The UMBC Instructional Technology Update is provided by the Division of Information Technology for students, faculty and staff. If you have questions or need help, please consult the Blackboard Help FAQs or directly at www.umbc.edu/blackboard/help.  You can also contact the Technology Support Center at 410.455.3838 or submit an RT (Request Tracker) ticket via the myUMBC Help Menu or directly at my.umbc.edu/help.

HEADLINES

What’s New

• Anthology announces retirement date for Blackboard Original Courses & Organizations
• FA2025 Courses Created in Blackboard on July 16, 2025
  • New Online Form Available to Request Merge of Blackboard Course Shells
• UMBC to migrate from Panopto to YuJa by March 2026
• Meet AVA: Blackboard’s AI-Powered Virtual Assistant for Faculty
• CourseArc offers new AI-supported features including image descriptions
• New Voicethread login for campus access

Training & Professional Development (recording archive | view upcoming events)

• New Faculty Orientation to Blackboard Ultra (8.12)
• Getting Started with Google Meet (8.13)
• Ultra Quick Start: Copy Content into Blackboard Ultra (8.14)
• What's New in Ultra Courses for Teaching & Learning FA2025 (8.14)
• Create Accessible Content with Google Office Tools (8.18)
• Ally Course Reporting to Improve Accessibility (8.19)
• What’s New About UMBC’s Blackboard Course Creation & Enrollment Process? (8.19)
• Accessible Images: Basics of Alt Text & Decorative Images (8.20)
• Poll Everywhere Course Management Features Training (8.20)
• Create Accessible Content with Microsoft Office Tools (8.21)
• New Faculty Orientation to Blackboard Ultra (8.21)
• Ultra Essentials: Create Assessments in Blackboard Ultra (8.25)

In Case You Missed It: Recordings & Tips

• Creating Accessible Content Series 
  • Digital Accessibility Guidelines Checklist
  • Creating Accessible Documents (44:51)
  • Creating Accessible Presentations (31:24) 
  • Creating Accessible Instructional Videos (45:19)
• Course Prep Checklists
  • Tips to Wrap Up Your Blackboard Course for the Semester
  • Effective Practices for Delivering Blackboard Tests
  • Tips to Get Your Blackboard Course Ready for Next Semester

Other DoIT & UMBC News

• Tom Penniston selected for prestigious Fulbright Award to advance learning analytics
• Internet2 NET+ Honors UMBC’s Jack Suess with the 2025 Cloud Superhero Award
• Security Updates:
  • Update your annual eduroam wifi Certificate
  • GlobalProtect VPN Authentication Change
  • How To Detect a Phishing Email
• How to Get the Most Out of Webex

This fall, UMBC faculty will have the opportunity to test Blackboard’s new AI Virtual Assistant (AVA), a suite of tools designed to support common teaching tasks. 

AVA Feedback Assistant will launch in early fall. This tool offers two functions to help instructors save time while maintaining high-quality, student-centered communication:

• Summarize Feedback generates a clear summary of rubric-based grading. AVA does not read student submissions and cannot evaluate student work. 
• Rewrite Feedback transforms short grading notes into polished, constructive responses.

Instructors must choose to activate AVA each time they want to use the functions.

Coming later this year, AVA Responses will help address frequently asked student questions send via Messages by generating real-time answers based on your course content. Whether it’s a question about deadlines or grading criteria, responses are linked to the original source in the course and shared with the instructor, who can review, confirm or correct as needed.

AVA will be available for faculty use through June 30, 2026, and ongoing feedback about these tools will be essential in evaluating the effectiveness of AVA and its long-term potential at UMBC. 

An information session will be scheduled in September when AVA is available. As with all of Blackboard’s AI tools, instructors must choose to activate AVA each time they want to use the functions.

About Blackboard’s AI Tools

UMBC currently uses Blackboard’s Course Design Assistant tools, which include AI support to:

• Define a course structure including learning modules, titles, descriptions.

• Generate images based on keywords for learning module thumbnails or course content, or search the Unsplash stock image gallery.

• Generate test questions and question banks, authentic assessments, journal and discussion prompts based on selected content in the course or other inputted keywords.

• Create rubrics drawing on an assessment, discussion, learning objectives, or selected course content.

• Create Socratic or roleplaying AI conversations around a topic or scenario to engage your students.

• Design attractive layouts for Ultra Documents that include images, knowledge checks, and helpful headings.

All AI tools and features are optional and available under Anthology’s AI Trustworthy Framework, giving instructor full control over how and when they use them. 

For more information about Blackboard’s AI tools, please contact Instructional Technology via RT ticket.

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We’d like to hear about your experience working at UMBC, so we are conducting an employee engagement survey.

Yesterday, an email was sent that included an access link. Please take a couple of minutes to complete the survey and share your feedback with us.

Energage, an independent research company, is facilitating this survey. To protect your confidentiality, they will not disclose your identity to us when completing the survey.

A few things to note:

• If you do not receive the survey email within the next week, please check your spam or junk email for a message from “Energage Survey.” To open the survey invitation, you may have to confirm the email is not spam.
• If you delete the survey email accidentally, you will receive a reminder message within a few days that includes another access link.
• Please do not forward the survey email to a colleague. Each email has a unique code to prevent multiple responses from a single person.
• Please reach out to Energage at 1-800-749-0187 or reply to your survey email if you have questions.

Thanks for taking the time to complete the survey. We look forward to your feedback!

Senators are the bridge between your department and student concerns such as hiring, funding, feedback, quality of life issues, and so on. It will be detrimental to you as your interests and concerns would not be brought forth to the relevant administration in a timely manner, in case GSA does not find representatives from your departments. Kindly volunteer for this role.

The Graduate Student Association (GSA) is now accepting nominations for four College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences (CNMS) Graduate Senator positions — an opportunity to represent over 2,500 graduate students and shape the future of student life at UMBC.

You can nominate yourself or another eligible graduate student. You or your nomination must be from the CNMS college.

Eligibility Criteria:

• Open exclusively to all CNMS graduate students (Master’s and Ph.D.). No other departments and majors are eligible.

• Must be in good academic standing (GPA of 3.0 or higher)

• Must be graduating in Spring 2026 or later
  (Senate term ends June 30, 2026)

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