Is the Ultra Course View Right for Me?
Following the May 2019 uprade to the Ultra Base Navigation, faculty now have the option to adopt the Ultra Course View. The Ultra Course View is cleaner with a more modern design and easy-to-use workflows. It also has powerful new tools that are not available in the Original Course View, like Discussion Analytics. There are some features of the Original Course View that are not available in the Ultra Course View, however. Some are on their way, others have been discontinued. Learn more and decide whether your course will work well with Ultra Course View!
Keep in mind that all courses will continue to use the Original view by default, and faculty can choose whether to enable the Ultra Course View on one or more of their courses.
Review the Ultra Course View Feature Guide for a complete comparison of the features in Original and Ultra Course Views. The lists below summarize the differences that would have the biggest impact on your decision to switch to Ultra Course View.
Low Priority
Instead of setting a test exception to allow a student to have a longer timer or extended availability window on each test individually, in the Ultra Course View you set an Accommodation for the student on the Roster. Those Accommodations then apply to every assessment in the course.
Individual exceptions can be granted on the Submissions page for an Assignment or Test to provide a longer availability window or additional attempts.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes - use Ultra Course View. Functionality is an improvement over Original Course View.
In the Ultra Course View, Announcements appear as a pop-up when students enter the course. They must dismiss the pop-up before accessing any files or assessments in the course. Announcements are also included on the Activity Stream and in the Daily Digest emails. However, Announcements cannot be sent via email, as they can in the Original Course View.
If you need to reach students via email in an Ultra Course, you can send a Message and select the option to Send an email copy to recipients.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes - use Ultra Course View. Students have a lot of ways to see your Announcement, even if it can not be sent as an email.
Blackboard Collaborate is available in Ultra Course View, and is accessed within the Details & Actions area of an Ultra course. However, it is not visible until your course is Open. You will have to wait to create Collaborate sessions until your course is Open to students.
The Ultra Course View makes it easier for students to find and access Collaborate sessions. When a session is active, meaning that there are people in the session, the Collaborate link will flash with a purple activity indicator to draw attention to it.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes - use Ultra Course View. The limitation to wait to schedule sessions until the course is open is minor, and the added visibility is a useful upgrade.
You can track student discussion activity in the Ultra Course View in a few ways. You can view student activity in the gradebook grid view. You can also view discussion activity in Discussion Analytics and in the Grades & Participation area of the discussion. To view individual student analytics, click on the student’s name under Grades & Participation for an individual Discussion assignment. Students are allowed to edit or delete their posts (there is no option to turn this off), but all replies to a deleted post are preserved in the thread; a system note appears to let users know that a post has been deleted.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes - use Ultra Course View. The ability to delete and edit posts is a change from Original Course View, but the Discussion Analytics feature is a significant improvement that is not available in the Original Course View. Enable grading when you create a Discussion Forum by clicking the gear icon to access the Discussion Settings.
Ultra Course View does not support the option to enable subscriptions for Discussion Forums. In the Original Course View, this option allows you and your students to sign up to receive email notification whenever a post is made to a particular Discussion Forum.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes, use Ultra Course View. You will still receive notifications for new forums on the Activity Stream, in the daily digest email, and a purple icon next to the discussion title in the content view of your course will indicate when there are unread posts.
In the Ultra Course View, YouTube Videos can be embedded on a Document, which is similar to a simple and easy-to-create web page. If you have a YouTube video embedded as an Item or Mashup in your Original Course that you convert to the Ultra Course View, Blackboard will automatically convert it to a Document.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes, use Ultra Course View. The video can still be embedded, although you create it in a slightly different way.
In the Ultra Course View, folders can only be nested 2 levels deep. So, for example, you could have a Content folder with individual Weekly folders within it, but you could not then have a Chapter 1 folder within a weekly folder: Content (level 1) > Week 1 (level 2) > Chapter 1 (level 3). This promotes a simpler structure for your Blackboard course, which makes it easier for students to find the content, assessments, and activities that they need.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes, use Ultra Course View. You may need to rethink your folder or module structure. We recommend structuring your course with top-level folders as opposed to nested folders.
In the Ultra Course View, the workflow for creating group discussions is reversed from the Original Course View. In Ultra, you create a single Discussion Forum and then assign it to groups for private group discussions. Because you create new groups each time, you can reuse the membership from previous groups if you want consistent groups, or create new groups so students engage with other classmates each time.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes, use Ultra Course View. This workflow is different from Original Course View, but it is a huge improvement in managing group discussions. Instead of having separate discussion boards in each group, you have a single discussion board. In addition, if you enable grading, you will only see a single column in the Gradebook instead of a separate column for each group.
In the Ultra Course View, Tests can include blocks of questions that randomly assign students a sub-set of a larger question pool. For example, you can have a pool of 25 questions on a topic and have Blackboard randomly assign each students 5 of those questions.
The terminology has changed from Original Course View to Ultra Course View, based on Blackboard's user research and industry standards.
| Original Course View | Ultra Course View | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Pool | Question bank | A set of potential questions that can be used on any Test, individually or with a random sub-set |
| Random block and question set | Question pool | Created within a Test to specify that students receive a sub-set of the questions within these questions (e.g., the set of 25 questions out of which students will receive 5) |
To create a random set of questions for students, first create a Question Bank in the Details & Actions area. Then, create a Test, click the + icon to add a question, and select Add question pool.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Yes! The question pool provides the same functionality as the random block or question set in Original Course View. Once you are accustomed to the new terminology, this will be an easy transition.
Medium Priority
Achievements (badges and certificates) are not currently available in the Ultra Course View, but they are planned for a later release.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe, if certificates and badges were an incentive as opposed to a critical feature. If you use Ultra Course View, you can manually create and distribute certificates by inserting a local file in a Message or in a comment for a column in the Gradebook. You could use an external badging platform like Credly to issue digital badges, or distribute them using Conditional Availability to display it within the course when students have met the requirements (use the Performance option). You may want to continue using the Original Course View for now, until Achievements are available in the Ultra Course View, particularly if issuing a badge or certificate is critical to your course (such as for training courses).
Blogs are not currently available in the Ultra Course View, but they are planned for a later release.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe, if you can redesign your activity or use an external tool. You can use Ultra Course View but convert your Blog activities to use the Discussion Board instead, particularly given the cleaner, redesigned look and feel of Discussions in the Ultra Course View. You could also consider using an external blog platform like Wordpress, if the blog format is critical. Otherwise, continue using the Original Course View for now.
In the Ultra Course View, you set up the Overall Grade to automatically calculate student course grades. At this time, that is limited to using percentages for weighted grading, as opposed to calculating grades with total points. There are two potential workarounds, however.
Workaround 1: You can use the percentage system and convert your points to percentages by dividing each the points possible for each assessment by the overall points possible for the course.
Workaround 2: You can create a Calculated Column to build a formula that calculates the students’ grades based on points and then use the Overall Grade to display the students’ grades only based on the Calculated Column.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe. The workarounds will likely work with your grading scale, and you can meet individually with us to set up your Overall Grade. There may be some complex grading systems that the Ultra Course View cannot support.
In the Ultra Course View, there is not a feature to automatically drop one or more lowest grades from a group of assessments. There is a workaround, however, that will work for dropping 1 lowest grade (but not for more than 1).
Workaround: Add a Calculation and build a formula with TOTAL (Category) – MIN (CATEGORY), and then use that calculation instead of the category in the Overall grade.
This does get tricky if the individual assessments don’t have the same points possible that leads to inconsistent results in how many points the calculation is worth in the Gradebook, but the overall calculated grade is correct even though the column looks wrong.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe, if you are only dropping the 1 lowest grade. You can meet individually with us to set this up. Blackboard is planning to develop a better mechanism for dropping one or more grades, but has not confirmed a timeline.
In the Ultra Course View, you cannot access the HTML editor to directly edit HTML code or add embed code for multimedia or widgets/tools, like a Vimeo video, O365 document, or Twitter feed. You can still embed YouTube videos in a Document (similar to a simple and easy-to-create web page).
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe, if you can link to the multimedia or tool instead of using an embed code. You can create a link that sits inline with your other content by clicking the + icon, choosing Create from the menu, and then Link from the side panel. You can also create a hyperlink on the text editor by selecting the text you want to link and clicking the Insert/Edit Link button on the toolbar.
Journals are not currently available in the Ultra Course View, but they are planned for a later release.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe, if you can redesign your activity. For private Journals, use an Assignment. If you enable multiple submissions, students can make multiple posts to the Assignment as they would have to a Journal.
Rubrics are available in the Ultra Course View, but with some limitations. Currently, rubrics are limited to percentage and percentage-range only; there are no point or point-range options. Also, rubrics are limited to a maximum of ten rows and ten columns.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe, if your rubric does not have more than ten rows and ten columns. You would need to convert your points to percentages, which we can help you with. Blackboard will also convert them automatically if you use the Course Conversion process.
Surveys are not available in the Ultra Course View, but they are planned for future development.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe, if you can use an outside survey tool. The university has licensed Qualtrics for all faculty and students, and the Forms tool in O365 is simple and intuitive.
In the Ultra Course View, you have a single control to determine whether students can see the answer choices, their submitted answer, and the correct answer immediately after submitting a test. This setting can be changed at any time, but it must be done so manually as opposed to the conditional settings available in Original Course View. Enabling the setting is an on/off choice, and you cannot specify the types of feedback students can see (e.g., you cannot show students their submitted answers but not show the correct answers).
Is Ultra Right for Me?
If you are concerned about students seeing the questions and answers for your Test, you may want to continue using the Original Course View until features to limit the feedback options are available. These features are being developed and should be available soon.
Wikis are not available in the Ultra Course View, and are not planned for future development.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe, if you can redesign your activity or use an external tool. Instead of a Wiki, you could use a shared document in Microsoft OneDrive or a classroom OneNote Notebook, which provide better collaboration tools. You could also use a wiki tool outside of Blackboard. Otherwise, continue using the Original Course View for now.
High Priority
In the Ultra Course View, Delegated Grading is called Parallel Grading. While it is available, there are some significant limitations. Currently, parallel grading is limited to 2 graders and assumes that each grader is grading all of the students. There is no way to use Parallel Grading to assign graders to a subset of students, as you can in the Original Course View, or to have more than 2 graders. Also, students cannot see the rubrics or comments made by the graders, so rubrics and comments would need to be recreated when grades were reconciled.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Probably not. If you rely on Delegated Grading, you may want to continue using the Original Course View until more features are added to the Parallel Grading feature.
The Ultra Course View is well-suited to a fully online course. It is easy to find course materials, Discussion Boards are more modern, and there are more embedded analytics on student progress and achievement. It is significantly different from a course in the Original Course View, however, and students in a fully online program expect a consistent experience for their courses.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Maybe. If you are teaching an online course that is not part of a fully online degree program, you can use the Ultra Course View. If your online course is part of a fully online degree program, we recommend that you first discuss the transition with the other faculty in the program and with your instructional designer, if applicable.
Publishers such as Cengage, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Wiley, and others are working on updating their integrations to be compatible with the Ultra Course View, but none of them are available at this time.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
Probably not. You can use the Ultra Course View and direct students to the external publisher website to use materials, but you will have to input grades manually in the Gradebook (or at least use the feature to download, update, and upload the grades). If integration is integral to your course, you may want to wait until the integration becomes available.
There are several question types that are not yet included in ULTRA, including:
- Calculated Formula
- Calculated Numeric
- Either/Or (you can use True/False question or Multiple Choice)
- File Response
- Hot Spot
- Jumbled Sentence
- Opinion Scale/Likert
- Ordering
- Quiz Bowl
- Short Answer (you can use Essay question)
Most of these are being developed over time, or other question types can be substituted.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
If you don’t use these question types, you can use Ultra Course View. You may also be able to redesign your questions to utilize the currently available question types, including Essay, Fill in the Blank (one option encompasses both Original View’s Fill in the Blank and Fill in Multiple Blanks options), Matching, Multiple Choice (one option that encompasses both Original View’s Multiple Choice and Multiple Answer options), and True/False. There are plans for creating some of the missing question types, with the calculated question types at the top of the priority list.
Self-and-Peer Assessment is not available in the Ultra Course View, although it is planned. Blackboard is completely rebuilding this feature to be more flexible and intuitive.
Is Ultra Right for Me?
If Self-and-Peer Assessment is critical to your course design, you may want to continue using the Original Course View until it becomes available in the Ultra Course View. You could also use an alternative, like online surveys or paper forms, to collect this feedback.
