Blackboard Ultra Interact with Students
To build a successful online community, instructors have numerous tools in Blackboard to interact with students and have conversations. Students report that their satisfaction with online courses relates to instructor presence and the collaboration and sense of community they experience.
Article Index
Announcements
Announcements are ways to post time-sensitive information for a course. Learn how to create and view announcements, schedule announcements, and more.
Messages
Messages are useful for keeping in contact with students individually or as a group. Learn to send messages to all courses, inside a course, and more.
*Note: Message activity remains inside Blackboard and is different from Email.
Email
Blackboard's email tool sends email to other people in a course without launching a separate email program. Learn how to send email to individual users or to groups of users.
*Note: Blackboard sends email to a user's email address listed in in the user's profile. If this email is incorrect or needs to be updated, please review the article Change Blackboard Email Address.
Roster
The Roster link on the Course Content page can be used to view a class list, connect with students, and match faces to names. Learn how to change views in the roster as well as how to filter, manage, and search for users. Accommodations can also be set for students in the roster.
Discussions
Online discussions provide unique benefits and can replicated discussion that may take place in a traditional classroom. Instructors may choose to grade these discussions as well. Learn how to create, respond, manage, grade discussions, and more.
Conversations
Conversations are different from discussions (they don't appear on the discussions page) and allow students to have dialogue on a specific assignment, test, document, and more. Learn how to enable and access conversations, about the conversation layers, and create conversations based on groups.
Groups
Group work improves critical thinking, problem solving, adaptability, and communication. Learn how to create and manage groups, import and export groups and members, and about group spaces.
Journals
Journals are personal spaces for students to communicate privately with an instructor or be used as a self-reflective tool that can be graded. Learn how to create, open, edit, manage, copy, and convert journals. Other topics include viewing entries and comments as well as navigating the participation tab and the grades & participation tab.
Record Audio and Video Feedback
Add personalization to feedback on assessments by recording audio and/or video along with any text added for a student. Learn how to record and rename audio and/or video, understand what students see, as well as some basic setup and troubleshooting with recording.
Organizations
Organizations behave like courses and contain tools that enable group members to communicate efficiently. Learn how to access, search, and manage organizations.
*Note: Organizations are not automatically created and must be requested. Please use the Blackboard request form to submit your request for a new site or to add/remove users from an existing organization.
Class for Web (Class Collaborate)
Class for Web (Class Collaborate) is an always-on, real-time, online meeting tool available in all Blackboard courses. This tool is off by default. Learn how to turn on this tool by reviewing the Get Started with Class Collaborate article.
OneNote Class Notebook
Microsoft’s OneNote Class Notebook (a.k.a. OneNote Classroom) is now available in Blackboard Learn. The OneNote Class Notebook has all the features you expect with OneNote, plus it has private sections that only instructors and their individual students see. Learn how to use OneNote by reviewing the Instructor Guide to OneNote Class Notebook for steps to the integration into Blackboard.
Blogs
Blogs currently are not available in the Ultra Course Experience. If you are currently using Blogs in your course, please contact an Instructional Designer in TTaDA to find an alternative solution that works for your course.
Wikis
Wikis are not planned to be included in the Ultra Course Experience. If you are currently using Wikis in your course, please contact an Instructional Designer in TTaDA to find an alternative solution that works for your course.