Blackboard Ultra Updates: October 2025

1. Improved Course Messages User Interface – 3902.1

We’ve redesigned the Course Messages interface in Blackboard to deliver a cleaner, more modern messaging experience. Messages now appear in chat-style bubbles, with the sender’s messages left-justified and the recipient’s messages right-justified—similar to popular messaging apps like iMessage or Teams. The sender’s avatar is displayed next to their messages, making it easier to visually identify participants in the conversation. Your own avatar does not appear in your view but will be visible to others when you send messages.

This update improves clarity and usability, helping users quickly distinguish between sent and received messages. Time stamps are clearly displayed, and group conversations are visually separated for better organization. 

2. Consistent Save and Cancel options in Settings page of Tests and Assignments – 3902.1

This enhancement includes the following updates:

• Timer settings: Removed the X icon and added Save and Cancel buttons.

• Access code settings: Replaced Close and Continue with Cancel and Save.

• Learning Outcome Measurements: Removed the X icon and added Save and Cancel buttons.

• Turnitin Originality Report settings: Removed the X icon and added Save and Cancel buttons. SafeAssign settings remain unchanged. 

3. Tag questions with metadata in tests and question banks – 3902.1

Updated Help Topic: "Sort and search question banks" section of Question Banks
Idea Exchange ID: LEARNU-I-932

Instructors can now tag questions with metadata when creating or editing questions in tests, forms, and banks. Metadata is not visible to students during test-taking or review. 

When creating or editing a question, instructors can turn on Question metadata, then create or apply a tag to the question. Created tags become available in the Enter question tags search results, allowing instructors to apply that tag to other questions without needing to create them again. 

Metadata is visible during question creation or editing and can be used to filter questions when reusing or adding to pools. Created tags are facets in the Categories filter set available on the question banks and Reuse question pages.

Question metadata for tests and pools that were copied from Original is preserved. Original offered four metadata types: Category, Topics, Levels of Difficulty, and Keywords. When questions have metadata that belongs to Topics, Levels of Difficulty, or Keywords metadata type, that type also becomes available for filtering on the question banks and Reuse question pages.

Example: An instructor copied an Original question pool to Ultra. The question pool contained questions that had metadata for all four types. When viewing the question bank in Ultra, the Tags section of the filter panel has filter sets for Categories, Topics, Levels of Difficulty, and Keywords. The Original tags are facets in these filter sets.

4. Require questions before making forms visible to students – 3902.1

We improved the visibility controls for forms to align with those of tests. Previously, instructors could make a form visible to students, even if it contained no questions. This enhancement ensures that students only access complete and purposeful assessments.

Instructors must first add at least one question to a form before they can make it visible to students. Release conditions cannot be set until the form includes questions. 

5. Improved student experience with fill in the blank question type – 3902.1

Impact: Students
Updated Help Topic: Fill in the Blank Questions
Idea Exchange ID: LEARNU-I-2027

We enhanced the student experience when answering fill in the blank questions in tests. Fill in the blank questions now display the blanks inline with the surrounding text, whether the question is presented as a sentence, paragraph, or table. We also added hidden ARIA labels to blanks to improve screen reader accessibility.