One of the advantages of our move to Blackboard Ultra is the ongoing potential for new feature releases and updates. New releases take place on the first Thursday evening of every month, which is much more frequently than for Blackboard Original. We will communicate about new features and changes via this blog. If you want to be kept up to date with the latest information, we recommend subscribing to the blog.
This release has new or updated features in the following areas:
- Communication and collaboration;
- Gradebook;
- Learner progression and personalised experience;
- Integrations;
- Blackboard Core.
These changes impact instructors, students, and administrators. Below you’ll find our highlights, and more detail on the most relevant updates.
Highlights
Release conditions expanded to include activity on items, including non-assessment content
Release conditions can now be based on whether a student has opened or started content items. This includes non-assessment items such as documents, media, and course links. An example usage is setting release conditions which require students to open a reading or watch a video before an assessment becomes available.
This update has led to some changes in the release conditions interface, with the term Performance now replaced with Activity. While this change in terminology should be noted, existing functionality for assessment-based release condition rules remains the same.
Improved handling of group membership changes
The Flexible Grading and Submissions pages have been updated to show changes in group membership more clearly.
On the Submissions page, if all members are removed from a group:
- The group avatar displays a ? icon.
- A No members label appears.
- The group name becomes non-selectable.
For active groups, the Flexible Grading interface always shows the current group members for each attempt.
Additional supported delimiters in MathJax
MathJax support in the Content Editor now includes additional LaTeX delimiters for rendering mathematical formulas. Instructors and students can now use:
- \(…\) for inline equations
- \[…\] for display equations
These options are in addition to the existing $ delimiters.
Other updates in this release include:
Please see the full Release notes for information on other updates in this release.
Further help and support
For more guidance on using Blackboard Ultra, please explore the Digital Education Development blog.
Students can view an Ultra orientation and advice on using Ultra from their Help for Students sections (or equivalent) in your Blackboard course.
