Blackboard Ultra News and Training

We're excited to share the latest updates and enhancements to Blackboard Ultra for the month of January. These improvements are designed to enhance your teaching and learning experiences.

Key Updates:

• Important! Course Availability Setting Moved - Course Availability has moved out of the Details & Actions menu and can now be set from the Course Settings page.
• Gradebook Item Management - Instructors can now edit the visibility of items from the instructor view, hiding columns associated with assessments that are causing clutter from the instructor view. This does not impact the student view.
• New Release Condition - In the past, a release condition could be set that required students to earn a specific grade or higher on an assessment. As of this release, the condition can now be set to "on submission," meaning if a student submits an assignment they can move onto the next item without waiting for the instructor to submit the grade.

To learn more about these features and how to utilize them, please refer to the following resources:

• ⁠Video: January 2025 Ultra Updates
• Wiki: Blackboard Ultra Course View for Faculty and Organization Leaders
• Wiki: Ultra Roadmap and detailed notes on the new features

Reminders

We are continuing to host our monthly Office Hours to discuss new features in Blackboard and invite instructors to share their experiences and ideas for future development. These Office Hours are typically the second Tuesday of each month at 2pm on Zoom, following the monthly feature release.

Register today: https://events.fairfield.edu/academic-computing

Next week the CAE is hosting Back to School Workshops. We have several Blackboard sessions scheduled.

Register for a Workshop: https://events.fairfield.edu/group/center-for-academic-excellence

We encourage you to explore these new features and incorporate them into your courses as you see fit.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us by emailing academiccomputing@fairfield.edu.