The experience colleagues have of moving to Blackboard Ultra will be different but some of the benefits and challenges will be common. In this series of short videos, academic colleagues show us their courses and share their experience of designing them to take advantage of the new course template and features in Ultra,
Cindy Becker (English Literature)
Professor Cindy Becker talks about how Ultra has changed her view of Blackboard and teaching online. Cindy shows what that looks like for a module called ‘Film Narrative’ and the refreshed student-focused approach it prompted.
Mary Morrissey (English Literature)
Dr Mary Morrissey shows the steps involved in planning and building the module ‘From Romance to Fantasy’ with the new University course template, the approach she’s taken and what was involved in doing this.
Mirjana Sokolovic-Perovic (Clinical Langauge Sciences)
Dr Mirjana Sokolovic-Perovic descibes how she has re-worked the first year module ‘Phonectics and Phonology 1′ using the University course template, made adaptations for an in-class test and achieved a simple and consistent weekly structure to help scaffold students’ learning.
Peter Sweby (Mathematics & Statistics)
Dr Peter Sweby outlines his approach to re-organising an existing module called ‘Differential Equations’. Whilst he found most resources translate easily into Ultra, Peter needed to re-think the levels of content to take advantage of Ultra’s new layout. The Maths department make dedicated use of specialist assessment software called Mobius and build resources using HTML files to make Maths equations digitally accessible to students.
Oscar Garcia Garcia (Languages & Cultures)
Oscar Garcia Garcia demonstrates how he has re-worked the ‘Intermediate Spanish Language’ module into an Ultra course. He focusses on the use of Announcements, the arrangment of course content using ‘Documents’ and integrating Discussions.
Rob Banham (Typography – Art & Communication & Design)
Dr Rob Banham explains how he’s merged two Part 3 modules into a single Ultra course following the Portfolio Review. This large project-based 60 credit module utilisies ‘conditional release’ to ensure students only see learning resources relevant to them, and organises them using ‘Ultra Documents’. He also recommends the most time-efficient method for moving and re-using content.