SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning to help you more masterfully manage yourself personally and professionally, improve your effectiveness in managing your work, and support you in skillfully leading your teams. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.

This week's spotlight course is Leading Your Team Through Change (30min)

Change is always happening. Effective team leadership means managing teams through the ongoing transition processes that facilitate change. Removing obstacles that can hinder the productive teamwork required to make these transition processes smooth is essential. In this course, you'll learn about types of resistance and obstacles to change and how to overcome them in a collaboration. You'll also learn about how to overcome barriers to introducing change at your organization. Finally, you'll learn effective approaches for communicating change when working on a team.

Next month's Blackboard update brings a frequently requested tool to Ultra courses: the Journal!

Journals are a personal space for students to communicate privately with instructors or to reflect on course-related content. Starting in early June, instructors can create a journal assignment on the Ultra Course Content page, add journals to learning modules, and use conditional availability to control access based on date or performance. Students and instructors can discuss the journal entry in comments. 

Ultra Journal assignments can be ungraded or graded. PLEASE NOTE: The initial release includes a very basic grading workflow, where instructors enter grades manually in the gradebook. Although a rubric can be attached to a graded journal assignment, the first phase of the journal tool does not yet support grading with the rubric. Full grading functionality and support for course copy and conversion are expected later this year. Continued enhancements, such as searching and sorting by student, are also coming.

Additional updates to Ultra courses include a new feedback setting for tests and the ability to copy discussions from one Ultra course to another. As with Original courses, Ultra instructors can choose not to show Score per Question feedback to control whether students see the score they earned for each assessment question. The Copy Content tool now supports discussions, allowing instructors to bring a discussion from one Ultra course to another.

The next Blackboard Learn update will be posted to our test site around June 9th and pushed to production around July 2, 2020. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. 

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

• 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

SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning that supports you in navigating complex challenges in personal and professional life, helps you to increase your effectiveness, and to improve your relationships. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.

This week's spotlight course is Beating Procrastination by Boosting Your Creativity and Drive (19 min)

Everyone could benefit from a boost in creativity. Whether you're in marketing and advertising, management, or software development, all professionals need to be able to come up with original ideas and think outside the box every now and then. But sometimes the pressure to think creatively is the very thing that blocks the flow of fresh ideas and results in the type of procrastination that is an obstacle to efficient time management. This course focuses on the relationship between procrastinating and creativity.

You'll learn about how the optimal amount of procrastination actually boosts creativity and efficiency. You'll also learn how to use creativity boosters to help you past those times when you procrastinate a little too much.

SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning to help you more masterfully manage yourself personally and professionally, improve your effectiveness in managing your work, and support you in skillfully leading your teams. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.

This week's spotlight course is Taking the Lead with Workplace Motivation and Engagement (20min)

The best leaders are masters in workplace motivation and engagement. In this course, you will learn the characteristics of motivation and engagement, as well as techniques for optimizing both. You will also learn techniques for motivating and engaging yourself and others, in both onsite and remote situations.

SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning that supports you in navigating complex challenges in personal and professional life, helps you to increase your effectiveness, and to improve your relationships. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.

This week's spotlight course is The Art of Staying Focused.

The Art of Staying Focused (30 min)

Even if you know what's important to do, losing focus can stop your progress. No matter who you are or what job you do, focusing at work can be hard. Even with great schedule management and organizing skills, it's easy to get off track if you're not careful. In this course, you'll learn how to stay focused and stay on top of your schedule. You'll learn strategies for dealing with focus challenges and distractions at work. You'll also find out how to beat fatigue, manage your time, and decline work-related requests. And you'll explore how to adjust your focus to deal with change, and how to regain focus when you've lost it. 

SkillSoft Spotlights focus on just-in-time online learning to help you more masterfully manage yourself personally and professionally, improve your effectiveness in managing your work, and support you in skillfully leading your teams. Each course is 30 minutes or less and is curated to provide tools, strategies, and practices to accelerate your success.

This week's spotlight course is Positive Atmosphere: Establishing a Positive Work Environment.

Positive Atmosphere: Establishing a Positive Work Environment (26min)

A positive workplace is paramount to your organization's long-term success. As a manager, you play a key role in establishing a positive work culture, and noticing when negativity takes the place of positivity. As a leader, you can foster a positive work environment by communicating honestly, respecting, supporting, engaging others, and maintaining a good attitude. This course will introduce you to best practices for creating a positive work environment. You'll learn the benefits of establishing a positive and engaged workforce, its characteristics, and concrete steps to create one. You'll also explore how to recognize the signs and impacts of negativity, and how to take corrective action if necessary to engage employees.