About "Details & Actions" in Blackboard Learn Ultra (for Instructors)
When you are in an Ultra course, Details & Actions appear on the right-hand side of your computer screen, or the top of your mobile device. On this document, we try to clarify what each item means and whether or not you want to have it hidden to students in the course.
Roster
The Roster link will allow you to see all the members in the course (or organization) and what their roles are (e.g. Student, Instructor, Course Builder, Leader, etc.). While it may be nice for the students to be able to see their classmates and build a community, you may want to consider hiding this feature in an Ultra "Organization" with a large number of members. To hide the Roster click on it and change the visibility to "Hidden from students":
Course Groups
The "Course Group" tool will allow you to create groups in the course and add students to each group. The groups, then, may be used for group assignments or other activities. Currently, you cannot hide the Course Groups tool from the students even if you have not created any groups in the course.
Progress Tracking
"Progress Tracking" is a tool we highly recommend using it! Progress Tracking allows participatory items to be marked as complete when a student has made a submission or contributed to a discussion. It also allows for the non-participatory content to be manually marked as completed by the students after they have viewed it. By having Progress Tracking on, you will obtain valuable data you can use for the benefit of the students and to have timely communication them about their progress and performances. We highly recommend turning it on!
Course Image
"Course Image" allows for visual personalization of the course, by the faculty. You do not have to have a course image if you don't want to. But, if you do, the image would appear in two places: 1) On the landing page of the course, the "Content" page, and 2) As the course's thumbnail if you have your courses on the Grid view (not list view) in the Global navigation. Image must be at least 1200 x 240 pixels. Remember: Images with text don’t scale well. To be ADA compliant, please either provide an image description in the provided box, or choose "Mark as decorative":
Course is private/open
Through this link, you can make the course available and then unavailable to your students. The padlock icon would also show you the status of the course. Click on "Course is private" to open the course to allow student access. Click "Open to Students". You can continue to edit and release content. After the end of the semester, you may want to discontinue access to the students. In that case, click on the same link now saying "Course is open". A small window opens to ask if you want to mark it back to Private, if you want to indicate the course has been completed. The difference is also explained: "When you complete this course, students can access the content, but they can't participate. When you make it private, the course continues to appear in their course listings but students can't access it."
Attendance
The "Attendance" tool works exactly as in Blackboard Learn Original. When you click on the Attendance/Mark attendance link, it will allow you to activate the tool in the course by clicking on the "Add Attendance" button. A column will automatically be created in the Gradebook for it. The Attendance tool itself will have several columns for each day you take attendance.
For more information about the Attendance tool, go to this site provided by Blackboard Help for Instructors.
Books & Tools
The "Books & Tools" link will allow you to access external partner/publishers' textbooks (e.g. macmillan, Pearson, or any other publisher approved by the Willo Labs) as well as LTI tools you can integrate in the course (e.g. Panopto, Turnitin, or Poll Everywhere).
Question Banks
"Question Banks" is a repository for all of the questions you may want to use to build pools, quizzes, tests, or assignments. You can share questions between multiple assessments. Question banks can be imported from other courses and resources.
Checking the Course as a Student
If you want to check the look and feel of the course as a student, you can click on the "Student Preview" button on the upper right corner of your course: