The New Blackboard Experience

The Blackboard Ultra Experience

Graduate Online and EMBA courses are delivered in the Blackboard Ultra Experience. In addition to the more modern look and feel adopted  with the new navigational experiece, the new course experience applies Ultra more deeply.  Extending the new navigation structure and saving instructors and students time with simpler workflows and streamlined access to important information. 

  • A New Mobile Experience - An enhanced and responsive mobile experience that helps align the educational experience in Blackboard with research-supported student behavior patterns.  Graduate Online and EMBA courses will benefit from a smoother browser-based mobile experience inside the course.
  • OU Hub - Need assistance?  The OU Hub contains valuable informative resources for your learning needs.
  • The Activity Stream - This page provides a top-down view of relevant activity in your blackboard courses.
  • Contextual Help - Access to self-help resources specific to the location help is needed.
  • Profiles - Control your personal information and cloud storage integrations.
  • Courses - Navigate your courses quicker with course search, favorites, and terms.
  • OU Communities - This provides all the benefits of the Courses page, but for non-credit purposes.
  • Calendar - Integrate your personal calendars.  Create events, list office hours, and view due dates.
  • Enhanced Course Messaging - Course messages now allow for emails to be sent and for users to control whether replies are possible.
  • The New Gradebook - A new and improved layout has been deployed along automatic zeroes for unsubmitted work.  A new inline grading tool is coming in August.
  • Tools - Access 3rd party integrations from a variety of services.

The Activity Stream is an up-to-the-minute tool that allows users access to reminders and grades in a bird's eye view of tasks across courses that can be filtered according to your needs.

Watch a video on the Activity Stream. 

Students

Jump directly into your courses from the Activity Stream, or straight into an assignment, depending on what item is clicked.  Due dates, past due assignments, and other notifications for courses are shown here.

act-stream-student-(3).png

Recent activity in all your courses is accessible from the Activity Stream.  You can follow student discussions in real time, note the number of gradable submissions, and receive personal reminders with a top-down, filterable view of course activity. 

act-stream-instr-(2).png

The Grades page provides access to all grade-related functionality.  The Grades page is organized alphabetically by course.

Students

The overall grade is displayed on the right, while the course name is displayed on the left.  Clicking on the course title, graded item title, or grade pill will navigate to those spaces.

grades-student-(3).png

Each course contains a list of assessments that require grading.  The number of gradable items is also visible.  Clicking on the course title or gradable item will take you to that space.

grades-faculty-(1).png

The courses page offers multiple advantages over our current experience:

  • favorite your courses with the star icon
  • courses organized by term
  • course filtering capabilities
  • a course search that includes content
  • future courses displayed on the Upcoming Courses page
  • Instructors may edit the course banner
List View

The list view displays courses in an alphabetical list.  The favorite button is displayed on the right along with additional functionality as permissions define.  Courses may be searched or filtered from this page.  Future courses are displayed through the Upcoming Courses link.

courses-student.png

The grid view displays each course in a tile with the a banner image and similar options to the list view.  The course banner may be edited from this page as user permissions define.

courses-student-grid-view.png

How do I log in to Blackboard?

Blackboard will remain accessible through My Ottawa and directly through https://blackboard.ottawa.edu.

Can I control where I land once I log in?

The Activity Stream is the default landing page system-wide.  The ability to control our Blackboard landing page is a system-wide feature at this time.

What happened to the colors on the My Courses page?

As part of the accessiblity improvements to our Blackboard system, color customization is limited on the individual level.  In addition to the accessibility improvements, this provides a much cleaner and more attractive interface.

What's in the OU Hub?

The OU Hub is a collection of resources and information meant to keep you informed.  Links to information relevant to your education and experience in Blackboard will be displayed here.

What are OU Communities?

OU Communities take advantage of Blackboard's Organization functionality to provide educational spaces for academic purposes outside of earning course credit.

What will my courses look like after the upgrade?

The course experience in Blackboard with change cosmetically.  Course items will still be displayed on the left, and everything will function as it did prior to the upgrade.  The difference will be the color scheme of the course.

original-experience-course.png

Where can I find more information?

Ottawa University Resources

Blackboard Resources

General

Students

Faculty