The new features in Blackboard’s September upgrade will be available from the morning of Friday 8th September. This month’s upgrade includes the following new features to Ultra courses:

• Email non-submitters – anonymous marking improvement to Turnitin in Ultra courses
• Progress tracking – automatically enabled in Ultra courses
• NILE Ultra Course Awards 22/23
• Online NILE induction for new students

Email non-submitters: anonymous marking improvement to Turnitin in Ultra courses

Currently, when marking students’ anonymous Turnitin submissions, it is not possible to precisely determine who has and who has not submitted, which makes it difficult for staff to contact and support non-submitters.

With Turnitin assignments, the student progress indicator in Ultra courses displays one of three states, the current meaning of which is:

• Unopened (student has not submitted)
• Started (student has opened the assignment, and may or may not have submitted)
• Completed (student has opened the assignment, and may or may not have submitted)

At present, when a student opens a Turnitin assignment, the student progress indicator automatically changes from ‘Unopened’ to ‘Started’. (It is not possible for a student to manually change the student progress indicator from ‘Unopened’ to ‘Started’; this can only be done by opening the assignment.) However, in order to display ‘Completed’, each student who submitted the assignment has to manually change the progress tracking state from ‘Started’ to ‘Completed’. This means that while staff know that a student whose student progress indicator shows ‘Unopened’ has definitely not submitted, it is not possible to determine whether students whose student progress indicator shows ‘Started’ have submitted the assignment or only opened the submission but not submitted. Additionally, as a student can change the status from ‘Started’ to ‘Completed’ without submitting an assignment, the ‘Completed’ indicator does not provide a sufficient guarantee that a submission was actually made.

Following the September update, the way that the student progress indicator works will change, and will allow staff to know with certainty which students have and have not submitted. These progress states will effectively become locked to the submission status in Turnitin and will not be modifiable by students. Therefore, after the September update the meaning of the statuses will be:

• Unopened (student has not submitted)
• Started (student has opened the assignment, but has not submitted)
• Completed (student has submitted)

For staff, this is a considerable improvement over Turnitin’s ‘Email non-submitters’ feature (which was withdrawn by Turnitin for assignment submission points set up after February 2022), as staff will now be able to see which students have submitted and which have not, and will be able to filter and sort the Gradebook and quickly send a message to all non-submitters. And, crucially, this will all be possible to do while not disclosing the identities of the individual authors when marking their work in Turnitin.

Following the September upgrade, staff will continue to see anonymised Turnitin submissions as normal in the Turnitin assignment inbox:

However, when looking at the progress summary for the assignment in the Ultra course, staff will be able to see the submission status for each student, and can use filtering and sorting to quickly select and message non-submitters. When using this feature to select and simultaneously message multiple students, each student will receive a private message which will not disclose the identities of the other recipients. As well as being able to read the message in NILE, students are also automatically emailed a copy of the message. Following the changes to University policy regarding student email addresses, from the 13th of September onward, copies of announcements and messages emailed from NILE courses will go to students UON email addresses (i.e., those ending @my.northampton.ac.uk) and not to their personal email addresses, e.g., addresses ending @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @qq.com, etc.

You can find out more about setting up and marking Turnitin assignments in Ultra courses, and about messaging non-submitters at: NILE Assessment Workflows – Ultra Workflow 1: Turnitin

^{Back to top ↑}

Progress tracking – automatically enabled in Ultra courses

Progress tracking is a helpful feature for students, as it lets them view their progress in Ultra courses. Progress tracking also provides useful insights for staff about how content in their Ultra courses is being used, and how students are getting on in their courses. When considered alongside other information, progress tracking can provide clues to staff about which students might be struggling and might benefit from additional support.

At present, progress tracking is default off in Ultra courses and needs to be switched on manually in each course. In the days following the September upgrade, progress tracking will be automatically and permanently enabled in all new and existing Ultra courses.

Progress tracking in Ultra courses is a considerable improvement over what was available in Original courses, both in its scope and ease of access. Plus, unlike Original courses, which only provided data about students who had accessed the course using a laptop or desktop computer, the data provided about student progress in Ultra courses takes account of access via laptops/desktops, mobile devices using a mobile browser, and mobile devices using the Blackboard Learn app.

You can find out more about progress tracking at: Blackboard Help – Progress Tracking

^{Back to top ↑}

NILE Ultra Course Awards 22/23 & 23/24

Did you put together a great NILE Ultra course in 2022/23? Do you know someone who did? Or, have you recently put together a great NILE Ultra course for 2023/24? If so, please consider making a nomination for the next round of Ultra Course Awards. Nominations are open until the 31st of December, 2023, and winners of Ultra Course Awards for their 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 courses will be formally announced at the University of Northampton Learning and Teaching Awards 2024:
Ultra Course Awards 22/23 & 23/24 – Make a nomination

^{Back to top ↑}

Online NILE induction for new students

If your students are looking for some information about logging in to NILE, finding their way around, and understanding a bit more about how NILE works, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve refreshed the student section of the Learning Technology Team website, which now includes an online induction to NILE for students.

The online NILE induction covers the following:

• What is NILE?
• Logging in to NILE
• Finding your way around NILE
• Personalising your NILE profile
• Accessing your NILE courses
• Understanding how a NILE course works
• Accessing content in NILE in alternative formats
• Submitting your assignments on NILE
• Improving your digital skills
• More information, help and support with NILE

You can view the online NILE induction pages at: NILE Introduction, Help & Support

And, of course, do feel free to add a link to this page in your NILE courses.

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?

The new features in Blackboard’s August upgrade will be available from the morning of Friday 4th August. This month’s upgrade includes the following new features to Ultra courses:

• Ability for staff to add images to learning modules
• New location for Ultra groups
• Improvements to messages tool

Ability for staff to add images to learning modules

Following feedback from staff about the need to make Ultra courses more visually engaging, the August upgrade will allow staff to add images to learning modules.

^{• Blackboard Ultra course with images added to learning modules.}

For more information about customising the appearance of learning modules, please see: Blackboard Help – Create Learning Modules, Customise your learning module’s appearance

^{Back to top ↑}

New location for Ultra groups

After the August upgrade, the groups tool in Ultra courses will move from the Details & Actions menu to the top menu.

^{• Ultra courses with new Ultra groups location highlighted}

For more information about creating and managing groups, and about group spaces in Ultra courses, please see: Blackboard Help – Groups

^{Back to top ↑}

Improvements to messages tool

Prior to the August upgrade, although courses which contained unread messages were flagged, they were not sorted to the top of the list in the messages page. Following feedback from staff and students, courses with unread messages will now be automatically placed at the top of the list.

^{• Messages page with courses with unread messages sorted to the top of the list.}

^{Back to top ↑}

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: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist

The new features in Blackboard’s July upgrade will be available from the morning of Friday 7th July. This month’s upgrade includes the following new features to Ultra courses:

• Advanced scoring options in multiple choice and multiple option test questions
• Complete/incomplete grade schema and formative assessment option
• Resizing media option in Ultra documents

Advanced scoring options in multiple choice and multiple option test questions

Currently, when setting up multiple choice and multiple option test questions staff can select from the following options:

• All or nothing – students must select all the correct answer choices to receive credit. If a student selects one or more incorrect answer choices, they earn no points;
• Allow partial credit – students receive partial credit if they correctly answer part of the question;
• Subtract points for incorrect answers – students will have points subtracted for incorrect answer choices, although the overall question score will not be less than zero.

Following the July upgrade staff will have more control on the way that scores for each question are compiled, and will be able to:

• Define a positive percentage value to award credit for a correct answer;
• Enter a negative percentage value (up to a maximum of -100% ) to subtract credit for an incorrect answer;
• Allow a negative overall score for the question.

In the following example, it is possible to score from a maximum of 10 points (by selecting only the first and third answers) to a minimum of -30 points (by selecting only the second, fourth, fifth, and sixth options). A student selecting all six options would score -20 points.

More information about using tests in Ultra courses can be found at: Blackboard Help – Tests, Pools, and Surveys

^{Back to top ↑}

Complete/incomplete grade schema and formative assessment option

Following the July upgrade, staff will be able to use a complete/incomplete schema when assessing student work that does not require a grade to be given. The complete/incomplete schema still requires an assessment to be given a point value, but any amount of points given, including zero, will result in the assessment grade awarded being ‘complete’.

When a value is provided, the mark shows as a tick to show that the assessment has been completed.

The July upgrade also includes the option to mark assessments as formative. When this option is selected, the word ‘Formative’ is displayed alongside the assignment in the gradebook. Staff have the option to display ‘Formative’ to students also.

The complete/incomplete schema and the ability to note assessments as formative can be used independently or together, and can be used with both Turnitin and Blackboard assessments.

The following screenshot shows the student view of the gradebook where two assignments have marked as formative and where the complete/incomplete schema has been used.

^{Back to top ↑}

Resizing media option in Ultra documents

After the July upgrade, when adding an image to an Ultra document staff will be able to resize the media using the corner handles that appear when the document is being edited and the image is selected.

^{Back to top ↑}

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: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist

The new features in Blackboard’s June upgrade will be available from the morning of Friday 2nd June. This month’s upgrade includes the following new features to Ultra courses:

• Announcements moved to the top navigation bar
• Ultra tests: upload questions from a file
• Journals – submission status filters available when using assessed journals

Announcements moved to the top navigation bar

Following the June upgrade, Announcements will move from the ‘Details & Actions’ menu to the top menu in Ultra courses.

^{Back to top ↑}

Ultra tests: upload questions from a file

Prior or to the June upgrade, Ultra tests could only be created directly in Blackboard. After the upgrade, staff will be able to author tests offline in Excel or in a plain text editor (e.g., Notepad for Windows or TextEdit for Mac) and create tests questions in bulk in Ultra courses by importing the file. For more information about how to do this, please see: Blackboard Help – Upload Questions

^{Back to top ↑}

Journals – submission status filters available when using assessed journals

Following the June upgrade, staff will be able to use filters in the Marks & Participation view in journals. These filters will allow staff to quickly view their students’ journal entries based on the status of their submissions.

^{Back to top ↑}

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: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist

The new features in Blackboard’s May upgrade will be available from the morning of Friday 6th May. This month’s upgrade includes the following new features to Ultra courses:

• Drag and drop content into to Ultra courses
• Email non-submitters of Blackboard Ultra assignments
• Improvements to hotspot questions in Ultra tests
• Ability to prevent backtracking in Ultra tests with page breaks
• Ability to reuse questions in Ultra question banks
• Improvements to Ultra rubrics
• Grading attempt selector improvements

Drag-and-drop content into Ultra courses

Staff will be able to upload files into their Ultra courses simply by dragging a file or folder into the course content area of their Ultra course.

^{Back to top ↑}

Email non-submitters of Blackboard Ultra assignments

Staff using Blackboard Ultra assignments will be able to quickly select and message students who have not submitted any work for assessment by setting the student status filter in the assignment inbox to ‘No Submission’, selecting all students, and choosing ‘Send Message’. When selecting more than one student as a recipient of a message, the recipients will be BCC’d into the message, ensuring that students’ identity and contact information remain confidential.

As well as being able to email non-submitters from an Ultra assignment inbox, staff can also use this functionality to send email messages to students based on other critera. By using the inbox filters and the sortable header columns, staff can quickly organise the inbox, and can also manually choose one or more students to send email messages to from the Ultra assignment inbox.

Please note that this ability to select and email students directly from an Ultra assignment inbox is only able to be used with Blackboard Ultra assignments, and is not available when using a Turnitin assignment in an Ultra course.

^{Back to top ↑}

Improvements to hotspot questions in Ultra tests

Staff creating hotspot questions in Ultra tests will be able to zoom in to their image, and to view it full screen in order to more precisely define the hotspot area.

^{Back to top ↑}

Ability to prevent backtracking in Ultra tests with page breaks

Prior the May upgrade, staff could only use the ‘prevent backtracking’ option in Ultra tests if the test did not contain any page breaks. After the upgrade, staff will be able to prevent backtracking in tests which contain page breaks. The ‘prevent backtracking’ option ensures that students progress through the pages of a test in a predetermined sequence, and will be helpful when later test questions provide hints or reveal answers to questions on previous pages.

As tests with page breaks may contain multiple questions per page, students who have an unanswered question on a page and try to navigate to the next page will receive a warning message prompting them that they have an unanswered question, and that they will be unable to answer it should they proceed to the next page.

You can find out more about setting up and using Ultra tests at: Blackboard Help – Create Tests

^{Back to top ↑}

Ability to reuse questions in Ultra question banks

Staff will be able to copy questions between question banks by selecting the new ‘Reuse Questions’ option. Additionally, staff will be able to copy questions from existing tests directly into their question banks.

You can find out more about using Ultra question banks at: Blackboard Help – Question Banks.

^{Back to top ↑}

Improvements to Ultra rubrics

When marking using Ultra rubrics the performance level descriptions will be hidden by default. This change streamlines grading for staff who are familiar with the performance level requirements. However, staff can quickly choose to display the performance descriptions if needed for grading.

Following the May upgrade it will also be possible to deselect a performance level (e.g., excellent, good, statisfactory, etc.) if choosing another level of performance isn’t appropriate. Prior to the May upgrade, once a peformance level was selected, it could be changed, but not deselected.

The May upgrade will also allow criterion feedback to be collapsed, allowing for a more streamlined view of the grading panel.

Finally, keyboard navigation of rubrics will improve following the May upgrade, introducing the ability to navigate between rubric criteria using the tab key, and to use the up/down arrows to select a performance level.

^{Back to top ↑}

Grading attempt selector improvements

When viewing a student’s Blackboard Ultra assignment submission, if there are multiple submission attempts the assignment viewer will automatically choose the most appropriate attempt to present by default based on the ‘Grade Attempts’ setting and the grading completion status.

Grade Attempts setting	Grading completion status	Default attempt displayed
Last attempt with a grade	Any	Most recent attempt
First attempt with a grade	Any	First attempt
Attempt with the highest grade	All attempts are graded	Attempt with the highest grade
Attempt with the lowest grade	All attempts are graded	Attempt with the lowest grade
Average of all attempts	All attempts are graded	Most recent attempt
Attempt with the highest grade	There are ungraded attempts	Oldest ungraded attempt
Attempt with the lowest grade	There are ungraded attempts	Oldest ungraded attempt
Average of all attempts	There are ungraded attempts	Oldest ungraded attempt

Regardless of the settings, all attempts will still be available to view in the assignment viewer, and can be quickly accessed via the attempt selector.

For more information about setting up and using Blackboard Ultra assignments, please see: Ultra Workflow 2: Blackboard Assignment

^{Back to top ↑}

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: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist

The new features in Blackboard’s April upgrade will be available from the morning of Friday 7th April. This month’s upgrade includes the following new features to Ultra courses:

• Ultra course content search
• Hotspot question improvements
• Multiple grading schemas
• Improved submission page sorting controls
• Discussion navigation improvements
• Quick access to student overview from multiple locations
• Ultra analytics improvement – deactivated students no longer show in the student progress reports

Additional features coming on Friday 14th April.

• Bb Annotate – improvements to commenting feature

Ultra course content search

For the first time in Blackboard (this was never a feature in Original courses), after the April upgrade users will be able to search for and locate content in a course. The content search facility is available to both staff and students.

^{Back to top ↑}

Hotspot question improvements

Following the April upgrade, staff will be able to define hotspot areas in Ultra tests using a circle shape selector, as well as the rectangle and polygon shape selectors.

You can find out more about using hotspot questions at: Blackboard Help – Hotspot Questions

^{Back to top ↑}

Multiple grading schemas

Prior to the April upgrade, Ultra courses could only contain one grading schema. Following the April upgrade, Ultra courses will be able to contain multiple grading schemas. Schemas can be added and updated in the Ultra gradebook settings, via the ‘Manage Mark Schemas’ tool.

^{Back to top ↑}

Improved submission page sorting controls

After the April upgrade, staff will be able to more effectively sort Blackboard assignment submissions in Ultra courses, and will be able to sort by students’ first or last names, ascending or descending.

^{Back to top ↑}

Discussion navigation improvements

After the April upgrade, staff will be able to more easily view student activity, and marks and participation in Ultra discussions via the updated tab navigation in the discussions panel.

You can find out more about setting up and using Ultra discussions at: Blackboard Help – Discussions

^{Back to top ↑}

Quick access to student overview from multiple locations

Prior to the April upgrade, selecting a student in the class register opened up the member information side panel which contains only limited information about the student.

Following the April upgrade, selecting a student in the class register will take staff directly to the student overview page for that student.

Staff can still access the member information panel in the class register by selecting the ellipsis ‘•••’ menu located to the right of the student’s name in the class register, and choosing ‘Edit member information’.

Following the April upgrade, the student overview page will also open when a student’s name is selected in an Ultra discussion or message.

^{Back to top ↑}

Ultra analytics improvement – students with deactivated enrolments no longer show in the student progress reports

Prior to the April upgrade, students with deactivated enrolments (i.e., students who had been originally enrolled on a NILE course, but who subsequently transferred off the module, or withdrew from their studies) still showed up in the student progress report in Ultra courses

Following the April upgrade, the analytics tools in Ultra courses will no longer show students with deactivated enrolments.

^{Back to top ↑}

Bb Annotate – improvements to commenting feature

Prior to the April upgrade, when using Bb Annotate to add comments to papers submitted to Blackboard assignments in Ultra and Original courses, comments could only contain plain text. Additionally, once saved, staff could delete their comments, but could not edit them.

Following the April upgrade, staff will be able to both edit and delete comments they have made. Also, comments will allow rich text features to be added, such as the ability to change the font colour, to make text bold or underlined, and to add hyperlinks.

You can find out more about using Bb Annotate to provide feedback and comments on student assessments at: Blackboard Help – Bb Annotate

^{Back to top ↑}

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: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist

The new features in Blackboard’s March upgrade will be available from the morning of Friday 3rd March. This month’s upgrade includes the following new features to Ultra courses:

• Prevent editing or deletion of discussion posts
• Improved data and analytics in Ultra courses
• Improved attempt switching when grading student submissions with multiple attempts

Prevent editing or deletion of discussion posts

The March upgrade includes an important enhancement to discussions in Ultra courses, which allows staff to prevent students from editing or deleting their discussion posts while the discussion is ongoing.

At present, staff can choose to lock an assessed discussion on the due date, but cannot prevent students from editing and deleting their own discussion posts prior to the due date. Following the March upgrade, staff will be able to select ‘Prevent editing’ when setting up an assessed or non-assessed discussion, which will make all published posts permanent.

More information about setting up and using Ultra discussions is available at: Blackboard Help – Create Discussions

Improved engagement analytics in Ultra courses

Following the March upgrade, staff will be able to get a quick overview of their students’ engagement in their Ultra courses.

Under ‘Course Activity’ in the Analytics section of an Ultra course, staff will be able to see how much time students have spent in their Ultra course, along with the number of days since their last access. Both ‘Hours in Course’ and ‘Days of Inactivity’ will be sortable ascending and descending, and from this view staff will be able to select one or more students and bulk message them.

Improved attempt switching when grading student submissions with multiple attempts

When students make multiple submissions to Blackboard assignments in Ultra courses, after the March upgrade it will be quicker and easier to navigate the submissions.

Rather then having to choose which submission to view, staff will immediately be presented with the most recent submission, and will be able to switch between submissions directly inside the submission viewer.

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: https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist