• The Ultra Course View is a simpler and more modern course experience for instructors and students. The workflows and tools are easy to find and use in the Ultra Course View.
• Blackboard's Ultra Course view offers access to new features and tools, as well as a redesigned interface providing a user-friendly environment with intuitive workflows and advanced analytics for faculty and students. All of this makes developing content that engages students significantly easier. This new environment will help us provide an environment that will grow its capabilities into the future.

Blackboard Ultra Course View offers several benefits for both instructors and students:

• Improved Accessibility: The interface is designed to be easier for everyone to use.
• Mobile-Friendly: Students can access and navigate courses seamlessly on their laptops, phones or tablets.
• Consistent Experience: The course layout remains the same across all devices.
• Instructor Benefits: Includes features like the AI Design Assistant and easier content organization with Modules, flexible grading and accommodation setup.
  
  

• Modules are a great way to structure your course materials:
• Improved Navigation: Students can easily move between content items using forward and back arrows, making it ideal for mobile devices.
• Sequential Learning: You can require students to complete content or assessments in a specific order.
• Progress Tracking: Track student progress by seeing which items they've viewed or completed.

• Multiple resources have been created to aid you in your journey to Ultra. In addition to webinars, short training videos are available to reinforce your learning and allow for easy reference any time of day or night.

• Courses are retained in Blackboard for 3 years. You can access your previous courses on the Courses page by using the Current Courses drop down menu to select a specific semester, or by using the arrow in the upper left to page through previous semesters.
• After 3 years, courses are archived and deleted from Blackboard. MercerOnline will send a notification to anyone with the Instructor role in a course that will be deleted. This provides time for you to export the course for your records.
• Older Blackboard courses created in the original course view will still be accessible to instructors for archival purposes only. As Original courses age, however, they will move into a retired state and marked for removal. Original courses from FA2024 would be retired in SU2028.
  

• Ultra Sandbox shell
  • We will build a sandbox Ultra course for each faculty member titled' Ultra Sandbox'.
    It will be available November 27, 2023, and will be an empty course shell for individual use.
  • This is the place to go and explore the Ultra course environment and try new features.
• If you want to see how a typical course may look in the Ultra Course View, access our testing environment. Please c ontact MercerOnline for online credentials.

• Training and Resources.
  Training will be scheduled starting in late Spring 2024 and through the 2024 academic year.
  MercerOnline is updating the TEACH site providing Ultra Course resources to be ready for the start of the Spring 2024 semester.
  
  Pre-Class Spring 2024, MercerOnline will hold Q&A sessions and a lab allowing faculty to review the basic structure and function of Ultra Course View.
  With Marketing, we will inform students of the upcoming change and continue to keep information flowing.
  
  The MercerOnline page is being updated providing student resources.
  We will provide "Information Sessions" for students with a focus on Ultra as we move toward implementation.
  
  ULTRA Course Day. With our Anthology Client Experience Manager, we will host a day (TBD) for students and Faculty to learn more about Ultra Course view providing an in-depth opportunity to ask questions and learn more.

Yes. MercerOnline recommends exporting (course content) and/or archiving (course content & student data) your courses. You should also download a copy of your gradebook. Save these files to your Mercer OneDrive account.

You can copy content from any Original course into your Ultra course using the "Copy Items" function. This tool allows you to selectively copy content from one or more Original courses into your Ultra course.

Announcements: Course-wide messages that appear when students enter the course site and can be sent to email. They can be scheduled, and you can track how many students have viewed them.

Messages: Sent to individuals or groups within a course and appear in a feed under the Message tab. Copies can also be sent to email (currently disabled, potentially available in Spring 2025).

Dark mode is not currently available in Blackboard Ultra. However, Blackboard is considering it as a future feature. In the meantime, you can use browser extensions like the Pixie browser extension to adjust brightness, contrast, and font size for a more comfortable viewing experience.