Course banners & table enhancements coming in November

New progress tracking improvements in Ultra courses

Customizing the course interface creates a visual identifier in a Blackboard course. In the next phase of the Ultra course's improved navigation and aesthetic redesign, course banners will be an option available to faculty in the November update, aligning to the visual image set in the course card on the Courses page. The course banner can be uploaded and cropped within the Ultra course interface.

The first phase of progress tracking required no activity in the course to be enabled. However, the latest update to progress tracking allows faculty to enable the setting at any time during the term. Enabling this functionality will give students an easy way to keep track of what they have done inside each one of their courses. When progress tracking is turned on later than the beginning of the term, participatory items and assessments will be retroactively marked as complete. Non-participatory items, like Ultra documents, will still need to be manually marked by students.

Example of new course banner and progress tracking in Ultra course.

In October, tables were released to Ultra's content editor. New enhancements for November now include formatting options including text style, alignment, list attachment, and inserting content. These options provide greater flexibility for faculty and students, especially in disciplines where the presentation and formatting of data is particularly important.

The next update to our test environment will take place on November 16, 2021. 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 and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra.

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