NILE Ultra Course Award Winners 2023
The Learning Technology Team would like to say a very big thank you and many congratulations to the four members of academic staff who received a NILE Ultra Course Award at the University’s Learning and Teaching Awards ceremony on Thursday 6th July.
This year’s winners were:
- Helen Caldwell & Joanne Barrow – EDUM074, International Perspectives on Education
- Alison Power – MID1028, Scholarly Practice in Midwifery
- Jodie Score – SLS1019, Introduction to Microbiology
The Ultra Course Awards recognise staff who have created excellent Ultra courses for their students, and each course submitted for an award was reviewed by a panel to ensure that it met the award criteria, which are that the course:
- Follows the NILE Design Standards (https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-design/nile-design-standards)
- Is clearly laid out and structured via the use of learning modules or folders at the top level, and uses, where appropriate, sub-folders to organise content within the top-level learning modules or folders
- Contains a variety of content, including activities for students to take part in
Nominations for the next round of Ultra Courses Awards will open in August 2023, where courses taught during the 2022/23 academic year will be considered. The winners will be formally announced at the 2024 UON Learning and Teaching Awards.
Blackboard Upgrades 2022/2023
The last twelve months have seen a lot of changes to NILE, and particularly to Ultra courses.
Between August 2022 and July 2023 we’ve blogged about 65 upgrades to Blackboard, almost all of which have been upgrades to Ultra courses:
- Advanced scoring options in multiple choice and multiple option test questions (July 2023)
- Complete/incomplete grade schema and formative assessment option (July 2023)
- Resizing media option in Ultra documents (July 2023)
- Announcements moved to the top navigation bar (June 2023)
- Ultra tests: upload questions from a file (June 2023)
- Journals – submission status filters available when using assessed journals (June 2023)
- Drag and drop content into to Ultra courses (May 2023)
- Email non-submitters of Blackboard Ultra assignments (May 2023)
- Improvements to hotspot questions in Ultra tests (May 2023)
- Ability to prevent backtracking in Ultra tests with page breaks (May 2023)
- Ability to reuse questions in Ultra question banks (May 2023)
- Improvements to Ultra rubrics (May 2023)
- Grading attempt selector improvements (May 2023)
- Ultra course content search (April 2023)
- Hotspot question improvements (April 2023)
- Multiple grading schemas (April 2023)
- Improved submission page sorting controls (April 2023)
- Discussion navigation improvements (April 2023)
- Quick access to student overview from multiple locations (April 2023)
- Ultra analytics improvement – deactivated students no longer show in the student progress reports (April 2023)
- Prevent editing or deletion of discussion posts (March 2023)
- Improved data and analytics in Ultra courses (March 2023)
- Improved attempt switching when grading student submissions with multiple attempts (March 2023)
- Polygon shape tool available when creating hotspot questions in Ultra tests (February 2023)
- Sort items by grading status in the Ultra gradebook (February 2023)
- Students can see other members of their group in Ultra courses (February 2023)
- Ally alternative format views count towards progress in progress tracking (February 2023)
- Prevent students from editing or deleting Ultra discussion posts after the due date (January 2023)
- Model answer question type supported in Ultra tests (January 2023)
- Improvements to Ultra test randomisation options (January 2023)
- Drag-and-drop content re-ordering improvements (December 2022)
- Course links (December 2022)
- Single student progress report (December 2022)
- Improvements for copying content (December 2022)
- Question banks descriptions and search (December 2022)
- Simpler exit actions for student preview (December 2022)
- Improvements to ‘needs grading’ count for Blackboard Ultra assignments (December 2022)
- Hotspot questions in Ultra tests (November 2022)
- Course activity report under the analytics tab in Ultra courses (November 2022)
- Student course access data available in student grades overview (November 2022)
- Improved grade history report available in the Ultra gradebook (November 2022)
- ‘Sticky’ Ultra gradebook view (November 2022)
- Turnitin icon is displayed in Turnitin assignments in Ultra and Original courses (November 2022)
- All content market icons appear alongside the content item in Ultra courses (November 2022)
- Improvements to unread messages indicator (November 2022)
- Student engagement reports for course content in Ultra courses (October 2022)
- Improved access to student grades overview in the gradebook in Ultra courses (October 2022)
- Enhanced auto save capability in the content editor in Ultra tests & assignments (October 2022)
- Maths formulas accessible with screen readers in Ultra courses (October 2022)
- Course name appears in browser tab in Ultra courses (October 2022)
- Add your preferred pronouns and name pronunciation to your NILE profile (September 2022)
- Copy rubrics into Ultra courses (September 2022)
- Ultra courses cannot be accidentally copied into themselves (September 2022)
- Improvements to question banks sorting controls (September 2022)
- Discussion replies in Ultra courses are available from the grading page (September 2022)
- Improvements to the Ultra test timer for students (September 2022)
- Microsoft Immersive Reader included as one of Ally’s alternative formats (September 2022)
- Turnitin problem in Original courses fixed (August 2022)
- Ability to manage question banks in Ultra courses (August 2022)
- Additional exceptions available for Blackboard assignments and tests in Ultra courses (August 2022)
- Improved Gradebook filters in Ultra courses (August 2022)
- Improved auto-save functionality for students when using the content editor in Ultra tests and assignments (August 2022)
- Improvements to LaTeX equation support in Ultra courses (August 2022)
- Import/Export group sets and members in Ultra courses (August 2022)
- Improvement to the Messages tool in Ultra courses (August 2022)
More information about all of the upgrades to Blackboard is available here: https://blogs.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/category/nile-update/
