What’s New in EIS

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...

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...

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...

What if a wrong answer could teach just as much as a right one? This month’s Blackboard update brings tools that let instructors do exactly that: Guiding students not just to the correct response,...

Have you ever spent more time wrestling with Blackboard's Groups tool than actually designing the group work itself, especially in a large course? The May Ultra update delivers meaningful...

Have you ever wrestled with Blackboard's group management -- spending too many clicks trying to organize students, waiting for pages to load in large courses, or losing track of who's assigned...

Have you ever wanted students to see exactly what's expected of them in a discussion, without having to navigate back to the assignment details to check? Or needed to recognize that one group...

Blackboard is preparing to launch a completely redesigned gradebook this summer, including a faster, cleaner, and significantly easier-to-use experience for faculty. To ensure the update meets the...

In January, UMBC faculty and students will experience a redesigned course navigation in Ultra that makes key areas easier to access and understand. The updated layout brings a full-width header...