As we move toward switching from our current Blackboard courses to Blackboard Learn Ultra courses, we are rolling out faculty development and training. Courses with student enrollments will not see the new Blackboard Ultra course views until Fall 2021, which provides time for training and designing quality, student-centered courses.  

Starting Oct. 27, all faculty will be enrolled in a Blackboard Learn Ultra instructor orientation course to introduce the new features in a scaffolded approach, and to help you transition to creating engaging courses in this new environment.

We are planning for delivery of four training modules over three weeks this fall with additional training modules to be released in the spring. When appropriate during this time, faculty will have access to sandbox courses (empty course sites with no student enrollments) to explore the new features’ capabilities.

For the fall training, we estimate each weekly training suggestion will take between 1–2 hours to complete. Once the weekly module(s) are released, they will remain available.

Details about each week’s training task will be provided in a weekly OnCampus post beginning Oct. 27.

— Karly Good, ITS