Course Structure Tools
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Blackboard Ultra features a single, central course content area. This page offers guidance on how to use modules, folders, documents, and other Ultra features to organize course content in ways that align with the needs of your curriculum and make it easier to share information with students through Blackboard. |
⏬ Table of Contents
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With the modern look and simple functionality of the Ultra Course View in Blackboard, instructors will find it easy to build their Ultra courses. The Ultra course layout is based on contemporary web design practices that meet current accessibility guidelines and responsiveness across all device sizes. This creates a consistent and seamless experience for faculty and students alike when moving between a desktop, tablet and mobile device.
When you are ready to begin building your Ultra course, we highly recommend that you
Re-imagine your course design
Build your ultra course in a sandbox that we have created for you where you will have the flexibility of experimenting and testing without impacting your active course shell. If you don't already have a sandbox and would like to get started, you can fill out a request for access to the orientation materials and a ultra sandbox.
In the Original Course View (OCV) you have a menu where you can customize multiple content areas. In the Ultra Course View (UCV), you get one main level content area, which means that you will be required to condense your menus into some combination of modules or folders.
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Because there are some features that exist in original courses, that are either not available or will not be enabled in the ultra course, performing a course copy of your entire original course content to populate your ultra course will result in broken and unconverted content. It will be difficult and time consuming to find broken/not converted items and remediate them than it would be to build the course from scratch. A combination of copying individual items from original courses, piecemeal, and building new content within your ultra course is ideal. Copying items into your Ultra course has been simplified and instructions on how to do so can be found here. If you want to start adding content to your course without copying previous content, you can follow instructions found here. Once your course is built in the Ultra Course View, copying an entire course and its content between Ultra courses is seamless. |
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Below are a few examples of Ultra Course designs that might help you to re-imagine your course design. |
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ModulesWhy use modules? Use modules when you want to control the flow of the content of the course. Modules allows you to enforce a sequence. Students must complete prerequisite items before moving onto the next item, ensuring that students obtain information systematically. You can organize all course materials into modules using a unit of your choosing, such as days, weeks, chapters or topics. Each module can be populated with files, discussions, assignments, exams and other learning materials, with the knowledge that you have control over the release and access of content. If you do not want to enforce a sequence, modules are a good choice if you would like students to access content using the built in navigation tools of the module. This allows students to move back and forth between materials within a module without having to exit out of the module. Use Modules to:
Benefits:
Limitations:
For a more detailed example of a course design using modules, click here. |
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FoldersWhy use folders? Folders make it easy to group like items, e.g., readings, lecture recordings/powerpoint, exams or assignments. You also have the flexibility to organize course materials by units, such as days, weeks, chapters or topics. You can think of a folder as a type of drop box where your students can access the content and progress through the content freely and at their own pace. Use Folders to:
Benefits:
Limitations:
For a more detailed example of a course design using Folders, click here. |
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Folders within ModulesWhy use folders within modules? You can organize all course materials using folders inside a module. The folders can be organized by units, such as days, weeks, chapters or topics. Each folder is then populated with files, discussions, assignments, exams and other learning materials with the knowledge that folders within a module will allow students to move through the contents of those folders without having to navigate to other parts of the course. Students will have access to the back and forward navigation arrows available when accessing content within a module. Use folders within modules to:
Benefits:
Limitation:
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Mix of documents and foldersWhy use a mix of items and folders? Documents in Blackboard Ultra are web pages that you can use to customize your course content. Utilizing documents to organize your content is beneficial for a number of reasons:
This approach is useful when content items inserted in the Ultra document are like items, closely related or address the same topic and are meant to be consumed at the same time. Benefits: Documents can be added to the course content page, folders or modules to present a combination of content. Documents can be used as containers for like items (e.g. lecture recordings or readings) or a combination of items such as images, text, links and media files. In the image below (left), the Lecture Slides/Videos have all been grouped together into one document. The image on the right shows a document that has a combination of content; an image, some text, a youTube video, links to readings and a file for students to download. An added benefit of using documents to organize content is that you can utilize the Ally tool to better meet accessibility requirements. Limitations: Using documents alone can lead to a long list of items in the course content area. Note that documents cannot be nested inside of another document. |
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For a more detailed example of a course design using Documents and Folders, click here. |