Blackboard Ultra – Navigating the Class Register and Photo Roster

Contents

Staff Guide: How to view staff and student information using the Class Register and Photo Roster. Using these tools you can view student photos, find their ID number and basic profile information, print and export class lists.

What tools can I use to view student information in Blackboard?

Class Register – this is the Blackboard register. It will show the student avatar (their choice of image) and basic profile information, as well as their enrolment status on the course.
Blackboard Gradebook – similar to the Blackboard Grade Centre in Original, you can view the marks of the students enrolled on a course, as well as their full name, IDs and username.
Photo Roster Tool – Find this via the Books & Tools menu. Available to instructors only, this is a tool to view the student ID card photos of students on your course. You can also view.
Student Support Recommendations Tool – Find this via the Books & Tools menu. Available to instructors only, this tool provides an at-a-glance summary of students who may have an Additional Exam Requirement (AER) or Student Support Recommendation (SSR) on your Blackboard course. You can select the links next to a student name to view their full SSR document in SharePoint.
Blackboard Student Overview – Blackboard Ultra has a variety of analytics including progress tracking, student overview and activity logs.

Tools outside of Blackboard

Education Dashboard – Staff and personal tutors can view basic information about a student.
MyEngagement – View attendance records for a student or module.

Differences between Blackboard student information tools

Feature	Class Register	Photo Roster	Blackboard Gradebook	Student Support Recommendations
Access by	Details & Information menu	Books & Tools	Gradebook page	Books & Tools
Photo	Student choice	ID card photo	Student choice	None
Printer friendly	No	Yes	Export and print without photos.	No
Quick contact	Blackboard message	Email	Blackboard message	N/A
Student ID	Yes, if you select the student name to view the student overview, or open the member information panel.	Yes	Yes	Yes
Student Username	Yes, if you select the student name to view the student overview, or open the member information panel.	Yes	Yes	Yes (username email)
Filter view by Blackboard group	No	Yes	Yes, but the filtered view cannot be exported or printed.	No
Additional Exam Requirement/ Student Support Requirement	Blackboard Accommodation Flag only.	Yes	Blackboard Accommodation Flag only.	Yes

Class Register

Select the Class Register from the Details & Actions menu. The register is visible only to staff by default.

You can choose grid view or list view.

Screenshot of the Class Register with the Grid or List view icons highlighted.

Grid view is sorted automatically by role and then by last name. Roles appear in this order: instructors, teaching assistants, graders, course builders, and students. To manually sort the list, switch to list view.
List view is sorted by last name by default. Select the Name or Role headings to sort the contents. You can also see any accommodations applied to students.

Filter and search the Class Register

You can view the roster by roles, such as Instructors or Support Faculty. The filter options are based on the roles found in your course. You can also filter by Students with accommodations. Students with accommodations appear with an icon next to their names.

Screenshot of the Class Register. The Search icon is highlighted in the top tight. The filer by role option is highlighted just below it. In student list view it is also possible to reorder the columns and the ordering arrows to the right of the header name are highlighted.

Viewing additional information

Select profile card to view the member information panel of staff on your course.
Select a student profile card to see their student overview.
Select the ellipses to view the more options menu to open member information or accommodations panel.
Select the purple speaker icon to hear the recording of their name.
Students with accommodations will be indicated with a purple flag.

Add and remove members

You should not need to routinely add or remove student enrolments from your teaching courses, as the majority of enrolments are automatically populated on your course from information in the Banner Student Records system.

See our guides on how user enrolments are managed via Banner:
Blackboard Ultra – Enrolling instructors and support staff.
Blackboard Ultra – Student enrolment.

Set a primary instructor

The primary instructor is listed first in the register and is most visible to students. If multiple primary instructors exist, they’re listed alphabetically before other instructors in the roster.

Open an instructor’s Member Information panel and select the Primary Instructor option.

The course settings section of a member information panel. The tick box for Primary Instructor is highlighted.

Photo Roster Tool

To view the ID card photos of your class, use the Photo Roster tool in Blackboard.

You must be enrolled on the course as one of the authorised roles (currently Instructor, School Office Administrator, Teaching Assistant, Pre-sessional Tutor, Programme Lead, Library Staff)
Enter the course and locate Books & Tools on the right-hand menu, then select Photo Roster.

Where to find the Photo Roster in the books and tools menu

A new page will load showing all students currently enrolled on the Blackboard course.

Screenshot of Photo Roster. Child course ID is highlighted, and it appears under the student name/ID.

You can order by last name, first name or student ID.
You can filter the list by student ID, name, email or group.
If applicable, child course ID or groups that the student has been allocated to will show on their profile card.
Selecting the student name will allow you to directly email the student.

Student Support Recommendations Tool

You must be enrolled on the course as one of the authorised roles (currently Instructor, School Office Administrator, Teaching Assistant, Pre-sessional Tutor, Programme Lead, Library Staff).
Enter the course and locate Books & Tools on the right-hand menu, then select Student Support Recommendations.

You will see a table listing any students on the Blackboard course who have a Additional Exam Requirement (AER) as listed in Banner, or an Student Support Recommendations (SSR) document as provided by the Student Disability and Inclusion team.
Select “Open student name’s SSR document” to open the student’s full SSR report (PDF stored in SharePoint).
Any student whose AER or SSR has been added or updated in the last 2 weeks, will be indicated by a pink dot next to the date in the column “AER last updated” or “SSR last updated”. You can also select the column header to sort the “last updated” date by newest to oldest.
The table headers can be filtered a-z, z-a or by date newest to oldest/oldest to newest. Select a header to cycle through the different orders. There is a diamond to the right of each header. The shading of the diamond indicates the current order. No shading indicates that this column is not currently in order. You may order one column at a time.

Three diamonds. One with shading on the top triange to indicate this column is on order, one with shading on the bottom triangle to indicate revese ordering. One diamond with no additional shading to indicate there is no order. — The diamonds inducate any column ordering.

Print a list of students from the Gradebook

Need a exportable list of students on your course? Go to the Gradebook and then select the in/out icons towards the top right to download marks and records from the course.

The download will include Last name, First name, Username and Student ID as Tab-separated File (.xls) or Comma Separated Values (.csv).

Note: You must have one markable item in your course for the Grid view of the gradebook to appear.

More information see the Blackboard guide on using the Ultra Gradebook.

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