Used by more than 1,400 courses and 300 organizations every semester, the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS) can be used to simply reduce administrivia by posting announcements, syllabi or other documents. Or it can be used for self-paced, interactive learning through online discussions, assignments or quizzes. At the end of every semester, DoIT publishes UMBC’s “Most Active Blackboard Courses” reports so faculty can seek each other out about what works (or doesn’t) and why.
Instructors can use Ally to gauge the accessibility of course content. Ally provides reporting tools to give feedback on the accessibility of linked course content and tools to help improve content accessibility with Ally’s step-by-step instructions. In addition to providing insight to content accessibility, Ally automatically creates alternative versions of files to students that best suits their needs.
As of March 2026, UMBC will use YuJa instead of Panopto. Please see this myUMBC announcement and follow-up posts about the migration of Panopto content.
Sometimes it’s just easier to show than tell. Using YuJa, faculty can capture and narrate anything they see on their computers, and then publish an online screencast movie tutorial or mini-lecture for students to watch and replay on their own time. YuJa is a sophisticated platform that provides multiple recording and editing options for the video and audio output, embed quizzes, live webcasting for interactive, synchronous presentations, cloud-based video storage integrated directly into Blackboard, and perhaps best of all, accounts are automatically provisioned and any user interested in trying the tool can do so without having to submit a ticket.
Other tools
UMBC offers a full suite of tools to support hybrid and online learning including:
- Akindi for assessment delivery and planning
- Poll Everywhere
- VoiceThread
- Respondus LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor
- Google Workplace
- Office 365
- CourseArc
- Qwickly Attendance
COLLABORATE
As of Summer 2025, Collaborate is no longer supported. Please see the related myUMBC announcement about end of support for Collaborate.