Ultra enhances usability, gradebook, test timer in November

Flag student retention and other grade alerts in your stream

Usability and a few gradebook improvements come to Ultra in November. New, larger icons with thicker line strokes and blue backgrounds improve accessibility and better support quick scanning of the Ultra course content page.

The gradebook's student list view will feature three key enhancements:

Send messages and add accommodations for a student within both the student list view and the grade details view
Configure whether students’ usernames are visible if they need to differentiate students in their Ultra courses.
Set up activity stream alerts about student inactivity and grade thresholds for themselves and their students.
If your course contains enough activity and grading data, you can also see a detailed visualization of class performance.

The gradebook also receives additional search capabilities, column sorting options, and enhanced page controls for both large and small devices. Instructors can also choose whether to show or hide the overall grade column to their students.

Additional enhancements include an update to the assessment countdown timer. Now students will know how much time they have left down to the last second when they take an Ultra assessment. The quiz timer will change from minutes to seconds when less than 1 minute remains.

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