Blackboard Ultra Courses now available to all OHIO instructors

All instructors are now able to opt in to Blackboard Ultra Courses by contacting the IT Service Desk. Ultra Courses have a cleaner, more modern design with easy-to-use workflows, and powerful new tools. The expansion of Blackboard Ultra to all instructors comes after a year of collecting feedback from preview participants. 

Preview participant and Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Business Management Technology Program, Greg Obi, enjoys the discussion assignment analytics tool that is available within Blackboard Ultra.

“In all my courses I attach more grade points to the discussion assignment,” Obi explained. “The analysis tool gives a good break down of each student’s contribution to the discussion topic – like how substantive the student’s post is, the level of sentence complexity of the post, the critical thinking level, amongst others. Discussion assignments are, for me, a great way of gauging students understanding of the concept/topic being discussed and how such applies to real-life scenarios.”  

There are a variety of new features but for those comfortable with Blackboard Learn, Obi encourages anyone who is interested in Ultra to view it as a new LMS platform and not just an improvement on Learn. 

“We should welcome change and approach it with the desire to learn something new, rather than being fixated on the differences between Blackboard Ultra and Blackboard Learn,” Obi said.

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) would like to thank all preview participants over the past year whose valuable feedback helped get Ultra Courses ready for broader adoption. 

If you would like to learn more, please visit Blackboard Ultra Courses.