Blackboard Ultra Updates – Future

Contents

Blackboard release monthly features updates. This article will contain a summary of things that are on the horizon.

To Do panel on the Courses page

As part of a refreshed Courses page, a new “To Do” list surfaces up to five of your most urgent, deadline-driven tasks across your active courses, so you can see what needs attention and go straight to it.

Your Top To Dos list shows a user’s most pressing tasks—such as assignments, quizzes, and exams, plus feedback to review once it’s posted—ordered by urgency.

Overdue items appear first, with the closest due date at the top, followed by items due soon
Each item shows the task title, course name, localized due date and time, and a status chip (Overdue or Due soon)
Selecting an item takes users directly to the page where you submit work or review feedback
Completed, unavailable, and duplicate items are filtered out, so the list stays focused on what matters

The Courses page with a Your Top To Dos listing several tasks, organized by Overdue, Due Today, and Due Soon. The Overdue items include AI Reading due 7 July 2026 at 9:40am. The Overdue list has a label saying Items older than 7 days not shown. The Due Today list displays No items due today. The Due Soon list displays one item: Subject Matter Expert (SME) Interview - role play, due 6 July. — *The Your Top To Dos list on the Courses page shows a student’s most urgent tasks, ordered by due date, each linking directly to the task.*

New Groups Management Experience

Groups management has been reimagined from the ground up with a cleaner layout and more intuitive controls.

Automatic enrollment with clearer controls
More flexible ways to assign students, including drag‑and‑drop
Sorting for group members and groups

You can now start by choosing how they want to structure groups—before managing individual members. The options include:

manual assignment
automatic assignment
self‑enrollment
import
bulk creation of groups

The Groups page showing two existing groups (Festival Planning and Final Presentations). The New group set button is selected, opening a dropdown menu. The options on the dropdown menu are Manually assign, Automatically Assign, Self-enroll, and Import from CSV. The dropdown menu is highlighted with a blue box, highlighting it in the screenshot.

You can automatically assign students to groups by specifying the number of members per group.

A new group set is being created called Exam Study Groups. The option for automatic enrollment has been selected, which opens a dialog box called Automatic enrollment. With instructions saying This will randomly assign students to groups, the required number field is labeled Number of members per group. The number 4 has been entered in the number field. Below the number field is text saying This will create 3 group. At the bottom corner of the dialog box, the buttons Enroll members or Cancel appear.

Upcoming improvements
– Search within the group management screen
– Improved sorting order when numbers are used as part of group name
– Improved handling of preview and unavailable students

Automations: Send messages to students based on rules

Instructors can soon create automations that send congratulatory or supportive messages to students based on custom rules set at the course level. Instructors define the score thresholds and write the messages. These automations help instructors deliver timely, personalized feedback throughout the course, boosting student engagement and saving time.

In the initial release, three automations are available. Instructors choose to either Send congratulatory message or Send supportive message, or reminder to students to review feedback. Congratulatory messages are sent when a student earns a high score; supportive messages are sent when a student does not achieve a specified score. Instructors select the grade item, set the score threshold as a percentage, and enter the message text.

Image 1: In the Automation trigger section, instructors set the conditions that will trigger the message to be sent.

Automation trigger page. User is setting the condition triggers.

Image 2: In the Action to be taken section, the instructor writes the message that will be sent to students when the rule is triggered.

Learning Object Repository

This feature is not yet available at the University of Southampton. Please raise a ServiceLine ticket for the Blackboard team if this is something you might want to use in the future.

The Learning Object Repository is a central location to store course materials in Ultra Documents. These documents can then be centrally updated from a single location, but appear on multiple courses.

Goals and Mastery Learning

This feature is not yet available at the University of Southampton. Please raise a ServiceLine ticket for the Blackboard team if this is something you might want to use in the future.

The Mastery tab in the Gradebook allows instructors and students to see how their activities align with institutional goals. Based on the goal performance scale set by your institution, the tab displays the mastery of each alignment.

The Mastery tab enables instructors to:

View the level of mastery per alignment for each student.
View how each student is performing against those alignments.

Screenshot of the Ultra Mastery tab in the Gradebook.

Considerations:

Goals cannot be created by a course Instructor. These must be set up by an administrator.
The Goal Performance Scale must also be created by an administrator, and is the scale used for all goals.
Gradebook columns cannot be expanded so it is difficult to view the full name and description of a goal.

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