Blackboard Learn Ultra is not Blackboard, at least not the familiar Blackboard Learning Management System I’ve used for many years. Though the changes might seem cosmetic, as the previous data migrated from Blackboard “Learn” to “Learn Ultra” without any issues, user interface and experience changes can be as significant as any changes made to underlying code or database designs.
Within a week I must familiarize myself with Blackboard Ultra so I can readily locate discussion forums and assignments. I need to be able to help my students, and myself during an eight-week, fast-paced course. What I had assumed would be a simple switch since I am familiar with current and past versions of at least six LMS platforms now seems daunting.
This intense self-training will be uncompensated. It’s for a flat-rate adjunct post that pays less than $2000 per course. That’s also why I’m not accepting any future contracts as an adjunct for less than $3600 per course. There’s a lot of time that isn’t considered “work” by universities, including preparing course shells for online courses.
The “improved” design of Ultra trims descriptive text for folders and items to the length of a Tweet. Many of the detailed instructions I incorporated into my shells are gone, so I now need to quickly rethink my approach. Details were helpful to students. I hope they’re all savvy users.
My discussion threads? The topics are gone. I can easily copy and paste from the last course, but that’ll be time-consuming. The new discussion settings might be better, but losing the text and the grade settings annoys me. It will likely be best if I delete all the old assignment entries that imported into the grade book, since many are unlinked to content now.
I Like Nested Folders
Ultra seems to be designed with phones, tablets, and short attention spans in mind. The system likely encourages flatter content models, instead of the nested folders that I prefer as a computer user. I’m not the type of user with dozens of icons on my desktop. I carefully craft directory trees, folders within folders.
Everything, all the content, in one long scrolling page. Why, Blackboard, why? It’s painful. I put items into my shells in reverse order and release them by date, so at least what students most likely need will be at the top of the screen.
My course shell has a top-level organized by units or weeks. I did this in Moodle, D2L, and Blackboard. Clean and organized with a navigation menu on the left. The “Assignments” folder on screen contained all the assignment sheets and their materials. In the file manager, I followed the same organizational structure. A directory named “Assignments” had four folders, each with the materials for a four-week unit.
I actually liked Blackboard’s course file manager. It was the familiar directory-folder metaphor familiar to any Mac or Windows user. The migration to Ultra maintained old folders and links, but new content gets dumped into an all-inclusive, read-only folder with two subdirectories named “Embedded” and “Questions.”
With Blackboard Ultra, by default files are either dumped into one massive folder or stored out in the cloud.
Note: You can use the Content Collection at the top-level of Blackboard Ultra, after clicking the plus symbol to add content. You cannot do this within some other sub-folder items, however. It seems all course shell organization is best done at the top level of Ultra.
To access the Content Collection file browser in Ultra, you access the Tools link from the main user screen. I can see files, I can manage them, but I see no obvious way to link to these files. I’ll experiment and explore only because I hate not knowing how this should work.
When you do add content, it seems to encourage content links from cloud services, such as Google Drive, DropBox, or OneDrive. What happens if a teacher swaps courses with another instructor? I personally prefer self-contained systems. I want all my course files in my course shell and I don’t want to have to remember what’s out on various cloud servers.
Too Touchy or Mousy for Me
Moving content into and out of folders within Ultra requires fine motor skills. I hate it. I spent more than eight hours moving items (and fixing my accidental placements of moved items). It was enough to make me miss text-based bulletin boards.
I tried to move things without the trackball, but that was even worse. At least I do use a trackball, which works better with my poor motor control.
Why do you need so many mouse clicks in Blackboard Ultra? Instead of using new screens or windows for information, the designers went JavaScript crazy. Panels slide from the left and right. Buttons are, of course, just below the bottom of my screen. (And I am using three high-resolution 4K screens, so there’s no excuse for an interface that doesn’t fit without scrolling.)
Trying to set content release dates, I kept receiving cryptic errors about “Something went wrong. Click for a debug code.” Click, open the setting. Click, save. Error! Click, close the error pop-up. Click, toggle the conditional release. Click, close the side panel. Click again to repeat the process and have the settings save properly.
When you have a lot of content, this clicking gets old fast.
Surrender is Easier, Sometimes
Instead of fighting some elements of the Ultra user experience, I deleted all the assignment sheets. I gave up trying to create a more structured course. I’ll spend days redesigning my course shell. For one use. For one, short, eight-week course that I am unlikely to teach again.
We’ve thrown almost every teacher, from K12 and higher education, into online learning management systems. The systems are mediocre, at best. We shouldn’t have to fight these systems to teach our classes.
Blackboard Ultra might be better for many students and instructors. Based on my observations, most people really do dump all their files in “Documents” or on their desktops. Every semester students would ask me, “What’s in the ‘lecture slides’ folder?” I’m not kidding.
I make sure to name files using conventions that should be obvious: COURSE NAME – Unit – Item.ext. The syllabus becomes COMM101 – Course Info – Syllabus.pdf. Trust me, that’s not obvious enough.
The first link in my course shell? It is named “Start Here!” I check the LMS logs. Regardless of the LMS, students don’t start there.
We assume students are tech-savvy and understand some basic traditions of computing metaphors. That’s not the case. My students understand their iPhones and iPads. Many don’t even understand the basic word processing icons for text justification left, right, and center. Calling our students “digital natives” implies they have internalized some skills and knowledge we take for granted.
Blackboard Ultra will force me to trim text descriptions and think more like a phone user than a computer user. That’s a different set of expectations.
Blackboard Learn did look outdated. Some features needed to evolve. I’m unconvinced that Ultra represents progress. By the end of April, I’ll have a better measure of the Ultra experience.