SU2025 Courses Created in Blackboard on April 24, 2025

New Process To Request Merged Course Shells

Blackboard course shells for Summer 2025 were created on April 24, 2025.

All Summer 2025 courses listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), regardless of designation as lecture, lab, etc, or instructor assignment, now have a Blackboard presence. RT requests are no longer needed for research, independent study, or practicum courses. As new course sections are added to the SOC by Department Scheduling Coordinators, corresponding Bb shells are automatically generated overnight.

If you are an instructor and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your Departmental Scheduling Coordinator to resolve the issue. Once you are listed in the SOC, your access to the Bb course shell will be updated automatically.
If you and your Department Scheduling Coordinator believe you are correctly assigned as the instructor of record in the SOC and you do not see your course shell in Blackboard, please submit a Request Tracker (RT) ticket via my.umbc.edu/help.

New Course Merge Request Process

As announced by DoIT in early April, instructors who teach multiple sections of the same course will see a separate Blackboard course shell for each section or course component. Courses will not be merged by default. Instructors planning to use separate shells will no longer need to submit an RT request.

Course shells may be merged upon request via RT ticket, which we recommend submitting at least one week before the semester starts, if not as soon as courses are created in Blackboard. NOTE: Courses should not be merged or split after student grade data and engagement activity is recorded, since it will be purged as part of the separation process.

For more information about these improvements, please see the following:

Presentation to Faculty Senate Computer Policy Committee (CPC) on March 4, 2025.
Updated FAQs & demo video: How to request a merged course
Common questions about the revised Blackboard course creation & user enrollment process (Google Doc version)

In addition, faculty are invited to attend an information session on May 1, 2025 about the new course creation process and why it matters. It will be a hybrid meeting in ENGR 102 and recorded.

Create an Inclusive & Accessible Course Environment

Plan your accessibility and Universal Design for Learning strategy before students begin working with course materials. Ally, an accessibility tool, is enabled in all course shells. Ally automatically scans uploaded and created course content, then performs a series of steps to make that content more accessible. Please review the Ally FAQs for more information about the accessibility indicators on course content and alternative formats, or attend a training session.