As UMBC gears up to fully adopt Blackboard Ultra by the Spring 2025 term, multiple training and support resources are available to help instructors become familiar with Ultra and successfully navigate the migration process. Ultra is designed with ease of use in mind, offering an intuitive interface and user-friendly features. Whether you are new to Ultra or need a refresher, many of these resources are designed to help leverage Ultra's innovative functionality. 

Training

Our training allows participants to learn directly from experts, ask questions, and gain insights in real-time. Instructional Technology offers Ultra Essentials, a series of five specific workshops tailored to various aspects of Ultra such as course design, assessment tools, grading, communication, and planning your migration roadmap. Other topics available include Ally and accessibility and deeper dives into tests and question banks, rubrics, managing groups, and supporting large courses.

Additionally, we offer: 

• Extensive recording archives for faculty to access training materials to revisit - Available Now

• Our What's New in Ultra for Teaching and Learning webinars provides the latest information about new features in Ultra - Offered in January, May, and August every year.

• A course migration and design guide to help instructors migrate their courses from Original to Ultra - Available in December 2023

Our training formats support the unique needs and preferences of the UMBC community including live webinars, faculty show and tell, and multi-model (e.g., hyflex). Typically scheduled during the lunch break, training can also be customized to meet department needs or schedules.

Support & Outreach

UMBC offers multiple options for getting help and staying informed. 

• Users can submit an RT ticket to address specific concerns or issues or browse the comprehensive FAQs for quick answers to common questions.

• Take advantage of virtual drop-in hours to receive real-time support. The Ultra Ambassadors program and Instructional Technology's consulting services also offer personalized guidance. 

• Monthly Ultra updates are posted to the FAQs and myUMBC to provide the latest information about enhancements and features. We also share effective practices for using Ultra and other instructional technologies.

• The DoIT News Bulletin, distributed via email, keeps the UMBC community updated on the latest news and development. You may observe contextual messages within Blackboard when you log in or mouseover certain areas or tools.

By leveraging these varied training, support, and outreach formats, the UMBC community remains informed, connected, and equipped to adapt to the evolving landscape of Blackboard Ultra as we progress towards full adoption in Spring 2025.

Blackboard course shells for SU2023 were created on April 27, 2023.

UMBC is committed to providing a consistent learning experience for everyone. The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in SU2023 courses, which allows faculty to convert a new Original course to see what it looks like in Ultra and adopt Ultra. The last day we will support Blackboard Original is December 31, 2024. 

• Please review the release notes for the latest Ultra updates as well as feature parity charts -- more than 150 new updates and enhancements were added over the year including multiple grading schema, assessment exemptions, drag & drop improvements, course content search, hot spot and extra credit questions, student progress tracking, points-based gradebook and rubrics, question banks, and more! 
• Learn more about What's New in Ultra for Teaching & Learning on May 17, 2023.
• Enroll in our self-paced workshop, Ultra for Instructors, designed to provide a starting point to help you prepare your courses in Ultra.
• Have a question about Ultra? Ask an Ultra Ambassador!
• For all other resources about Ultra, please visit: umbc.edu/go/ultra 

Ally, an accessibility tool, is always enabled in all course shells. Ally automatically scans uploaded and created course content, then performs a series of steps to make that content more accessible. Please review the Ally FAQs for more information about the accessibility indicators on course content and alternative formats.

For faculty who will be teaching hybrid or online, the instructional technology team would like to share several resources to support online course development and instruction.

1. Choose from our PIVOT Solo lessons to refresh or enhance your online teaching preparation. Five key topics cover course organization, active learning, community building, assessment, and supporting students. 
2. Explore our Panopto folder for a wide variety of recorded webinars on various instructional technologies available at UMBC.

• 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. NOTE: Courses should not be split after student grade data and engagement activity is recorded since it will be purged as part of the separation process.

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.

Connect with Instructional Technology

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, consider the following options:

• PIVOT | Academic Continuity | Student Technology Resources

• What's new in Ultra? | Known Issues 

• Open a ticket via RT

• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups

• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

From Syllabi to Textbooks - Accessibility in Open Educational Resources for Institutions of Higher Education

A series of 3 no-cost intensives designed to build capacity in IHE teams

ISKME and CAST’s National AEM Center invite teams of faculty to learn how to use accessible Open Educational Resources (OER) to make learning more equitable and bust the barriers to learning that millions of learners experience every day. 

The Accessible OER Academy series is provided at no-cost to faculty at Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) and will introduce cohorts to how openly licensed resources are key levers for both adapting existing resources to increase digital accessibility and designing resources that are accessible for learners with disabilities from the start. Participants will also gain an understanding of how accessibility relates to Universal Design for Learning (UDL). 

We invite educators from the same Institution to form a cohort. Throughout the six-week series, cohorts will receive access to a curated set of high quality resources to review and adapt for use in their own settings. Institution cohorts that complete all six sessions will be invited to present at a national summit alongside CAST and ISKME. Each individual participant of the Academy will receive a certificate of completion. Each team will submit one application.

We encourage cohorts of 3-5 faculty to represent a diversity of lived experiences, classroom expertise, and current educational roles. Consider building your team with representatives from full-time faculty, part-time faculty, disability services, ed tech, assistive technology, library media, and administration. Your team will produce resources that can be used with and to benefit all learners, so consider building a team that can collaborate for instructional purposes. The cohort will explore modifying a variety of resources - with a focus on syllabi and entire textbooks.

The series will consist of three 90-minute webinars with three 90-minute implementation sessions between each. All sessions will be at 1:00pm ET/10:00am PT.

• 101 - Collaborative Questioning and UDL - on May 4th and Implementation Session May 11th

• 201 - Adapting and Creating Accessible OER on May 18th and Implementation Session May 25th

• 301 - Curating and Evaluating OER for Accessibility on June 1st and Implementation Session on June 8th

Apply as a team by May 1st. If you have any questions, please contact Joanna Schimizzi (joanna@iskme.org) or Alison Driscoll (adriscoll@cast.org).

1. Create the assessment, whether test or assignment
2. Enable the settings via the Respondus Lockdown Browser dashboard for the specific assessment
3. Select Respondus Lockdown Browser for the assessment
4. Save the settings

DoIT and Student Disability Services hosted a "Candid Conversation on Enhancing Accessibility" on March 15th. The session highlighted ways that course accessibility benefits all students and results in inclusive learning and working environments. Student Disability Services and DoIT's Instructional Technology team collaborate to provide resources and support to enhance course accessibility. Proactively designing and teaching a course with accessibility in mind not only supports students with documented accommodations, but also supports Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and best practices in course design. In the session panelists shared several key recommendations and resources that are available:

Key recommendations for course design and delivery

• Use Blackboard Ally to check the accessibility of course content, get guidance on remediating content, and to access alternative formats of course materials.

• Videos about Ally

• Alternative Formats in Bb Ally 

• Which Alternative Format is Best to Use? 

• Student FAQ - How do I download an alt format file generated by Ally? 

• Use live captioning in online course meetings, either with Webex or Google Chrome browser live captioning enabled.
• Caption video recordings with automatic captions in Panopto or VoiceThread.
• Upload a Video to Panopto
• Add time limit and due date accommodations in Blackboard.

Accessibility Resources

In addition to the tools noted above, the following resources also support accessibility:

• Create accessible documents with Office 365.
• Review the Google Workspace guide to accessibility.
• Explore SDS assistive technology resources.
• Review assistive technology resources available at the AOK Library.
• Review SDS Information for Faculty.

Technology Highlight: Class

UMBC will be piloting Class, a synchronous web conferencing platform built on Zoom's infrastructure. Class provides support for the following:

• Live transcription. All students in a Class session can view captions.
• Multiple video displays while sharing content, including support for sign language interpreters with a dedicated Sign Language Camera.
• Notes, an upcoming Class feature, will allow students to highlight text from the meeting transcript and add notes.
• Screen reader compatibility and keyboard navigation.