In March, Ultra's update includes two new course reports, an exciting rubric enhancement requested by faculty, and improvements to the AI Course Design Assistant.

Located on the Analytics page, the two new course reports focus on goals. The Course Goal Coverage Report provides a comprehensive view of goal coverage in the course, including a detailed breakdown of course items aligned with goals. The Course Goal Performance Report evaluates how a course meets selected goals, including a detailed breakdown for individual students and goals. These reports do not include third-party tools and uses snapshot data that is up to 24 hours old.

Instructors will be able to pop out the grading rubric into a separate window when grading an assignment. Formatted in a grid view, the pop-out rubric is a separate, movable window. Popping out a rubric allows an instructor to view a student's submission and the rubric side-by-side for a more efficient grading experience. However, the expand icon for popping out a rubric will only appear if the primary browser window is sufficiently large enough to display enough of the course page. Instructors will be able to print a blank or completed rubric using their browser's print function.

Image 1: Example of new pop-out rubric

Content Creation & Management

• When setting or updating release conditions, due dates for content items are now included with the release condition settings, reducing the need to navigate back to the item to check deadlines.
• Instructors can now copy banners between courses.

AI Course Design Assistant

• When using the AI Course Design Assistant, if no image is generated, a placeholder will maintain a consistent layout. A refresh button allows instructors to generate a new image easily.
• The AI Course Design Assistant now generates one image at a time instead of four, reducing energy and processing power. If an instructor regenerates an image, previous images are saved for comparison.

Assessments & Grading

• If an instructor hides an assessment while students are actively taking it, those with the test open can continue without disruption.
• Instructors can configure the visibility of calculated columns from Items Management, streamlining the gradebook view. (Note: The Overall Grade column remains visible at all times.)
• The layout for the Test Submission Page for students now mirrors the assignment submission page update from September 2024, ensuring feedback is clearly presented.

Faculty should see the latest updates in their Ultra courses around March 6-7, 2025. The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on March 11, 2025; release notes are posted to the What's New in Ultra that same week. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Please watch the FAQs, including the What's New with Ultra page, and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra.

This month's update to Ultra provides new and updates indicators for core functionality in Ultra courses including discussions, grading, and reports. 

Two improvements to Ultra focus on the AI Course Design Assistant and the Blackboard mobile app:

• The AI Course Design Assistant is optimized for complex rubric outputs. Instructors can expect better rubrics, even for complicated assessments. The AI Course Design Assistant should also work faster.
• UMBC can define the maximum length of time a user can access the Blackboard mobile app before they are required to login again, which will be about 2 weeks if the session hasn't expired. This should address a student concern that the mobile app was frequently logging students out.

Additional improvements in December include:

• A "new" indicator will display next to discussion posts and replies that a user has not accessed yet, making it easier to find.
• Late submissions will have a "late" indicator within the Flexible Grading interface.
• Instructors will see "Override" for discussion grades that meet this criteria with a new Undo Override workflow.
• Instructors can go directly to an attempt log for any test or assignment from the activity log for any student in an Ultra course.
• Blackboard improved performance so saving groups is now 80%-90% quicker.
• For easier navigation, students can now select arrows to the left and right of LTI or SCORM items to move through learning modules. 

Faculty should see the latest updates in their Ultra courses around December 5-6, 2024. The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on December 10, 2024; release notes are posted to the What's New in Ultra that same week. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Please watch the FAQs, including the What's New with Ultra page, and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra.

Whether you're preparing your first Ultra course or updating existing content, the latest features released in August are designed to streamline your teaching experience. 

The Ultra Document is the centerpiece of the Ultra course, providing a place for preparing and delivering engaging content including text, lists, tables, links, images and media, or third-party tools. The Content Designer is a significant enhancement to the Ultra Document, providing new and robust options that support mobile friendly and responsive columns. Instructors can still embed files, images, and HTML content. To resize a block or move it on the Ultra Document page, simply drag and drop the block. All content is moveable with a mouse, keyboard or tab.

Image 1: Example of redesigned Ultra Document with new column display

Releasing content for different needs in a course is a critical part of an instructor’s toolkit -- whether that content is distributed by date, performance, or group using different criteria. The latest update to Ultra features advanced release conditions allow faculty to create multiple rules for release conditions using AND and OR criteria. For example, if a course consists of undergraduate and graduate students, each group may have different requirements to access certain content in the course. Rules and criteria will copy from Original adaptive release conditions with the exception for attempts and marked reviewed, which are not yet supported in Ultra.

Image 2: Example of Release Conditions page

The Ultra Assignment is also redesigned for August, removing the underlying engine that powered Tests. Now a separate instructions box is available for instructors to specify expectations for completing a graded activity. There are no options to add questions; if this is essential for an assessment, a Test must be used instead. The settings panel is updated to provide options that are only relevant to Assignments. Most importantly, when students access the Assignment, a blank attempt is no longer created, which helps reduce confusion and frustration for both learners and instructors alike. Students can access the Assignment as often as they need to before submitting their actual attempt. 

Image 3: Example of new Assignment page

Instructors have long desired for the ability to subscribe to discussions in Ultra. In August, this is now possible with the new Follow Discussions setting, which allows any user in a course to re-engage with a discussion as updates occur. The first version of this feature will distribute notifications through the Activity Stream, which users can customize according to personal preference. In October, the follow notifications can be received via email.

Image 4: Example of Discussion with Follow notification enabled

Finally, when an Original course is converted, undeployed tests from the Tests, Surveys, and Question Pools area will now be converted to question banks. This will help to declutter both the course content page and the gradebook, making it easier for instructors to manage their course materials. NOTE: During the conversion process, any random blocks, question sets, and linked questions included in undeployed tests will be removed as Question Banks do not support those features. However, the resulting question banks will preserve original questions without duplication.

Additional updates for August include:

• Instructors can now collect anonymous submissions in Forms.
• Instructors can quickly navigate between submissions using the Next Student and Previous Student buttons in Flexible Grading. 
• Image generation process will leverage DALL-E to produce higher resolution images for learning modules, Documents, announcements, assessment questions, and journal prompts.
• The response time when creating a math formula in the text editor is reduced to help instructors can process formula requests more efficiently.
• Students can send a group message from the members page of a group space, which encourages collaboration on content that they have been assigned.

To learn more about these updates, and other features from the last six months, please join our What's New in Ultra for Teaching & Learning webinar on August 16.

Faculty should see the latest updates in their Ultra courses around August 8-9, 2024. The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on August 13, 2024; release notes are posted to the What's New in Ultra that same week. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Please watch the FAQs, including the What's New with Ultra page, and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra.