The new features in this month’s Blackboard’s upgrade will be available from Friday 4th April. This month’s upgrade includes the following new/improved features to Ultra courses:
- Option to print Ultra documents
- Blackboard assignments indicate if students have reviewed feedback
- Maths support for Microsoft Word documents available for alternative formats
- NILE Ultra Course Awards 2025 – Nominations open until 30th April
Option to print Ultra documents
Following April’s upgrade, staff and students will have the option to print Ultra documents to PDF or directly to a printer.
Where knowledge check questions are used in an Ultra document the print option works differently for staff and students. When staff print the document both the questions and the answers to knowledge check questions will be given in the printed version, but when students print the document only the questions will be printed.
Blackboard assignments indicate if students have accessed feedback
While Turnitin assignments have for many years included an indicator to show whether students have accessed their feedback or not, Blackboard assignments have not had this feature. However, following this month’s upgrade staff will be able to see whether feedback has been accessed when using Blackboard assignments. Additionally, staff will also be able to see in the student overview page in Ultra courses whether students have accessed their feedback for Turnitin assignments too, making it easier for staff to get a quick overview about whether individual students have accessed the feedback for their assignments.
To access the student overview page in an Ultra document select the student either from their entry in the class register or the gradebook. As well as showing the time and date on which they last accessed the NILE course, the student overview page also displays an overview of their marks, a summary of their progress through the course (via the ‘Progress’ tab) showing which course materials they have accessed, and a more detailed log of their course interactions (via the ‘Activity Log’ tab). The ‘Student Activity’ report is also available from this page which details time spent in the course.
Maths support for Microsoft Word documents available for alternative formats
This month’s upgrade will see Ally’s alternative format conversion process upgraded to include the first version of support for OfficeMath found in Microsoft Word documents. Students downloading material in the HTML and BeeLine Reader alternative formats will now see equations rendered as MathML via MathJax in their browser, meaning that students will no longer be missing important equations when using Ally to download material in their preferred HTML option. This is the first of multiple releases to better support the rendering of equations within Ally’s alternative format options.
More information about what Ally is and how it works in NILE is available from: Blackboard Help – Ally
NILE Ultra Course Awards 2025 – Nominations open until 30th April
Have you put together a great NILE Ultra course for 2024/25? Or do you know someone who did? We’re really keen to highlight and celebrate examples of good practice with Ultra, so if you or someone you know has designed a good Ultra course we’d really like to hear from you. You can nominate yourself, or someone else, or multiple members of staff if the Ultra course has been created by more than one person. In your nomination we just need to know who it is that you’re nominating, which module the nomination is for, and what it is that you think has been done well. And you don’t have to tell us who is making the nomination if you don’t want to.
Nominated courses will be reviewed and Ultra Course Awards will be given according to the following criteria:
- The course follows the NILE Design Standards for Ultra Courses (https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-design/nile-design-standards);
- The course is clearly laid out and well-organised at the top level via the use of content containers (i.e., learning modules and/or folders);
- Content items within top-level content containers are clearly named and easily identifiable for students, and, where necessary, sub-folders are used to organise content within the top-level content containers;
- The course contains online activities for students to take part in.
Winners of 2025 Ultra Course Awards will be announced at the University’s summer Learning and Teaching Conference, and you can find out more about last year’s winners here.
• Ultra Course Awards 2025 Nomination Form
Please note that nominations for 2025 Ultra Course Awards close at 23:59 on the 30th of April, 2025
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?
