Ultra Course - Course Creation Basics
Course Creation Basics
This page is designed to assist instructors in getting started with designing their Blackboard ultra course. It includes steps to take at the beginning of setup that can save you work later.
Working from your syllabus during the course creation process will help ensure that your course is fully set up and organized effectively.
Course Organization
Blackboard Ultra courses have a single course content page where all course materials are organized using modules, folders, and multimedia documents that users click to expand. Please visit Ultra Course - Navigation for more details.
Modules and Folders are the two main ways instructors can group course material. It's helpful to determine your course structure and create the folders or modules you need for the content before you begin creating/copying course materials. Our course structure gallery has examples of approaches you can take. If you are using modules, you can take advantage of the AI module generator to help create them quickly.
Create Content
Once your course organization is in place, click to expand the folder/module and display the plus sign within to create content inside it. The
allows you to create new content, like a Document or Assignment, or copy content from a prior course into the module or folder.
If you use weighted categories for grading students, it is important to properly categorize your any assessments you create. Each course includes a default set of categories you can use, or you can create custom categories in the Gradebook. See Gradebook Settings for more information before proceeding.
For more ideas and information about course content, visit our creating content and /wiki/spaces/blackboard01/pages/154384915 pages.
Gradebook Setup
While gradebook setup can be performed at any point in your course, setting up your gradebook at the outset minimizes additional work when calculating final grades at a semester's end.
The following settings can be adjusted by clicking the gear icon within the Gradebook section of your course:
Use progress tracking to monitor student progress in your course. For more information please visit, Progress Tracking. For additional information about the gradebook including additional settings , please visit Ultra Gradebook and Ultra Gradebook Settings. For information about how to apply accommodations for students, exceptions, and exceptions, please visit our answers page Accommodations, Exceptions, and Exemptions .