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 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:
Instructional design;
Communication and collaboration;
Tests and assignments;
Learner progression and personalised experience;
Gradebook;
Blackboard Core.
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Below you’ll find our highlights, and more detail on the most relevant updates.
Highlights
Add dividers to documents
Instructors can now add divider blocks to Documents. Dividers provide a clear way to structure a Document into sections. They can be resized to span up to four columns.
Image 1. Dividers are now included as a block type.Image 2. Dividers can span multiple columns in a Document.
Create jumbled sentence questions
Instructors can now create jumbled sentence questions for tests. This question type lets instructors define one or more paragraphs with blanks for students to complete. Additionally, instructors can:
Add distractors
Add automated feedback for correct and incorrect answers
Designate questions as extra credit
Use accessibility tools, such as keyboard-only workflows, to create this question type.
To create a Jumbled Sentence question, enter the question text and define the blanks by enclosing the correct answers in square brackets (see image below).
Image 3. Creating a jumbled sentence question.
Please see the Release Notes for further information.
Unread discussion post indicator
An indicator has been added to the Discussions tab which shows the number of unread discussion posts from anywhere in a course.
Currently, Jumbled Sentence questions are incorrectly copying from Blackboard Original to Blackboard Ultra courses.
This question type is due to be released in Blackboard Ultra on June 6, but currently Jumbled Sentence questions are not supported, and a partial copy is being produced when any attempt is made to copy them (for example, as part of a larger pool or test with multiple questions). These partial copies contain the written element of the question but are not functional.
Actions needed
Until June 6, tests or question pools/banks with Jumbled Sentence questions should be not be copied between Blackboard Original and Ultra courses. After June 6, these can be copied with full functionality expected.
Jumbled Sentence questions that have already been copied will need to be deleted and then re-added after June 6.
Resolved: 06/06/25
Following an update to Blackboard, Jumbled Sentence Questions can now be created in Ultra courses and can be copied from Original courses to Ultra courses without issue.
Turnitin has informed us of an intermittent known issue causing the Blackboard Gradebook to fail to sync with Turnitin. More information can be found on Turnitin’s known issues log.
In the meantime, instructors can continue marking as usual via Turnitin’s Assignment Inbox by entering marks there, and also manually in the Gradebook column for affected students. We also recommend using Turnitin’s Assignment Inbox to check for non-submissions, rather than relying on the Gradebook.
The issue with extracting marks from Blackboard to eVision was resolved yesterday, 29 April, at around 5 pm. It was caused by a University-wide issue with Microsoft web applications.
Update: This issue was resolved at around 5 pm on 29 April.
You may be experiencing an issue with extracting marks from Blackboard to SITS/eVision, which we believe is being caused by the current IT Services issue with a range of web-hosted applications (noted under “Exam Timetables Down” on the IT Service Status page). We are investigating this and will provide updates here as we have them. In the meantime, it may be necessary to manually enter any marks that are needed in eVision urgently.
The annual creation of Blackboard unit courses has been carried out, and the 2025/26 Blackboard courses are available to access. We are now working on building “parent” courses, where these are needed.
This year, all courses are Ultra courses, using the new Ultra templates created with the faculties. You can find your courses in the usual way, by logging in to Blackboard.
Instructor enrolments are copied from the previous year’s courses, where these exist; instructors will need to be manually enrolled onto all new courses. Please contact your school office if you need to be added to any new Blackboard courses.
Please note that, because of the early creation of courses, some tools that link to other University services outside Blackboard – such as Re/Play and Talis Aspire Resource Lists – will not be fully functional until those services have carried out their annual switch-over. For Re/Play, links to Collections won’t work until mid-July. For resource lists, links can be added to your 2025-26 lists from Thursday 29 May; please contact lib-resource-lists@bristol.ac.uk or your Subject Librarian if you require any support with this.
Blackboard is continuing to investigate an intermittent issue with document rendering in the Annotate tool, which is affecting users globally.
When this happens, students submitting assignments with attachments might see an error message asking them to try again later. Please note that this does not stop the submission, but it can be confusing as students cannot view the document’s content during the upload process. However, students can confirm that their submission has been successful by looking at their digital receipt.
Blackboard developers are collaborating with their partners to fix it, and a solution will be included in a future update.
Blackboard is currently investigating an intermittent document rendering issue affecting the Annotate tool. Instructors using Blackboard assignments and attempting to annotate papers via the online interface may be affected.
![Screenshot of creating a jumbled sentence question. The question text reads:
Single water molecules are held together by [covalent] bonds and multiple water molecules are held together by [hydrogen] bonds. The kind of bond where atoms are sharing electrons but are not sharing them equally is [polar covalent bond].](https://blackboard.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/files/2025/06/jumbled-sentence.png)
