Staff Guide Five steps to working with the template to plan your layout and add content to a Blackboard Ultra Course.
These three quick set up guides are designed to take you through the essential steps to getting your Blackboard Course ready for teaching.
- Quick Set Up – Part 1: Personalise your Course and check enrolments.
- Quick Set Up – Part 2: Plan Layout and Add Content to your Course.
- Quick Set Up – Part 3: Review Content and Engage with your Students.
- Extended Full Checklist to Prepare for Teaching on Blackboard Ultra.
- For more information on Assessment, see the Overview of Assessments eLearn guide.
This is Part 2, which will take you through the 5 steps to familiarise yourself with the course template, plan your course layout and start adding teaching content to your Blackboard Ultra course.
Step 1: Familiarise yourself with the Blackboard Ultra template and Universal Standards
All Blackboard modules are provisioned with an Ultra template to try and support a consistent design for all students as part of the Blackboard Universal Standards. You should familiarise yourself what has already been provisioned in the course by populating the following three learning modules for information:
- Module information
- Resources and Support
- Assessments
There are also examples of learning modules for teaching content which can be arranged chronological e.g week 1, week 2 or by topic. This will demonstrate a clear path for students to engage with online module resources via their Blackboard Course.
Step 2: Updating the template modules
Update the three learning modules provisioned as part of the template with the relevant and useful information about your module.
Update Module Information
This learning module could contain information such as:
- A short introduction to the module.
- Meet the teaching team.
- Contact information (how/when).
- A bookings with me link.
- Overview of the weekly lectures/seminars/lab sessions.
- Expectations of the module e.g. personal study time.
- Link to the Module Profile page.
- Other useful information that students might need to know about the course.
Update Resources and Support Materials
This learning module contains information that students may wish to access to help them with their studies including links to the online reading list, eLearn guides, Panopto’s course folder, assist links, past exam papers and more. It is useful to review and make available relevant resources as well as adding more of your own if required.
Update Assessments
If you have any questions about assessments for your module including who should be setting these up, please contact your school A&A team. Review the content of the Assessments learning module which already contains links to the following links:
- Academic Responsibility and Conduct
- Special Considerations Guidance
- eLearn Student guides for Assessment
The assessment’s learning module should also contain all the information relevant to any assessments, both formative and summative, required for the module. Information such as the following might be useful to include:
- An Assessment Overview (e.g. formative/summative, types of assessment, weighting, deadlines if known, what to do if you need support).
- Submission links (saved in this folder so students can easily find them when they need to submit).
- Additional guidance, advice or support for assessment e.g. sample questions, sample essays, guidelines.
For technical support setting up an assignment, please raise a Serviceline ticket with Serviceline FAO EdApps well in advance of the assignment start date.
Step 3: Organise your course with Learning Modules
Students prefer content to be organised into clear sections so it’s easier to navigate through module content. You can add Learning Modules which should be clearly named to indicate the teaching content within such as Week 1: Introduction to Archaeological Theory.
The default layout of an Ultra course is chronological which is the students’ preferred method of viewing course content. There are three main ways to organise content:
- Chronological e.g. Week 1, Week 2, Week 3.
- Topic Order e.g. Learning modules named after stages not taught chronologically.
- Activity Order e.g. this could be due to how students are learning such as via lab sessions (please contact a member of Digital Learning for support this this course layout).
Step 4: Adding Content
Most content can be added wherever you see the plus (+) icon either via an item or through the Content Market for things like Panopto, Turnitin and other learning tools.
See our eLearn guide about adding different types of content to your module.
Ultra documents allow you to present mixed media on one page for an engaging teaching experience. To find out more, see our eLearn guide about creating Ultra document.
Don’t just upload a Word file to an Ultra document, you can copy and paste text to keep the formatting for a better viewing experience for course content.
Embedding a Panopto video into an Ultra document allows you to add context to the video such as tasks before/after watching, relevance of video etc. See the eLearn guide for adding Panopto videos to an Ultra Course.
Online reading lists allow students to quickly find the required reading for their module. You can add a link to a segment of the reading list to ensure students understand what is required each week. See the eLearn guide on adding a reading list section to a Learning module.
See this Blackboard video guide on adding content to your module.
Step 5: Copying Content (re-use materials)
Copy teaching content from previous academic years allows you to efficiently prepare your course with known and trusted resources. It is important to review content before copying to a new course to ensure it is still relevant and useful for students. Courses with lots of unrequired content can quickly become cluttered and confusing for students.
See the eLearn guide on copying content items into an Blackboard Ultra Course.
You may also want to:
Reading List: Do you need to add an online reading list or reading list section to your course?
Class Team: Do you need to create a Class Team that syncs with Blackboard student enrolments?
SCORM Packages: Do you need to add/create a SCORM (Shareable Content Objective Reference Model)?
Linkedin Learning: Do you want to add links to Linkedin Learning Content?
Assessments: Do you need to an overview of available Blackboard Ultra assessments?
Please contact Serviceline if you would like more information or support in setting up Blackboard Ultra Assessments.
Next steps:
Go to Blackboard Course Quick Set Up – Part 3: Engage with your Students.
For a more detailed Checklist see our eLearn guide Blackboard Ultra – 2024-25 Prepare for the new academic year.