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"NILE Upgrades"
The March upgrade, which will be available from Friday 4th March, includes some minor changes to way that learning modules in Ultra courses are set up and modified.
Learning Modules
When setting up learning modules after Friday 4th of March, the following panel will open up once a learning module has been selected for creation:
From this panel, the learning module can be named and a description can be added. The learning module availability can also be set (‘Visible to students’ or ‘Hidden from students’), or release conditions can be set allowing the learning module to be made available to all or only certain groups of students. Release conditions can also include the learning module being made visible after and/or until a particular date.
Additionally, learning modules can be set so that students have to navigate through the content in order and cannot skip ahead. To enable this, ‘Forced sequence’ should be chosen when setting up the learning module.
To update any of the learning module settings after it has been created, simply select the ellipsis menu on the right-hand side of the learning module and choose ‘Edit’.
Also, learning module descriptions are now visible immediately, and students no longer have to open the learning module to read the description:
You can find out more about how to use learning modules in Ultra courses at: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Course_Content/Create_Content/Create_Containers_for_Content/Create_Learning_Modules
More information
As ever, please get in touch with your learning technologist if you would like any more information about the February upgrade: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist
| Sorry. The upgraded version of Blackboard scheduled to be available from the 4th of February has been delayed, and will now be available from the 11th of February. |
February’s upgrade, which will be in place from the morning of Friday 4th February, adds additional functionality to Blackboard Ultra test settings, and brings in the option for granular copying of content from Original courses to Ultra courses. Also included in the February update is a bug fix which means that the date and time shown on submission receipts for Blackboard Ultra assignments will, from Friday 4th February onwards, be the date and time that the submission was made, not when it was started. Note that this bug did not affect Turnitin assignments – the submission receipt for Turntin assignments has always shown the correct date and time of submission.
Blackboard Ultra test settings
From the 4th of February onwards, staff will be able to select two new options when setting up tests in Ultra courses:
- Prohibit late submissions
- Prohibit new attempts after due date
Selecting prohibit late submissions enforces a hard deadline and prevents students from making a late submission. In-progress and saved attempts will auto-submit at the due date, and students will receive a submission receipt via email. Specified accommodations are still respected.
Selecting prohibit new attempts after due date prevents students from beginning a new attempt after the due date.
Note that selecting ‘prohibit late submissions’ auto-enables ‘prohibit new attempts after due date.’ However, staff can enable the ‘prohibit new attempts after due date’ option on its own.
If an instructor enables the due date and/or time limit, students will see these details, as they will appear in the Details & Information section for the assessment.
Please note the current limitations with these new settings. ‘Prohibit late submissions’ does not work in combination with Peer review, Group submissions, or Offline submissions. And the ‘prohibit new attempts after due date’ setting enabled on its own does not work with Peer review, or with Offline submissions.
You can find out more about setting up tests in Ultra courses at: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Tests_Pools_Surveys/Create_Tests_and_Surveys
Granular copy content from Original to Ultra courses
Staff making use of the copy content function in Ultra courses will now find that content from their Original courses is available to copy into their Ultra courses. More importantly, and more usefully, the upgraded Ultra copy content tool allows staff to select individual elements of their Original courses, including content items, folders, and tests, to copy into their Ultra courses.
However, please be aware that content copied from Original courses into Ultra courses is transformed (or Ultra-ified) in the process, and incompatible elements are stripped out of the copy. This means that any content copied into an Ultra course from an Original course needs to be manually checked over before it is made available to students. In the case of tests, in particular, incompatible questions will be removed during the Original-to-Ultra conversion process.
More information about the Ultra copy content tool is available from: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Course_Content/Reuse_Content/Ultra_Copy_Content
Blackboard Ultra assignment receipts
Students submitting Blackboard assignments in Ultra courses will have found that the submission date and time on the receipt was the date and time that the submission was started. From the 4th of February the date and time shown on the receipt will be the date and time of actual submission.
You can find out more about setting up and using Blackboard Ultra assignments at: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Assignments/Create_and_Edit_Assignments
More information
As ever, please get in touch with your learning technologist if you would like any more information about the February upgrade: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist
The way that Turnitin is integrated into NILE is changing. This will affect all staff who use Turnitin in Original courses. The way that Turnitin is integrated into Ultra courses is not changing.
It is essential that all staff who use Turnitin in Original courses understand what is changing, and when, as the current way of setting up Turnitin assignments in Original courses will change on 7 February 2022. These changes will also affect students, as the assignment submission process is changing too.
Please note that the Turnitin tool using for marking and feedback, known as Turnitin Feedback Studio, remains unaltered. What is changing is the way that Turntin assignment submission points are set up and accessed, and the way that students submit their assignments.
February 2022
From Monday 7 February, 2022 (the beginning of semester 2) it will no longer be possible to set up a Turnitin assignment in an Original course in NILE using the current method of going to Assessments, and selecting Turnitin Assignment. This way of setting up a Turnitin assignment uses an integration into NILE called Turnitin Basic, and Turnitin have recently announced the end of life for this integration, which is why we are moving away from it.
From the 7th of February onwards, the only way of setting up a Turnitin assignment in an Original course in NILE will be by going to Build Content, and selecting Turnitin. This way of setting up a Turnitin assignment uses an integration into NILE called Turnitin LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability), and is the only integration that Turnitin are continuing to offer and support. Turnitin LTI is the same integration used in Ultra courses, and is already available in Original courses.
Staff who have already set up assignment submission points using the Turnitin Basic integration will need to delete these submission points if the assignment due date is after 30 April, 2022, and set up Turnitin LTI submission points instead.
On the 7th of February, the Learning Technology Team will be updating the Workflow 1: Turnitin Guide for Original Courses for staff, and the Assignment Submission Guide for Original Courses for students, to reflect these changes.
May 2022
Any Turnitin submission points set up using Turnitin Basic with a submission date on or after 1 May, 2022, should not be used, as there is a danger that the integration into NILE will lose critical functionality before all marking and internal moderation has taken place. Instead, such submission points should be deleted prior to students submitting any work and replaced with Turnitin LTI assignment submission points.
If you are not sure whether your Turnitin submission points were set up using Turnitin Basic or Turnitin LTI, please check the ‘Submit your work’ area of your NILE course. As the two submission points look very different, it is very straightforward to tell which is which.
September 2022
From 1 September, 2022, all assignments submitted via a Turnitin Basic assignment submission point will become permanently read-only. This means that while it will still be possible for staff and students to access the papers via NILE, and to see the marks and feedback for these papers, it will no longer be possible to change the marks or the feedback on these papers. Papers will be accessible in read-only form until the end of August 2023, after which time all papers submitted via Turnitin Basic assignment submission points will become permanently unavailable via NILE.
August 2023
31 August, 2023, is the final date on which assignments submitted via a Turnitin Basic submission point can be accessed. From 1 September 2023 neither staff nor students will be able to access any submissions made via Turnitin Basic. From this point onwards, students wishing to obtain copies of their papers submitted via Turnitin Basic will need to contact Turnitin directly.
Key differences between Turnitin Basic and Turnitin LTI
While Turnitin Basic and Turnitin LTI are functionally almost identical, the following two features which have been available in Turnitin Basic are not available in Turnitin LTI:
- Email non-submitters;
- Automatic hiding of the Grade Centre column in the NILE courses.
In addition, students who submit an assessment to a Turnitin LTI submission point will no longer receive an emailed submission receipt. Instead, they will see a message which confirms successful submission, along with a prompt to download their submission receipt.
LearnTech Turnitin guides
Turnitin assignments for Original courses (new Turnitin LTI type):
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/sage/turnitin_anonymous
Turnitin assignments for Original courses (old Turnitin Basic type):
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/sage/turnitin_old
More information
If you require additional help or information about these changes, please contact your learning technologist: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist
December’s upgrade includes improvements to rubrics, accommodations, and groups in Ultra courses. Also included in the December upgrade is the ability to add a description to Ultra course banners. New features in the December upgrade will be available from Friday 3rd December.
Rubrics
Rubric types in Ultra courses have been extended to include both points and points range rubrics. The addition of qualitative rubrics is on Blackboard’s roadmap, although no date has yet been given for when these will be availalble.
Guidance on creating and using rubrics in Ultra courses is available from: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Grade/Rubrics
Accommodations
Currently, accommodations for time-limited assessments only include the options to give an individual student +50% or +100% more time, or unlimited time. Following December’s upgrade, any percentage can be selected.
More information about accommodations for time-limited assessments in Ultra courses can be found at: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Interact/Roster#about-accommodations_OTP-2
Groups
A small and subtle change to groups in Ultra courses, but following the upgrade, staff will have the option to decide whether groups are visible to students or not. This will be useful for staff who like to set up marking groups in Turnitin, for example, to manage the marking of a large cohort amongst multiple markers. While it’s not a problem to do this already, such groups can be hidden from students following the upgrade.
More information on using groups in Ultra course is available at: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Interact/Course_Groups/Create_Groups
Course banner description
Ultra course banners were introduced in the November upgrade. These course banners should always be used as a decorative element to the course, and they are treated as such for accessibility purposes, informing students using a screen reader that the image is decorative and does not need describing. However, December’s upgrade allows an image description to be added, and which, if used, will explain to students using a screen reader what the image contains.
More information about adding a course banner to your Ultra course can be found at: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Getting_Started/Navigate_Inside_a_Course#customize-your-course_OTP-2
More information
As ever, please get in touch with your learning technologist if you would like any more information about the December upgrade: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist
From October 8th 2021, one of the most requested features of Blackboard Ultra will finally be available: the ability to create tables in the Ultra RTE (Rich Text Editor).
Also included in the upgrade, from the 8th of October onwards the maximum number of columns and rows in Blackboard Ultra rubrics will increase from ten to fifteen.
And when students submit Blackboard Ultra assignments, from the 8th of October they will receive confirmation via email and downloadable receipt that their submission has been successful. Please note that this does not apply to Turnitin assignments in Blackboard Ultra courses. Students will still be able to download their submission receipts for Turnitin assignments in Ultra courses, but will not be emailed submission receipts. Emailed submission receipts will only be available for Blackboard assignments in Ultra courses from 8th October onwards.
Also included in the upgrade are various other minor big fixes, etc.
August 6th 2021 will bring some important changes to Blackboard Ultra courses.
First, and most difficult to miss, is a change to the location of the Tools menu and the Student Preview button. Currently the Tools menu is on the upper right hand side of the page and is indicated by icons. This will move to the left side of the page and will become text buttons instead of icons. The Student Preview button will move from the lower left to the upper right side of the page.
Currently the Tools menu and Student Preview buttons are located as follows:
However, from 6th August onwards they can be found here:
Also coming in the August upgrade is Gradebook filtering. This feature is very much like the Smart Views in Original courses, but also allows quick and easy instant filtering, as well as giving staff the ability to save preferred filters.
The August upgrade will bring improvements to the Calendar and to the Peer Review tool in Ultra courses. After the upgrade, hyperlinks will be supported in the calendar location field so that staff can link any virtual tool of their choice in the calendar event, and students can launch the virtual session from the calendar itself.
Peer Review was introduced to Ultra courses some time ago, but the August upgrade brings some useful improvements. The current capabilities of the Peer Review tool are explained in Blackboard’s guide, Peer Review for Qualitative Peer Assessments. Following the August upgrade staff will be able to access the submissions reviewed by a student right from that student’s grading panel. Students will also have direct access to the submissions available for their review from either the Due Date or the Calendar views. This makes it easier for them to act when reviewing their pending tasks.
NILE courses for the 2021/2022 academic year are now available.
Courses will be Original or Ultra depending on type of course and level of study. Module-level courses at Foundation and Level 4 will be Ultra. Module-level courses at Levels 5, 6, 7, and 8 will be Original. All programme-level courses will be Original. You can find out more about the transition from Original to Ultra on our Blackboard Learn Ultra guides:
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-guides/blackboard-ultra
Find and enrol on your new NILE courses using the process outlined in our FAQ, ‘How do I enrol/remove myself off a module site?
https://askus.northampton.ac.uk/Learntech/faq/181746
The NILE design standards for the 2021/22 academic year were approved at the Student Support Forum meeting on the 15th of April 2021, and have now been published.
The most significant change to NILE design standards for 2021/22 is the inclusion of the design standards for Ultra courses (see, ‘Section B, Tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3’).
The design standards for Original courses remain largely unchanged. The only changes of note from the previous year’s standards are:
- Clarification that, should staff wish to, it is fine to update the course landing page from ‘About this module’ to ‘Announcements’ after the first few weeks of teaching (see, ‘Section C, Table 6, About this module [Entry Point*]’.
- Renaming ‘Virtual classroom’ to ‘Blackboard Collaborate’ and having this area available by default (see, ‘Section C, Table 6, Blackboard Collaborate’).
- Removal of the ABL definition from the landing page on programme-level courses (see, ‘Section C, Table 7, My Programme [Entry Point’].
The NILE design standards for 2021/22 are available to view at:
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-design/nile-design-standards
From the 1st of March 2021, Kaltura will be making a change to the way that your video files are stored. However, please be aware that this change will not affect the playback of your videos.
When you upload a video file to Kaltura, the original video file that you upload (known as the source file) is automatically converted by Kaltura into a variety of different video formats which are more suited to web streaming. These converted video files (known as transcoded flavours) are the ones that people see when they play back your video. Once your original video file (the source file) has been automatically converted into the various transcoded flavours, it remains on Kaltura, but is not used for video playback.
From the 1st of March 2021, your source video files will be automatically removed from Kaltura after one year. However, all transcoded flavours will be retained, therefore playback of your Kaltura videos will be unaffected.
Please note that once the one-year period has expired and your source video file has been removed, it will no longer be possible to edit your Kaltura video.
Because it won’t be possible to automatically convert Original courses to Ultra, Ultra development courses will be created for all modules at least six months before they are required for first teaching.
Foundation and Level 4 Ultra courses for first teaching in September 2021 are available now.
To enrol on the Ultra development course for your module, please use the Enrol as a Tutor on your Modules tool in NILE.
The ID and name of your module will be in the format: Course ID = ABC1234_ULTRA, Course Name = ABC1234 Ultra Development Course.
Please note that these Ultra development courses are not the final versions of the courses that you will be using for teaching. The actual courses that your students will be enrolled on and which are synchronised with the Student Records System will be created later in the year (usually late May, early June). These Ultra development courses are intended for staff who would like to spend time slowly building their courses over many months, rather than waiting until June to begin the process. If you build your module using an Ultra development course you will need to copy it across later in the year into the course that your students are enrolled on; however, this is a quick and easy process. Our suggestion is that these Ultra development courses are best used as a place to structure, develop and build your module content and activities. Once this is complete, you can add assessment submission points, etc., into the final version of your course later in the year.
