Staff Guide Five steps to reviewing and releasing content, checking accessibility and engaging with students via 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 3, which will take you through the 5 steps to review your Blackboard course content, accessibility and engage with students as you start teaching.
Step 1: Use Ally to check content accessibility
Once your course is populated with content, use the Ally tool to obtain feedback and support to improve accessibility of items. In two clicks, you can see your overall Course accessibility score. Then you can quick fix items, or review lowest scoring content to improve accessibility for students.
Under the Details and Actions menu, select View Course & institutional tools, then Accessibility Summary to view your Ally Summary Report.
For more information, see the eLearn Guide about the Accessibility Report.
Step 2: Make content available using Batch Edit
Content added to Blackboard Content is Hidden from Students by default so once you have uploaded your content you will need to make it available to students. This can be done individually with items but you can also Batch Edit content to change visibility and set release condition on 100 items at a time.
In your Course Content, select the three dots in the top right corner next to the search icon then select Batch Edit. Here you will see all the content of your course, expand learning modules and folders to see what is inside. You can select multiple items then Edit visibility to make items Visible to Student.
For more information, see Blackboard’s Guide on Ultra Batch Edit
Step 3: Review Content with Student Preview
With content available to students, use Student Preview to create a temporary account to experience teaching content and activities as a student would. In Student Preview, you can access available content, take tests and more.
Select Student Preview on the top right hand corner of the course, then Start Preview to enter student preview. A bar will display along the top of the course to show you are in Student Preview mode. When finished, select Exit in the top right hand corner then:
- Discard – to delete any evidence of your interaction with the course.
- Save – will show allow you to view your Student Preview user interactions such as submissions/discussion contributions.
For more information, see the eLearn guide about Student Preview on Ultra.
Step 4: Open your Course to Students
When Blackboard Courses are created, they are closed to students. This means that students can be enrolled on courses but not access teaching content until you are ready.
There are two ways to open your course to students:
- In the Courses Menu, select the three dots on course list/tile and then select Course Settings, then Open Course. A pop up will will ask you to confirm, select Open to students.
- Within a Course, select Course Settings (in the top right of the page) then under Close Course, select the green tick and it will open the Course. You will see, at the top under Course Access, the course change from Unavailable to student, to Open.
For more information, see Blackboard’s guide to Course Settings. Note that not all setting options may be available on University of Southampton Courses.
Step 5: Send an announcement
Welcome students to your by sending an announcement. Select Announcements in the navigation bar at the top of the course. Then select the plus icon to create a draft of your announcement including a Title and the message. Announcements are
For more information, see the Announcements eLearn Guide.
For more information about other communication and engagement tools, see these eLearn articles about communicating with students.
You may also want to:
Content Visibility and Release Conditions: Do you want to create automatic rules for showing content to students?
Progress Tracking: Do you want to support student’s progress through the course and see what content items students are engaging with?
Discussions & Journals: Do you want to engage with students via discussions or journals?
Gradebook: Do you want to understand the features of the Gradebook and how to mark assignments?
Next Steps:
Congratulations! If you have followed these 15 steps, you have just set up your Blackboard Ultra course ready for teaching. We wish you all the best with this semester!
If you need any further help, a more detail eLearn guide is available to help you Prepare for the new academic year.
Read more about the Blackboard Ultra Migration Project on the sharepoint site.
There are plenty more eLearn guides to support you on your Blackboard Ultra journey.
Blackboard Ultra is continually developed and improved. Keep up to date with the latest changes via the monthly Blackboard release notes.