What’s New in EIS

A student submits their essay as a Pages file. Another turns in a .zip when you asked for a single PDF. By the time you notice, you're chasing down a resubmission instead of grading. September's...

The week before the semester starts can feel like a sprint: A full inbox, a syllabus that still needs one more edit, and a course shell that isn’t quite ready for students yet. Before the scramble...

Blackboard's August update is one of the bigger releases we've seen in a while, touching grading, navigation, assessments, and course workflows all at once. Here's what's changing, organized by...

As we gear up for the FA2026 semester, Instructional Technology is hosting Blackboard Week from August 10th to August 14th. Whether you are completely new to Blackboard or a seasoned pro looking...

After a year-long redesign with faculty feedback sessions – including on-site at UMBC – Blackboard will launch a new gradebook starting August 7, 2026. The redesigned gradebook grid view will...

Blackboard course shells for Fall 2026 were created on July 15, 2026. All Fall 2026 courses listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), regardless of designation as lecture, lab, etc, or...

In partnership with the Math and Physics Departments, the Division of Information Technology is pleased to announce a pilot for Gradescope, a feedback and grading platform that integrates with...

This month's Ultra update provides a new report that gives instructors class-wide rubric data at a glance, and a dedicated field that separates discussion context from prompt. Paired with clearer...

Email is one of the most universal communication tools we have at UMBC, and one of the most commonly overlooked places where accessibility breaks down. Whether you’re sending a department update,...

If you've ever run an Ally course accessibility report and found a long list of untagged PDFs, you know the feeling: the problem is clear, but the path forward is time-consuming. Tagging PDFs for...