- For all institutions, the instructional designers and online education leadership have been offering to provide instructors with Ultra “sandboxes” to allow them to start working with the Ultra Course experience outside of a classroom setting to prepare and experiment.
- For most institutions, terms prior to full conversion not already converted to Ultra will be loaded in Instructor Choice mode to ease preparation. This allows the instructor to individually choose to offer their course in Ultra Course View format. [instructions on Instructor Choice and Ultra Preview]
- SHSU Online is contracting with an outside vendor to automate conversion of a large portion of the most recent fall and spring courses not already converted to the Ultra Experience.
- This will be done in two waves
- LIT and LSCPA will have automatically generated course shells made available in early Summer 2023.
- SHSU, SRSU, and LSCPA will have their courses made available in Fall 2023
- These converted courses will still need instructor review but will allow all faculty who had not yet requested sandboxes areas from which to prepare for likely upcoming courses.
- This will be done in two waves
- Impact pop-up messages
- Utilizes pop-up messages on the LMS to inform users about the conversion process.
- Provides reminders of how to convert content every time they are logging in to Blackboard.
- Highlights the benefits of the Ultra course experience to encourage adoption and how-to articles
- Campus Online / Distance Education and other leaders will send regular email updates to all faculty and staff about the conversion process and its impact
- Instructional designers will send regular emails to faculty with tips, best practices, and resources for transitioning to Ultra courses and provide personalized support to faculty who are struggling with the transition