Track student engagement with Ultra content in October

Improved auto-save for student assessments

In the October update, scheduled for this week, instructors who teach in Ultra courses will be able to track and view student engagement with course content. Tracking how, when, and what students do with course content may help instructors identify when to take important actions such as reaching out to inactive students about their progress in a course.

Image 1: Click the overflow menu to access the new report

Unlike in Original courses, the new report, called Student Progress, does not need to be enabled on a per item basis. It is automatically available in all Ultra courses when Progress Tracking is turned on at the global level. Instructors can view the report by selecting the (...) menu for each supported content item:

Learning Modules & Folders
Ultra Documents
Uploaded files
Links
LTI content (third-party tools) with no associated grade

Image 2: Example of progress report for course content

The report will show instructors:

Students who have not yet opened content;
Students who have opened or started viewing content; and
Students who have marked the content as complete.

Instructors may sort by student name or progress status. The list of students will also include pronunciation and, when enabled in Blackboard by UMBC, pronoun information.

The report provides instructors with the date and time for when an action occurred (e.g., when a student started viewing content). Instructors can then send an individual or bulk message with a blind copy to each student.

Improved Auto Saved Support for Students

This month's update features a major improvement for students when taking assessments. Responses entered in the content editor will be auto saved two seconds after the student stops typing. The "last saved" time is displayed at the bottom of the assessment and auto updates. If there is a disruption in connectivity, students will receive a "Connection lost" warning. This warning informs students that action is needed to re-establish the connection so that their work is saved.

The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on October 11, 2022. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Additionally, our Ultra feature tracker is updated and now includes a filter for functional category (e.g., assessment, course management, grading) so you can sort only those items you might be interested in tracking the status. Please watch the FAQs, including the What's New with Ultra page, and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra.

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options: