News

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...

Links are everywhere -- in syllabi, announcements, email, assignments, websites, and Blackboard pages. They’re one of the most useful tools for connecting students to resources and one of the most...

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,...

Imagine a student learning Spanish who relies on a screen reader to access course materials. They open a PDF of a restaurant menu and instead of hearing the items and prices their classmates are...

Accessible math content ensures that all students can fully engage with your course material. Yet mathematical notation remains one of the most common accessibility barriers in STEM courses. The...

During Summer 2026, DoIT staff and Blackboard will archive our entire instance of Blackboard, which will save individually backed-up copies of every course and organization through SU2023. Courses...

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...