Project update

The University of Northampton is now three years into its five year project to move NILE from Blackboard Original to Blackboard Ultra courses. While it might seem like we’ve only completed the first year of a three year project, the project actually started back in 2019, around six months before the UK’s first COVID lockdown in March 2020.

In order to move to Ultra courses, the first thing that we needed to do was migrate NILE from Blackboard’s data centre in Amsterdam to a new data centre in Frankfurt. The planning for this began in autumn 2019, and the actual move took place during the 2019/20 winter break. Almost immediately after the move, our first Ultra course, EDUM129, was in development with the UON’s Institute of Learning and Teaching, and, very soon afterwards, EDUM129 was piloted with students.

In June, 2020, we enabled UBN (Ultra Base Navigation), which transformed the look and functionality of the NILE home page.

Remember the old days when NILE looked like this?

We’ve come a long way since then.

In second phase of the project, which took place during the 2020/21 academic year, all faculties were invited to nominate staff to take part in a review of Ultra courses, the outcome of which would determine whether to adopt Ultra courses across the University. Staff from seven different subject teams took part in the pilot, the results of which were positive, and which gave UMT (University Management Team) the confidence to go ahead with the roll out of Ultra courses across the University.

You can read more about the findings from the 2020/21 Ultra course pilot in our previous blog posts:

• What do UON staff think about Blackboard Ultra?
• How long does it take to build an Ultra course?

The third phase of the move to Ultra was the adoption of Ultra courses for all zero-credit modules, plus all modules at foundation and level four, which took place during the 2021/22 academic year.

The upcoming academic year, 2022/23, sees us entering the fourth phase of the move, in which as well as zero-credit, foundation, and level four modules, modules at level five will be delivered as Ultra courses on NILE.

The 2023/24 academic year will be the final year of the Ultra project, in which modules at levels six, seven, and eight will be delivered for the first time via Ultra courses. In 2023/24, NILE programme-level courses will also be Ultra for the first time.

From September 2024 onward, all courses will have been Ultra for at least a year, and Ultra will be business as usual.

Ultra course awards

Have you created a great Ultra course? Or, do you know someone who has? We’re really keen to find out more about how staff have used Ultra courses this year, and to highlight and celebrate example of good practice with Ultra.

If you’ve designed a good Ultra course, or have just been using one or two Ultra features well this year, we’d really like to hear from you.

You can nominate yourself, or someone else. You can nominate an individual member of staff, or multiple members of staff, or an entire team. In your nomination, we’ll just ask you who it is that you’re nominating, which module the nomination is for, and what it is that you think they’ve done well. And you don’t have to tell us who is making the nomination if you don’t want to.

Nominations are open until the 18th of September, 2022.

• Nominate someone for an Ultra course award

What new features do you want to see in your Ultra courses?

Blackboard have put a significant amount of development into Ultra, but we know that there are still features that staff would like to see added to Ultra courses. This is why we would like to invite you to contribute your ideas for the development of Ultra. These could be things that you liked to use in Original courses that are not available in Ultra courses, or it could be entirely new things. We will collate your responses and send them to Blackboard’s product development team.

Submissions are open until the 18th of September, 2022. To submit your ideas for Ultra, please use the following form:

• What new features do you want to see in your Ultra courses?

More information and help with Ultra

Throughout the move to Ultra, the Learning Technology Team have been on hand to advise and train academic staff about all aspects of Ultra. If you’re new to Ultra, or simply want to find out how to get the best from it, please do get in touch with your learning technologist:

• Who is my learning technologist?

If you’re stuck for ideas about how to design your Ultra course, your learning technologist can help you with this. You might also find it useful to check out our Ultra demonstration courses, and to have a look at the NILE design standards:

• How should I design my Ultra course? Do you have some examples that I could look at?
• NILE design standards, expectations, and guidance for an excellent student experience

You can find out lots more about the move to Ultra on the UON Ultra project page on our website, which includes information about what Ultra is, and why we are moving to it:

• The UON Ultra project

Finally, did you know that new features are added to Ultra every month? You can always catch up with what’s new in Ultra courses via this link:

• Learning Technology Blog: NILE updates