What’s New in Blackboard Learn Ultra – April 2024

Our Blackboard® Learn team at Anthology has been hard at work once again this month on new features and updates. The Learn 3900.91 release is full of improvements in the areas of Flexible Grading, Learner Progression and Personalized Experience, Competency-Based Education, Gradebook, and more. These improvements impact administrators, instructors, students, and observers. Read on to discover highlights from the latest Blackboard Learn release!

1. Flexible Grading: Add question feedback when grading a test by question

When grading by student or by question, instructors can now provide contextual feedback and can add this feedback to all question types. Question level feedback promotes deeper understanding and personal growth among students while also enhancing both overall submission feedback and automated feedback for auto-graded questions.

Instructor view of adding per-question feedback when grading by question

Instructor view of question with saved feedback

After scores are posted, students can access their feedback in the Gradebook. Students can access both overall feedback and question-specific feedback.

Student view of feedback added to an essay question

For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

2. Upgrade to Learn Ultra: Option to convert Content Areas to Learning Modules

In previous releases, Content Areas converted to Folders when converting Learn Original courses to Learn Ultra. We updated conversion so administrators can choose if Content Areas convert to Learning Modules or Folders. 

Converting to Learning Modules is helpful for the following types of courses: 

• Learn Original Courses using more than one Content Area to organize course materials 
• Courses migrating from Canvas, Brightspace, and/or Moodle learning management systems 

The default setting is to convert Content Areas to Learning Modules.

Convert Content Areas to Learning Modules toggle

For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed. We recommend administrators review this configuration to set the most appropriate choice for their institution.

A new configuration option is available on the Ultra Experience Management page. The default state is ON. When set to OFF, Content Areas will convert to Folders instead of Learning Modules.

3. Learner Progression and Personalized Experience: Observer role support in Learn Ultra Courses

Academic advisors, parents, coaches, and other users may find it beneficial to monitor the progress of one or more students. This enables them to effectively support the students in their learning journey. Now these observers can monitor student progress and performance in Learn Ultra courses. 

The streamlined process for Learn Ultra courses eliminates the need for complicated instructor settings. Observers will have access to the following information: 

• Last access date: Observers can view when the student last accessed the course. 
• Grades tab: This tab provides details on a student’s earned grades. The information included is:
  • Overall grade
  • Upcoming and past due dates 
  • Any exceptions granted to the student 
  • Late submissions
• Progress tab: This tab helps the observer understand a student's progression in the course. The information included is:
  • Navigation through the course content 
  • Course elements visible on the student’s learning path 
  • Completeness and progress indicators for items, folders, and Learning Modules 

To view a student's progress, progress tracking must be enabled in the course. 

Observer view of a student’s grades in a Learn Ultra course

Observer view of a student’s progress in a Learn Ultra course

Observers can access a dedicated dashboard in the Tools area of the Base Navigation. Observers should first select the student they wish to observe and then choose the specific course they want to access. Both Learn Original and Learn Ultra courses can be observed from this dashboard. 

An observer chooses which student they want to observe in the Observer Dashboard

For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed. As before, administrators can manage observer-to-student relationships manually, with a bulk file, or through data integration.

A user must be assigned the Observer system role as their primary system role. In this release, Observer accounts continue to be mutually exclusive from other user accounts. We plan to remove this restriction in a future release.

4. Competency-Based Education/Mastery Learning: Align goals to questions in question pools

Institutions want to align goals to course content, as goal alignment ensures curriculum design meets specific learning outcomes. Now instructors can align goals to questions within a question pool. Question-level goal alignment ensures that assessment items measure the desired learning outcomes. This helps to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of evaluation and feedback practices.

Option to choose ‘Align with goal’ from the menu when adding or editing a question in a question pool

Learn more about goal alignment in the Learn Ultra Course View.

For administrators: This feature is available for all Learn Ultra courses. There are no configurations needed.

5. Competency-Based Education/Mastery Learning: Supporting multiple performance criteria in release conditions

Release conditions determine when students can view course content and are located on the content's visibility setting on the course content page. Currently, you can set:

• Which course members or groups have access
• When the course content is accessible, visible, and hidden
• When student performance is necessary for completing an assignment or scoring

Instructors can now set more than one performance criteria per content item.  

Release condition panel with additional performance criteria selected

Explore these updates and more in the full Blackboard Learn 3900.91 release notes.