FA2022 Courses Created in Blackboard on July 28, 2022

Blackboard course shells for FA2022 were created on July 28, 2022.

The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in FA2022 courses, which allows faculty to convert a new Original course to see what it looks like in Ultra. 

Ally, an accessibility tool, is also 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.
  3. Learn about the Quality Matters Impact program, a new initiative to formally recognize courses that meet Quality Matters standards and demonstrate exemplary online/hybrid course design.
About Course Creation

Bb shells for FA2022 are available for all courses (designated as lecture, lab, field or discussion) listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), provided that there is an instructor of record listed. As new course sections and/or instructors are added to the SOC by Department Scheduling Coordinators, corresponding Bb shells are automatically generated overnight. 

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.

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.

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:
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WEBINAR: Mom Burnout: The Struggle is Real
Date: Tuesday, August 9th
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm EST
Register Today
 
About this Event 
For more than two years families have been going through craziness. Every time they hit their stride, something came along to throw things back into chaos. And here we go again....it's back to school season and for many, back to the office full-time or hybrid. Families are again in flux. If this sounds familiar, join us and our guest -- life and career coach Letisha Bereola -- to learn how to build new systems that support life today, enabling you to thrive, not just survive. 
 
These Care webinars are free to attend, and a recording will be shared afterwards.

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Join an upcoming training webinar from Respondus to see the latest features and integrations for LockDown Browser and Monitor. Learn how these applications are used with a range of online testing environments, virtual proctoring and Blackboard. Discover enhancements that make Respondus Monitor even more effective and easy to use.

Instructor Training: LockDown Browser & Respondus Monitor
This comprehensive 45-minute training is intended for instructors who plan to use LockDown Browser and/or Respondus Monitor to protect academic integrity and ensure student identity during online testing. The training will cover:
  • How to use LockDown Browser to prevent digital cheating in proctored testing environments
  • How to use Respondus Monitor in non-proctored environments, to protect exam integrity and confirm student identity
  • The student perspective using each application
  • Efficient review of the assessment data collected, including the Review Priority system, timeline, and milestone features
  • Best practices and tips for success with both applications
Pick your date/time and register directly with Respondus:
All attendees will receive a link to a recording after the session.

NOTE: Students should not register for any instructor training session but instead, contact use the Respondus support tools embedded in RLDB, or review this FAQ for further help.

About Respondus Lockdown Browser

RLDB is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard. Students are unable to copy, print, access other applications, or visit other websites during an online exam. For additional information, please review our FAQ collection.
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It's another massive update for Ultra in August, bringing a significant improvement to question banks, a unified mobile app experience for faculty and students, and overall enhancements to assessment, grading, content, and engagement. 

ASSESSMENT & GRADING
  • Question banks: Create, edit, and manage - Last month, Ultra added the option to copy question banks between courses. With this update, faculty can create new question banks in a course, search for questions in a bank, as well as add, edit, and delete questions within a bank.

    Example of groups management interface
    Image 1: Example of new question banks interface
  • Set due date exceptions - Instructors can add due date exceptions for a student per assessment as well as existing exceptions for additional attempts or item visibility.
  • Submission filter improvements - Quickly sort the list of submissions on an assessment's grading page to view which students have opened or completed an activity and which submissions need to be graded.
  • Advanced calculation for Overall Grade - In addition to points (added in July) and weighted options for calculating the Overall Grade in your Ultra gradebook, you can also create a bespoke formula in a customized column for greater flexibility and evaluation needs.
  • Auto-save for student written responses - Student responses entered in the content editor will be auto-saved every 2 seconds after the student stops/pauses typing. Ultra will post a last saved date/time in the lower right corner of the page. [Update: This feature is delayed.]
CONTENT & ENGAGEMENT
  • Create, import/export groups and membership with CSV file - Instructors can create group sets and add members with a CSV file. You can also export your groups and memberships to reuse in another course. The update to the Ultra groups tool will replace the custom tool licensed by UMBC. 

    Example of new question banks interface
    Image 2: Example of updated groups management interface
  • LaTex equation support - Create and edit LaTex equations using the Ultra content editor. 
  • Send messages in private/unavailable courses - Instructors can send messages (email) to students in courses that are not yet available. 
  • Messages automatically go out as emails - Messages will automatically go out as emails (except Announcements) to align to the Send Email tool in Original. Messages will still be retained as part of your course archive.
As with previous updates this year, the continued focus aligns with faculty feedback and requests to strengthen essentials features and settings in core Ultra tools, bringing feature parity closer to 95% by SP2022.

Finally, Blackboard consolidated the mobile app for both instructors and students rather than have separate apps. Instructors can use the updated Blackboard app for both Original and Ultra courses since the user experience will change based on the assigned role within a course. This new Blackboard mobile app will be available August 8, 2022, from the iOS and Android app stores. Students using the current Blackboard app should simply update. Instructors, assistants, and graders should remove the Blackboard Instructor app as support ends in September 2022.

Faculty should see the latest updates in Ultra courses around August 4-5, 2022. UMBC FAQs will be updated over the next few weeks before fall classes start and Blackboard help documentation is also available. Please sign up for one of our What's New in Ultra for Teaching & Learning webinars or Ultra Essentials trainings in August to learn more about these exciting new features!

The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on August 9, 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:
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Are you ready to invest in your career in higher education? Whether you’re new and looking to forge your path, mid-career and looking to inject some energy, or staring down retirement and considering your legacy, there’s something for you at the USM Learning and Talent Development Committee's annual, virtual, week-long conference, USM Professional Development Week. Save the date for inspiring panels, engaging workshops, and networking with your colleagues from across the system. Empower Your Journey and Unleash Your Potential. 

October 17 - 21, 2022. 

Visit https://www.usmd.edu/learning-and-talent/ for more information. 

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Planning Instructional Variety for Online Teaching (PIVOT) has received a 2022 Catalyst Award from Blackboard/Anthology for Training and Professional Development. Designed and delivered by DoIT’s Instructional Technology team in response to the pandemic shift to online learning, PIVOT also received an Effective Practice Award from the Online Learning Consortium in 2021. 

The Catalyst Awards honor innovation and excellence in the global community. UMBC previously received a Catalyst Award in 2017 for Leading Change using innovative data analytics to support student success. The Catalyst Award for Training and Professional Development recognizes institutions that display an organization-wide dedication to innovative training and development programs for their educators and staff. The Catalyst Awards are evaluated based on four criteria:

  • Design (goals/outcomes);
  • Structure (process/people/activities);
  • Impact (analytics); and
  • Significance (best practices for education).
The use of Blackboard solutions is also an important factor.

Grounded in the evidence-based principles for how people learn, PIVOT’s pedagogical foundations and use of 25 faculty peer mentors for pedagogical and technical facilitation are well established as an effective practice. Quality Matters (QM) informed much of the program’s conception and delivery, and through the QM Impact program, which expanded PIVOT, eight courses have since met QM certification. 

The PIVOT program also used Ultra as part of DoIT’s larger migration to Blackboard’s new course interface. Content was delivered in an Ultra course using assessments, discussions, groups, and third-party tools. PIVOT webinars were also delivered in Collaborate using content, polls, and breakout rooms for increased engagement and demonstration of essential web conferencing tools.  Faculty peer mentors and Ultra Ambassadors offered personal experiences, course tours, feedback and support to their colleagues throughout the PIVOT experience.

Use and demonstration of Ultra tools encouraged faculty to try Ultra for their own courses, which positively impacted our larger migration to the new experience. Our Ultra adoption increased by 148% between FA2019 and FA2020, representing 46% of all active Bb courses with a substantial surge occurring during the pandemic. Students are also consistently satisfied with Ultra. Finally, as a result of the PIVOT program, more faculty are willing to teach online and student satisfaction with PIVOT courses is consistently higher than non-PIVOT courses. 

Dr. Mariann Hawken, director of Instructional Technology, will represent the Instructional Technology team at the Anthology Together conference in Orlando, FL, to receive the award and present on UMBC’s Ultra migration plan. The Catalyst Awards Livestream will be broadcast on Wednesday, July 13, 2022 at 10 AM ET. Register online.


]]> Planning Instructional Variety for Online Teaching (PIVOT) has received a 2022 Catalyst Award from Blackboard/Anthology for Training and Professional Development. Designed and delivered by DoIT’s... https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/instructional-technology/posts/126203 https://my3.my.umbc.edu/api/v0/pixel/news/126203/guest@my.umbc.edu/021f2ad75563827ebfc0576624f4ec18/api/pixel award online-learning pivot training ultra Instructional Technology https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/instructional-technology https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/xsmall.png?1446126703 https://assets1-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/original.png?1446126703 https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/xxlarge.png?1446126703 https://assets1-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/xlarge.png?1446126703 https://assets1-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/large.png?1446126703 https://assets4-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/medium.png?1446126703 https://assets3-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/small.png?1446126703 https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/xsmall.png?1446126703 https://assets3-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/001/164/dec3b026b81ee6d890a8f82f75c94a2e/xxsmall.png?1446126703 Instructional Technology https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/thumbnails/news/000/126/203/721aa545ffb91e818411fdd49461c2db/xxlarge.jpg?1657585639 https://assets1-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/thumbnails/news/000/126/203/721aa545ffb91e818411fdd49461c2db/xlarge.jpg?1657585639 https://assets4-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/thumbnails/news/000/126/203/721aa545ffb91e818411fdd49461c2db/large.jpg?1657585639 https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/thumbnails/news/000/126/203/721aa545ffb91e818411fdd49461c2db/medium.jpg?1657585639 https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/thumbnails/news/000/126/203/721aa545ffb91e818411fdd49461c2db/small.jpg?1657585639 https://assets3-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/thumbnails/news/000/126/203/721aa545ffb91e818411fdd49461c2db/xsmall.jpg?1657585639 https://assets1-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/thumbnails/news/000/126/203/721aa545ffb91e818411fdd49461c2db/xxsmall.jpg?1657585639 12 1 true Mon, 11 Jul 2022 20:31:43 -0400 Mon, 03 Oct 2022 14:22:50 -0400 ATTN: Employees in the MD State Retirement & Pension Fall 2022 Pre-Retirement Seminars/Webinars schedule

For employees enrolled in the MD State Retirement & Pension system, the schedule of Pre-Retirement in-person seminars/webinars is now available for July – December 2022.

These seminars are a valuable planning tool for all eligible members and their spouses, provided by the MD State Pension Agency via the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). Employees who attend should be within 8 years of retiring.

Please register for an in-person seminar or webinar using this link: http://www.ccbcmd.edu/ceed-preretirement-state or by calling 443-840-5059. Please provide the course number when registering. 

All in-person seminars and webinars run from 9:00am - 4:00pm.

Webinar Dates:

If you prefer to attend an in person seminar, please see the following dates below:

To register for these events please go to: http://www.ccbcmd.edu/ceed-preretirement-state

This link includes directions for registering by phone if you encounter difficulties registering online. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact Sarah Moore at scullip@ccbcmd.edu. 

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Ask Fidelity Q&A Session: Understanding Your Debt So You Can Take Control

Would you like to get a handle on your debt, once and for all?  Discover real strategies to help you prioritize what to payoff first and tips for managing your spending.

Date: Tuesday, July 26, 2022 Time: 12:00 pm EST 

Register today*

*To register for this event, please click Register today and then select Virtual Event from the Select Event Type pull down menu.

]]> Ask Fidelity Q&A Session: Understanding Your Debt So You Can Take Control Would you like to get a handle on your debt, once and for all?  Discover real strategies to help you prioritize... Flyer https://assets1-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/attachments/6e81100a8795431a11c9c8662d0ca4d3/69fcd51c/news/000/126/111/2faee87e8295a785ed8bd638907b5852/07-July Flyer.pdf?1656707971 https://my3.my.umbc.edu/api/v0/pixel/news/126111/guest@my.umbc.edu/ad0116092ef5b283cf3a524a2b088d50/api/pixel benefits Training https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/training https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/xsmall.png?1281010946 https://assets4-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/original.png?1281010946 https://assets3-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/xxlarge.png?1281010946 https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/xlarge.png?1281010946 https://assets3-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/large.png?1281010946 https://assets3-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/medium.png?1281010946 https://assets4-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/small.png?1281010946 https://assets2-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/xsmall.png?1281010946 https://assets3-my.umbc.edu/system/shared/avatars/groups/000/000/019/bdb106a0560c4e46ccc488ef010af787/xxsmall.png?1281010946 Training 0 0 false Fri, 01 Jul 2022 16:57:08 -0400 Points Calculation & Display Arrive to Ultra Gradebook Prevent question backtracking, copy question banks & more
The July update to Ultra courses brings ten new features and improvements, focusing on assessment, grading, and content creation. As with previous updates this year, the continued focus aligns with faculty feedback and requests to strengthen essentials features and settings in core Ultra tools.

ASSESSMENT & GRADING
  • Calculating & Displaying Points in Gradebook Overall Grade - The Overall Grade will support and display a points-based calculation (e.g., 745/800). The setup wizard guides the instructor to select points or weighted calculation, and includes examples of each calculation type. 

    example of points-based gradebook set-up
  • Prohibit backtracking of test questions - This option allows instructors to force a sequence through questions in an assessment. If students skip a question, an alert informs them that they cannot go back to the question.
  • Edit points earned on an assessment question - Instructors can now change the points a student earns on an assessment question. The points field supports negative and positive values with up to two decimal points.
  • Download grade center history - The first phase of this feature, provides a download (.xls or .csv) of changes to grades in the gradebook.
  • Copy question banks between courses - The first phase of question banks improvements allows you to copy question banks from Original to Ultra courses and Ultra to Ultra courses.
  • Recategorize discussions & journals - There is now a "Grade category" selector in the settings panel for graded discussions and journals to allow reassigning of the category to another default or a custom category.
CONTENT & ENGAGEMENT
  • Inline file rendering of files in Course Content, Folders, and Learning Modules - Various files will now render inline in Course Content, folders, and learning modules. As with files uploaded to Ultra Documents and Assessments, instructors can set the behavior of these files for users to view and download (default), view only, or download only. 
  • Original Blank Pages converted to Ultra Documents - When Original courses are converted to Ultra courses, Blank Pages will be converted to Ultra Documents. 
  • Accessibility improvements of math formulas - Ultra will render math formulas as images in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format, allowing users to zoom in or enlarge formula images without losing quality. This change improves accessibility for users with low vision.
  • Messages Improvement: Larger Panel for Reading & Writing - Messages will use a larger panel for viewing and composing messages rather than the smaller panel.
Faculty should see these updates in courses around July 7-8, 2022. UMBC FAQs will be updated over the next few weeks before fall classes start and Blackboard help documentation is also available. Please sign up for one of our What's New in Ultra for Teaching & Learning webinars in August to learn more about these exciting new features!

We'll have 1-2 more updates to share after the Blackboard conference in mid-July and the August release announcement -- with those notes, we'll update our parity tracker to confirm the increased compatibility with Original courses by the end of 2022. 

The next update to our test environment will take place on July 19, 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:
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The Learning and Talent Development Committee will be launching the 2nd annual Professional Development Week from October 17-21, 2022. 

We invite you to submit workshop proposals for the week-long conference which will run at various times through out the week. Workshop proposals are due July 29, 2022. This is a wonderful way to showcase your ideas and talent with the broader USM system. If you have multiple presentation ideas, please submit a NEW proposal form for each new idea.  We look forward to receiving your submissions!
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