What’s New

By most accounts, UMBC’s PIVOT initiative has been considered a success in that 70 percent of all faculty participated, and 85% percent of students in PIVOT courses felt they were well organized...

Customizing the course interface creates a visual identifier in a Blackboard course. In the next phase of the Ultra course's improved navigation and aesthetic redesign, course banners will be an...

One in four students take some of their courses online, and two-thirds do so at a public institution in the same state where they live (Allen, Seaman, Pouline, & Straut, 2016; Allen &...

Rubrics are grading tools that help instructors to assess student performance and give feedback in detail. Prior to the October update, rubrics were limited to 10 rows and 10 columns. Now faculty...

There are some new features in VoiceThread Assignments!  New features were added to VoiceThread Assignments at the end of September and we would like to share them with faculty. These features...

Shifting to teaching in online and hybrid formats has created opportunities to identify how students can share multimedia projects and receive feedback through peer critique. While various tools...

The Bb Instructor Webinar Series offers a set of free 45-minute webinars designed for instructors who are getting started with teaching using Blackboard, Ultra, and Collaborate. Click on a topic...

Breakout groups are a powerful engagement tool for active learning in a synchronous session, providing private audio, video, whiteboard, application sharing, and chat for small group...

Join an upcoming training webinar from Respondus to see the latest features and integrations for LockDown Browser and Monitor. Learn how these applications are used with a range of online testing...

The Online Learning Consortium announced that UMBC's Instructional Technology team has earned an Effective Practice Award for its Planning Instructional Variety for Online Teaching (PIVOT)...