More Departments Move to Fully Adopt Ultra for Fall 2023

Thu, 18 May 2023 12:46:23 -0400
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Given UMBC will be migrating to Ultra by the start of Winter 2025, five more departments will fully adopt Ultra for Fall 2023, The following departments join Theater and Gender, Women's, + Sexuality Studies in applying a consistent look and feel for their students when courses are created every semester:

American Studies

Education

Emergency Health Services

Erickson School of Aging Studies

Mathematics/Statistics

Additionally, at least eight foreign languages in the Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication department have been fully using Ultra for the last year including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. English 100 and IHU courses also leverage an all-Ultra adoption.

Instructional Technology offers the following course creation and conversion support for department adoption of Ultra:

1. For departments or disciplines that want to adopt Ultra by default, Blackboard course shells can be designated as Ultra when courses are created. This approach can be especially helpful for instructors who are new to UMBC and need to quickly prepare course resources.

2. If departments decide to adopt Ultra after courses are created, we can bulk convert Original courses to Ultra in early August or early January before the semester starts. Using this approach, courses start in Original before content is added and students begin to work, but switch to Ultra with the assistance of Instructional Technology staff.

3. If departments want faculty to prepare courses for Ultra over a semester before fully adopting, we can bulk copy and convert older Original courses to Ultra (e.g., prepare in fall, adopt in spring). Additional time and flexibility are key to this approach, allowing faculty review previously offered courses in Ultra and optimize a redesigned format.

Please open an RT ticket to request any of these department adoption strategies. Providing the discipline's prefix for the courseID ensures Instructional Technology can quickly identify courses and trigger the conversion process on behalf of faculty, saving time and effort.

Finally, we have extensive training options for departments including customized workshops, recording artchives, and other resources.

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UMBC is committed to providing a consistent learning experience for everyone. The last day we will support Blackboard Original is December 31, 2024. Please check out our training and support: umbc.edu/go/ultra