December 1 – Instructor News from the Center for Instructional Technology  – Center for Instructional Technology

December 1 – Instructor News from the Center for Instructional Technology 

December 1st, 2023
in -Instructional Technology News

Hello from your colleagues in CIT! Below you’ll find resources to help with finals and grading. If you need help with instructional technology, including assistance with your exam and grading setup, please contact cit@ua.edu. 

Resources for Exams and Grading:  

Testing Tips for Instructors, including ways to avoid common issues 
Add Accommodations to a Blackboard Test, to allow extended time or other accommodations 
Testing Tips for Students, including setup and tech guidance 
Grading in Blackboard, including downloading and managing submissions and grades 
Grade Reporting at UA to import grades into myBama, locate last activity dates, and review Registrar information. Final grades are due Tuesday, Dec 19, by 11:59 PM.

A Simpler, More Modern Blackboard is Here

UA instructors can now explore—and teach with—Blackboard Learn Ultra Course View.

An alternative to the traditional Blackboard Learn experience, “Ultra” offers a simple, modern, intuitive, and consistent interface across devices and a more streamlined experience for instructors and students. CIT and the Office of Teaching Innovation and Distance Education (OTIDE) have established a goal of having all courses designed and delivered in Ultra by Spring 2026.

See Ultra for yourself and start to prepare: Request a Blackboard Ultra Practice Course

Like what you see? Instructors of non-OTIDE courses may now teach with Ultra. Request a Blackboard Ultra Course View LIVE Course and CIT will help you determine whether Ultra meets your needs.

Learn more about Ultra and UA’s plans: Blackboard Learn Ultra Course Pilot

Upcoming Learning Opportunities 

New to one of our instructional tech. tools? We would love to guide you step-by-step or provide tips and ideas for using it in your class. Just let us know how we can help! 

  A few workshops are highlighted below.  Keep up to date on all the training sessions at https://cit.ua.edu/workshops/ 

Teaching with Blackboard Sessions 

These CIT-led workshops and webinars aim to help you get started with and get the most out of Blackboard Learn, UA’s learning management system. Upcoming sessions include: 

Teaching with Blackboard: Blackboard Learn Basics

- Wednesday, December 6, 2023, 10:00 –11:00 AM – Meets in A232 Gordon Palmer Hall 
- Thursday, December 14, 2023, 3:00 – 4:00 PM – Meets online via Microsoft Teams

Teaching with Blackboard: Creating Accessible Course Content

- Wednesday, December 20, 2023, 10:00 – 11:00 AM – Meets online via Microsoft Teams

Teaching with Blackboard: Fostering Student Engagement in Learn Original

- Wednesday, December 13, 2023, 2:00 – 3:00 PM – Meets in A232 Gordon Palmer Hall

Teaching with Turnitin Sessions 

Turnitin provides tools for grading and peer review and helps deter and prevent plagiarism by checking student-submitted work against an extensive online database. Learn more in these upcoming sessions: 

Teaching with Turnitin: Turnitin Basics

- Wednesday, December 6, 2023, 2:00 – 3:00 PM – Meets in A232 Gordon Palmer Hall 
- Thursday, December 7, 2023, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Meets online via Microsoft Teams

Teaching with Turnitin: Understanding Similarity Reports and Scores

- Thursday, December 7, 2023, 3:00 – 4:00 PM – Meets online via Microsoft Teams 
- Wednesday, December 13, 2023, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Meets in A232 Gordon Palmer Hall

People.ua.edu Workshops

Wednesday, December 6, 1:00 – 2:30 PM (virtual)

Tuesday, December 12, 10:00 – 11:30 AM

Create your professional faculty website using our easy, drag and drop web platform. In this session, you’ll learn how to add text and pictures, create column layouts, add video, audio, and hyperlinks, and add and rearrange pages.

Gradescope for Final Exams (partner event)

Friday, December 1, 12:00 – 1:00 PM

Gradescope helps instructors quickly grade and provide feedback on online and in-class assessments. This workshop, led by the Gradescope team, will offer guidance of assignments that are paper-based. They will also cover the grading and rubric-building workflow on Gradescope and walk attendees through the instructor interface for creating an assignment and student interface for viewing feedback.

Gradescope Bubble Sheets (partner event)

Tuesday, December 5, 10:00 – 11:00 AM

Gradescope helps instructors quickly grade and provide feedback on online and in-class assessments. This workshop, led by the Gradescope team, will offer guidance on using Gradescope Bubble Sheets (as a scantron replacement). You will learn how to digitally create answer keys, easily edit bubbling mistakes electronically, provide students with feedback, and return graded work electronically.  

Simple Syllabus Overview

Tuesday, December 5, 10:00 – 11:00 AM

Learn how to navigate and add your Spring 2024 syllabus content to Simple Syllabus, UA’s new syllabus tool. By default, Simple Syllabus will populate section information and materials, as well as instructor information, from other UA systems, such as CourseLeaf and Banner. 

Live polling with Microsoft Forms

Thursday, December 7, 3:00 – 4:00 PM

In this introduction to polling with Microsoft Forms workshop, users will learn how to create surveys, quizzes, and polls for both synchronous and asynchronous classes. Instructors can see and/or present real-time polls results as students respond using almost any web browser or mobile device. Results can be exported to Excel for further review.

 In this session, we’ll cover: Quiz and poll creation, sharing options, permission control, and result options.

Build a digital portfolio and personal website 

Thursday, December 14, 2:00 – 3:00 PM

Join CIT as we explore tools and strategies to setup up digital portfolios and personal websites.  Learn how to easily build creative webpages and portfolios using Adobe Portfolio and Microsoft Sway to capture, edit and publish a unique website. 

Digital Storytelling for the Classroom

Thursday, December 21, 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Explore tools and strategies to setup up digital storytelling assignments for your class.  Learn how to develop the steps for implementing creative webpages and portfolios in your course and of course the software and hardware tools to capture, edit and publish the final products.

In this course we will take a look at Adobe Express Pages, Adobe Portfolio and Microsoft Sway.  