Copy Rubrics Between Ultra Courses Starting in September

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 09:29:07 -0400
blackboard, ultra-experience, ultra-update

In early September, Ultra courses will receive updates in several key areas that benefit instructors and students. Maintaining the trend focusing on assessment and grading, these updates also include increased support for test taking and grading feedback for students as well as a new alternative file format for Ally.

ASSESSMENT & GRADING

Copy Rubrics Between Ultra Courses - Reusing rubrics provides faculty with flexibility when designing and preparing courses each semester. Starting in early September, you can save time and easily copy rubrics between your Ultra courses. Use the Copy Content tool and select only the Rubrics folder to copy all rubrics, or click the Rubrics folder to select one or more specific rubrics to copy into your course.

Image: Example of copying rubrics between courses

As with all Copy Content functionality, you can copy Rubrics from multiple Blackboard courses at the same time. Rubrics will appear in the Gradebook under settings and can be easily attached to an assignment.

Sort Question Banks - Last month, question banks received significant improvements including creating and editing. With this update, you can sort question banks by name, number of questions, or last edited date.

Respond to Discussions From Grading - Instructors can now post a reply to student discussions within the context of the grading interface.

Set points for manually added grade items - When creating a manual grade column, instructors can edit the maximum point value regardless of how the grade is displayed to students.

Test Timer Notifications for students - It's important for students to be aware of how much time they have when taking a test, but sometimes this can be stressful. Ultra now provides multiple options, which can be reviewed in this FAQ.

Student Access to Instructor Feedback - Students will have access to grade feedback, regardless of how an instructor grades, including grade overrides.

Summary of Grading Annotations - A new side panel is available when providing inline feedback for student assignments. This panel summarizes all comments in one list, making it easier to view feedback in a student's submission. Note: This functionality will be rolled out over time, separately from the main updates in September.

CONTENT & ENGAGEMENT

Microsoft Immersive Reader for Ally - Ally now features a new alternative format to download. Microsoft Immersive Reader helps students improve their reading, comprehension, and grammar skills.

Prevent duplicative content of an entire course - Copying content within a course is an important feature to quickly deploy reusable structures. Ultra now includes functionality to help prevent accidental copying of an entire course within a course.

Faculty should see the latest updates in Ultra courses around September 2-3, 2022. While the September update appears light compared to earlier summer releases, Ultra continues to focus on key functionality in assessment and grading, bringing features parity closer to 95% for SP2023 and faculty course adoption for FA2023.

The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on September 13, 2022. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Additionally, our Ultra feature tracker is updated and now includes a filter for functional category (e.g., assessment, course management, grading) so you can sort only those items you might be interested in tracking the status. Please watch the FAQs, including the What's New with Ultra page, 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:

PIVOT | Academic Continuity | Keep On Teaching | Student Technology Resources

Check our extensive FAQ collection

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