts.

Within the Report, you can enable and customize student alert flags to fit your teaching style. These alerts will be visible in the Course Activity Report and are related to factors such as overall grade, missed due dates, or days since a student last accessed the course. Comprehensive reports let instructors see which students have opened, started, or completed content, helping them tailor teaching strategies.

Exploring and leveraging Ultra's progress tracking tools can make identifying and intervening on behalf of students who may be struggling in the course easier and efficient for instructors.

Upcoming events about progress tracking and student support:

October 4: Track Student Progress & Elevate Learner Outreach

November 14: Lessons Learned Nudging Students with Personalized myUMBC Posts

For more information on how to use Ultra’s reports and analytics for student tracking and support, check out these resources:

Reports & Analytics

Course Activity Report

Alert Flags (within Course Activity Report)