Event Information
On April 9, 2024 an event was held (in person at both campuses and online via Zoom) to announce that RCSJ is moving to Ultra Courses. Below is more information about that event.
Questions & Answers
There were a few questions asked during the event that we were unable to answer live. After investigating, we're able to provide some answers below.
Q: Has the Calendar tool been updated? - CORRECTION TO ANSWER PROVIDED IN VIDEO
A: While the Calendar tool hasn't technically been updated, some of the functionality of Ultra Courses makes the Calendar tool more useful. Because items that are not yet available to students can still be visible to students (but locked), all items in a course with a due date assigned will appear on the calendar, even if they are not yet available to students. This means if all of the course assignments/tests/etc in the course have due dates assigned to them at the beginning of the course, the Course Calendar will show the students everything. This is a huge improvement to how the Calendar tool works with Original courses.
Q: Can instructors see if a student saw/read a message?
A: There is no mention of that feature anywhere, but we found it in the Idea Exchange. If you'd like to see this feature, you should create an account with your RCSJ email address and vote for it!
Q: In Ultra, if I use the Gradebook to send students an alert about missing submissions, will that send to their course messages, or to their RCSJ email address? Or both?
A: The Messages tool is the default tool for all communication inside Blackboard Ultra. If you go to the Gradebook and choose to send a message to an individual student, the message will be sent inside Blackboard via the Messages tool. The same is true if you go to an assignment in your Gradebook and choose to alert everyone missing the assignment – they will receive an alert in the Messages tool. Keep in mind that if users set up their notifications to get an email alert when they receive a Message, they will also get an email.