The new features in Blackboard’s August upgrade will be available from Friday 6th December, along with two new features which are available already. This month’s upgrade includes the following new/improved features to Ultra courses:
- NILE > SITS grades transfer process (available now)
- Turnitin Paper Lookup Tool (available now)
- AI Design Assistant: Rubric generation improvements
- New post indicator for Ultra discussions
- Important updates to the storage and management of Kaltura media (from 31st December)
- End of life for guest access to NILE, including welcome courses and organisations, and removal of old Original courses and organisations (from 31st December)
NILE > SITS grades transfer process
The process for sending grades from NILE to SITS is now available. Full guidance on how the process works, along with a list of FAQs, is available at: Learning Technology Team – Transferring grades from NILE to SITS
Turnitin Paper Lookup Tool
The Turnitin Paper Lookup Tool is now available, which means that staff can easily find assessments submitted to Turnitin on NILE courses which are no longer available. The tool is accessed from the course content area of a NILE course, in the Details & Actions menu, under ‘Books and Tools: View course and institution tools’.
The paper lookup tool is the same in all NILE courses, so it doesn’t matter which NILE course you access it through. Guidance on how to use the Paper Lookup Tool is available at: Turnitin – The paper lookup tool for Feedback Studio
AI Design Assistant: Rubric generation Improvements
Blackboard have upgraded the AI tool powering the auto-generation of rubrics. Following the upgrade, Blackboard say that rubrics, “will now have more complex outputs. The AI Design Assistant will also work faster. Instructors can expect better rubrics, even for long, complicated assessments.”
More information about using the AI Design Assistant is available from: Learning Technology Team – AI Design Assistant
New post indicator for Ultra discussions
We added a “New” indicator that displays next to posts and replies that a user has not yet accessed.
More information about using discussions in Ultra courses is available from: Blackboard Help – Discussions
Important updates to the storage and management of Kaltura media (from 31st December)
As previously announced, in order to make more effective use of our available storage in Kaltura, the audio/video streaming system used in NILE, in October 2024 ITSG (IT Steering Group) approved changes to the storage and management of Kaltura media. Removal of media files from Kaltura will now take place as follows:
- Staff and Student Media: Media files with no plays to be permanently deleted after three years.
- Student Media: Media files with one or more plays to be permanently deleted eight years after upload date.
- Staff Media: Media files with no plays in the last eight years to be permanently deleted.
End of life for guest access to NILE, including welcome courses and organisations, and removal of old Original courses and organisations (from 31st December)
As previously announced, in order to implement necessary security measures, from the 1st of January 2025 guest access to NILE will no longer be possible. This means that only logged in users will be able to access NILE. Guest access to Ultra courses has never been possible, however, some old Original courses, including welcome courses, may still be available via guest access and the information they contain may need to be relocated.
Additionally, please note that while most NILE courses are regularly archived and removed from NILE in accordance with the NILE Archiving and Retention Policy, some old Original courses and organisations remain on the system and will continue to be removed from NILE on a rolling ten year basis. Currently, all Original courses and organisations created before 01/01/2014 are no longer available on NILE, and courses created before 01/01/2015 will be no longer be available from 1st January 2025.
Staff who are concerned that they may be affected by either of these matters are encouraged to contact Robert Farmer, the Learning Technology Manager, to discuss their requirements. Where information needs to be available to people who do not have a NILE login, it will be necessary to use another platform to provide this. However, where using NILE is still the best option, we will be happy to provide a new Ultra course or organisation to replace the old Original one.
More information
As ever, please get in touch with your learning technologist if you would like any more information about the new features available in this month’s upgrade: Who is my learning technologist?
