Here are this month’s new and improved features in Blackboard Ultra. For more details, please follow the links below:
Set exemptions for anonymous grading
To improve the ability to manage student exemptions, instructors are now able to set exemptions for anonymously graded assessments from the Student Overview page by clicking on ‘add or edit exemptions’ found in the overflow menu (‘…’).
Note: Instructors can now enable anonymous grading on tests by going into the test settings and checking the Anonymous marking box.
Add exceptions from Gradebook grid view and Student Overview page
The exceptions workflow can now be accessed from the Gradebook grid view (click on the corresponding grid block) and Student Overview page (‘…” menu). Instructors may need to grant a student exception for these reasons:
- Provide additional attempts
- Reschedule due dates
- Grant extensions
‘Base calculation on points earned out of total graded points’ support for Custom Calculations
For greater flexibility, instructors can now use the ‘Base calculation on points earned out of total graded points’ option* for any gradebook calculation regardless of whether it contains operators with functions and variables.
*Enabling this setting ensures that students see their actual grade earned-to-date out of all the assessments you have graded so far.
Upload questions from a file to tests and assignments
Up until now, instructors could only create new questions in tests, assignments, or question banks. Now, instructors can create questions offline in a text file (tab-delimited TXT file) and upload them into a test. Review the related Ultra Help page for details on formatting requirements.
Journals Grades & Participation list filters
To help manage journal entries, new Student and Grading Status filters have been added to the Grades & Participation view in Journals to provide instructors the option to view students based on grading status.
The full list of June updates including Course Link improvements are available on the Blackboard Help Center website.