Instructional Technology

Blackboard news for Fall 2025:

Jeff Welsh, Director of Instructional Technology in the IT division

This Fall 2025, all new course sites in the Blackboard system will use the Ultra style course site theme. So the question on your mind should be…What is an Ultra Course site and why are we switching to them in Fall 2025?

For a number of years Blackboard has been supporting two course themes called Original and Ultra. Hood has been using variations of the Original course theme over the last 24 years with the familiar left hand oriented and customizable menu area. In Ultra the user interface has been enhanced with a unified modern look that benefits students and has added many rich content management tools and features for faculty. Blackboard has fully embraced Ultra as its default course theme and has only provided new features and improvements over the last two years to this version of Blackboard course sites. Original courses have not seen any new additional features or systemic improvements in over two years. Blackboard has effectively abandoned Original courses and put that style of course in maintenance mode only. We want our Blackboard community to have the best user interface available and start enjoying the benefits of all that Ultra courses have to offer. This decision to move to Ultra courses in the Fall of 2025 was carefully made in consultation with the Academic Technology Group, the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Online Program Leadership Council and the Provost. These groups that represent faculty as it relates to academic technologies all agree that Ultra course modernization in Fall 2025 is the right next step with our Blackboard Learning Management System.

We understand that shifting from Original to Ultra Courses is going to be a significant change for all faculty. Students will have a smaller learning curve, as the uniformity of Ultra courses and the modern interface lend themselves to ease of use over Original courses. Whether you are a faculty user or a student user, Ultra will not be totally unfamiliar to our Hood Community. You may not have noticed that many of the features found in Ultra courses are already part of your day to day Blackboard lives. Since 2018 the Ultra style and functionality themes have been appearing in our Blackboard system in various ways for both Faculty and Students. Ultra’s look was first captured in the Blackboard mobile app and that theme has been the persistent user interface since 2018. In the Summer of 2022, Hood shifted to the Ultra Base Navigation style for our Blackboard Institution Page. This Ultra infused base navigation theme has many stylistic features that you will see in Ultra courses and it unifies the look and feel of Blackboard from the initial entry point to course site level. Ultra features have also appeared in areas like the Attendance tool and in iterations of the content textbox editor over the last few years. We think you will find that Hood Blackboard Ultra course sites will retain many of the familiar Blackboard features faculty and students are already accustomed to.

As mentioned there are so many advantages with Ultra courses to look forward to as follows:

• A Common user interface for all course sites
• Ultra was designed to improve student interaction with Blackboard and data shows that with peer institutions who have already made the change in their Blackboard systems
• Ultra has modern responsive technology for viewing course content on multiple devices
• Streamlined course content creation and management tools make adding, editing and finding content so much better
• Typical uploaded content file formats like Word, Power Point and PDF files all appear inline on screen with download options that faculty can control

Blackboard Ultra offers extensive new tools and features only found in Ultra courses:

• New Announcements Tool gives visibility to faculty on student views and allows deployment controls
• New look for the Grade Center as the new “Gradebook” gives faculty vastly improved grading tools
• New Messages tool keeps course communications inside Blackboard and still provides email notifications
• New Analytics tool helps faculty track student performance in their course
• New Search Course Content tool gives students and faculty keyword search options for locating content
• New Batch Edit tool allows faculty to edit content in bulk
• New Progress Tracking feature allows more situational awareness of when students interact with course content
• New AI Course Design Assistant provides suggestions for content creation based on faculty input prompts
• New AI Conversations options for student Socratic Questioning or Role Playing prompt activities
• New Print to paper or PDF Assignment and Test options
• New Content Designer provides more flexibility to display content in various layouts

If you are wondering if Original Course content and assessments can be copied to or imported into Ultra Courses, Blackboard has that covered. As of the most recent Blackboard release, over 95% of content, features and tools from Original courses can be re-used in Ultra courses. Some nuisance circumstances exist, but in testing IT has found that most Original content comes over in a 1:1 ratio for the majority of course sites. All third party integrations for Zoom, Panopto, Portfolio Assignments, Respondus, ThinkingStorm and Text Book Publishers are also supported in Ultra Courses.

To help faculty acclimate and learn the new Ultra course interface. IT will be offering multiple options for self-paced learning/exploration, technical/instructional office hours and traditional training opportunities. Faculty can pick from these options starting in March 2025:

• All current faculty will be enrolled in an individualized Ultra Sandbox site, to learn and explore options with an Ultra course of their own
• Faculty can create a support ticket in the IT Helpdesk Support Portal to request access to the Ultra Preview in an existing course site that is inactive. This allows you to temporarily look at how your Original course site is going to convert to and Ultra course.
• IT will host Ultra Office hours to take any questions or discuss content transition concerns. These office hours will be offered at various times starting in March on Zoom. Please visit the Academic Technology Training Blackboard site Calendar area for more information and to register.
• IT will host Ultra training opportunities on a variety of topics starting in March and continuing through August of 2025. These trainings will be offered at various times starting in March on Zoom. Please visit the Academic Technology Training Blackboard site Calendar area for more information and to register for upcoming training.
• IT will provide self-paced tutorials, training recordings and Blackboard Ultra help resources through the Academic Technology Training Blackboard site

To learn more about Ultra Modernization and what it has to offer the Hood Community. Please take a look at these excellent resources to get started on your Ultra learning journey:

• Ultra Course quick look video (Instructors)
• Ultra Course quick look video (Students)
• Ultra Course Theme Overview (Instructors)
• Ultra Course Theme Overview (Students)
• Original to Ultra Feature Map
• Original to Ultra Course Terminology
• What’s New in Blackboard
• Blackboard Product Roadmap

We look forward to sharing with you more about what Ultra Modernization has to offer our Hood Community in the future.

Blackboard news for Spring 2022:

The Faculty Academic Technology and Infrastructure Committee in conjunction with IT reviewed a multi-year proposal negotiated with Blackboard to change some service offerings and expand others over a five year contract period. IT is happy to report that the contract was unanimously approved and we will continue to use the Blackboard Learning Management System through June 30, 2027. With this new contract which begins on July 1, 2022. Hood Blackboard users will see the following changes and additions:

• To keep Blackboard as modern as possible for our user community and to take advantage of new Blackboard technologies for streamlined information access. IT will switch our Blackboard system from the "My Institution" traditional module based landing page to the new and more responsive Ultra Based Navigation landing page. To learn more about Ultra Based Navigation, click here. This change will occur in early June 2022.
   
• Blackboard Ally is a tool that will allow students greater access to accessible content and support the important development of Universal Design in Blackboard course content. Ally is a tool that will analyze instructor content and provide recommendations and conversion services for a variety of media formats. For more information on what Ally has to offer for Blackboard users, click here. Ally will be made available in July 2022.
   
• Blackboard Collaborate Ultra will continue to be offered as an integrated videoconferencing and collaboration tool in all Blackboard course sites, but will be right sized contractually for our intended usage of this tool. This allows for increased cost savings and still provides the same level of service users are accustomed to going forward. To learn about new features added to Collaborate Ultra that are available now, click here.
   
• Over the last three years, IT has seen tremendous benefits in Blackboard using the Inline Messaging tool powered by the Impact software integration. Impact which also powers the software behind the 24/7 support button inside Blackboard has given IT a very powerful way to place messaging inside of Blackboard and keep the Hood Community up to date on important information, software issues and work arounds for common browser problems just to name a few examples. With more changes coming to the look and feel of Blackboard in the near future and a desire to see how Blackboard is being used. IT has decided to expand the capabilities of the Impact platform adding their targeted Campaign learning feature and their deep data LMS analytics tool called Insights. To learn more about what these two new features have to offer, click here for Impact Campaigns and here for Impact Insights. These features will be available in July 2022 and are administrative features used to communicate, educate and analyze information in Blackboard that are not tools for instructors or students.
   
• Blackboard 24/7 Email and Chat Support will be discontinued and replaced with 24/7 support through the new AI Chatbot tool from Blackboard. This right sizes the 24/7 support tools offered in Blackboard based on three years of usage data and provides a new and more dynamic on-demand support technology tool outside of normal IT Help Desk office hours for users. Click here to learn more about the new AI Chatbot coming in July 2022.
   
• Based on growing content storage needs, the expansion of fully online course offerings and a desire to retain previous term on-demand course site access. Hood's Blackboard cloud storage allotment will be increased from 1 TB to 2 TB starting on July, 1, 2022.

 

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Repondus 4.0: Offline Test Making Tool
Respondus 4.0 lets you create exams and assessments the way you want. With Respondus 4, you can quickly create assessments offline using a Windows interface, then publish directly to the Hood Blackboard system. Respondus 4 supports 15 common question types, including calculated and algorithmic formats. You can insert mathematic and scientific symbols using the Respondus Equation Editor or MathType, use enhanced formatting such as bulleted lists and tables, add images, video, and links to content on other servers. With Respondus 4 you have access to thousands of Respondus-compatible publisher test banks – FREE to instructors who adopt a participating textbook. You can also import questions from MS Word format (with images imported intact), rich text, QTI, and tab/comma delineated files. Below are some resources to learn more about Respondus 4.0:

• Respondus 4 Videos and Guides
• Test Bank Network Overview
• Search for a Test Bank
• Recent Training Webinar Recording

If you would like to use Respondus 4.0, please submit a work order to the IT Help Desk at helpdesk@hood.edu to install this pre-configured software on your Hood PC.

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New Virtual Text Box Editor
Blackboard recently updated the textbox editor commonly used throughout the interface with an improved version. With that change, some of the commonly used icons and features shifted from their familiar positions in the toolbar. A few new features were also added. Please use the guide found here to learn about these new changes in location and features.

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Blackboard/Zoom/Panopto Integration

Hood has connected Blackboard to the Zoom Video Conferencing system and the Panopto Video Content Management System. This allows all Zoom cloud recordings to be copied and processed for optimal viewing in the Panopto system. Panopto also serves as a platform to store all video content created by faculty and students to reduce the storage burden these large file types have on Blackboard cloud storage. For step by step instructions on how to enable Zoom in Blackboard for your course site. Please use the supplied instructions link below:

Create a Zoom meeting in Blackboard for cloud recording to Panopto

For an explanation of how the Blackboard/Zoom/Panopto integration works, please view the video found here.

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Respondus LockDown Browser & Monitor Module


Hood has connected the Respondus LockDown Browser system with the Monitor option to Blackboard. Respondus allows Faculty to administer online testing in Blackboard inside a secured browser that prohibits the user from leaving the test session or using any disallowed web sites or applications during a test. To learn more click here. Additionally, faculty can employ the Respondus Monitor tool for unattended virtual test proctoring of student test takers. To learn more click here.

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24/7 Blackboard Support Chat & Email Help


Hood has connected the EesySoft 24/7 support system for Chat & Email help options after normal business hours at Hood. Blackboard users can get quick self help answers on a number of topics and ask for help from a live agent as needed. 

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Barnes & Noble AIP Module

Hood has connected the Barnes & Noble Adoptions and Insights Portal to Blackboard and our Office 365 cloud authentication system for easy access by faculty for course material review and adoption.

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Campus Labs Beacon Quick Alert Module


Hood has connected the Campus Labs Beacon Quick Alert "Create Notification" link for faculty to easily add student alerts as needed without leaving the Blackboard system.

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Online Learning Resources Site Module

Students and Faculty have direct access in Blackboard to the Online Success Toolkit website found here.

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ThinkingStorm Online Tutoring

Hood students have 10 free hours of online tutoring through ThinkingStorm per semester or can book time with a Hood approved in person/virtual tutor. Live, drop-in and appointment-based support is available in evenings, on weekends, and when Hood tutors are not available.

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Bb Annotate

Bb Annotate is Blackboard's new annotation tool offering more robust features than the old Box View Inline Grading tool for customizable feedback to students. Bb Annotate features include a sidebar summary view, freehand drawing tools, various color selections, and much more. To learn more click here.

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Blackboard Collaborate Ultra

Blackboard Collaborate is a simple, convenient, and reliable web conferencing solution built for education and training. Engage with the material and your instructor. Thanks to robust collaboration and conference tools, everyone feels like they're in the same room together, regardless of their location or device. To learn more click here.

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Add Files from Cloud Storage (Office 365 OneDrive for Business)

Faculty or Students can add files from their personal cloud storage services or connect Blackboard to their OneDrive for Business through Hood's Office 365 system. This allows users to generate content on any number of devices and then easily access it in the cloud for placement or submittal on Blackboard. To learn more click here.

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Mobile Apps for Faculty

Blackboard Instructor is a mobile app that enables you to view course content, grade assignments, connect with students in discussions, and launch Blackboard Collaborate sessions. The app is available for iOS and Android mobile devices. To learn more click here.

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Mobile Apps for Students

The Blackboard app is designed especially for students to view content and participate in courses. The current version of the app is available on iOS and Android mobile devices. To learn more click here.

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Mobile Friendly Theme

The Learn 2016 theme for Blackboard Learn is a modern version of the user interface that incorporates elements from the new Blackboard design language including color, fonts, and spacing for greater consistency between Blackboard Learn and the Blackboard app. This theme is a significant improvement over the previous one with an optimized experience for our ever increasing community of mobile users. To learn more click here.

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Avatars

Avatars are personal profile images that allow users to identify themselves to their learning communities.Avatars appear in the page header, people tool, blogs, journals, discussions, wikis, and roster. Avatars also appears in the notifications modules, such as What's New. The modules may appear on the My Institution tab or on a course's home page. To learn more about how you can upload your own personal image for use on Blackboard click here.

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Attendance Tool

An attendance tool has been added to Blackboard for faculty who wish to track and grade students based on attendance. Attendance records can be shared with students or hidden from view if desired. To learn more click here.

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Drag and Drop Files
Users can now drag files from your computer to the "hot spot" in the Attach Files area.
More on Instructor - Drag and Drop Files | Student - Drag and Drop Files.

*Files larger than 500 MB cannot be uploaded to Blackboard SaaS by Faculty or Students at this time.

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Course Quick Tools Module
This tool also known as "Qwickly" provides faculty users with the ability to rapidly and efficiently turn On/Off courses, post general announcements as well as send e-mail to all or selected courses in one easy operation. Students can also e-mail all or selected course instructors in one easy to use and simple interface. To learn more click here.

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Hood Links Module
This module provides access to important academic systems and tools at Hood. Users selecting the Self Service link will not be required to login to that system from with-in Blackboard. Both Blackboard and Self Service now use the same Active Directory Federated Services(ADFS) authentication. ADFS authentication provides a seamless Single Sign-On experience for Hood users.

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New Icons for Course Items
A new icon set has been applied to all system courses and organizations
More on - New Icons for Course Items

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Cancel/Submit buttons move with you
The Cancel/Submit buttons move with you on screen and will always pin to the bottom of the page regardless of device.
More on - Cancel/Submit buttons move with you

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Submission Receipts
When students submit assignments successfully, the Review Submission History page appears with information about their submitted assignments and a success message with a confirmation number. Students can copy and save this number as proof of their submissions and evidence for academic disputes. For assignments with multiple attempts, students receive a different number for each submission. Email notifications for submission receipts, students will also receive an email with a confirmation number and other details for each submission.
More on Instructor - Submission Receipts | Student - Submission Receipts.

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Reminders
Instructors can send email reminders from Grade Center columns to students and members of groups who have missing coursework. Instructors receive a success message at the top of the screen when the email is sent. Reminders can also be sent for assignments with anonymous or delegated grading enabled. To protect anonymity, students' names and attempt statuses aren't revealed.
More on Instructor - Reminders.

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Needs Grading Improvements
When you allow multiple attempts, you may not need to grade all of them. The Needs Grading page automatically displays only the attempts that need grading based on which attempt you chose to grade—first or last.
More on Instructor - Needs Grading Improvements.

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Course Activity Overview
You can run several types of course reports to view information about course usage and activity. You can view summaries of course usage such as which course areas are used most frequently and course access patterns for specific students.
More on Instructor - Course Activity Reports.

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Default System and Course Site Themes