February Instructor News from the Center for Instructional Technology
- February 5th, 2024
- in -Instructional Technology News
Hello from your colleagues in CIT! Below, you’ll find announcements and events to assist you with teaching and learning needs.
Safeguard your and your students’ rights and data.
Please ensure that all official UA communications, including email communications between students and faculty, are conducted via approved tools such as Blackboard or your UA email account. The use of personal email accounts for conducting University business is prohibited by the Terms of Use of University Technology Resources.
Please contact cit@ua.edu if you need assistance with communication with students via Blackboard or if you have any questions or concerns.
Simplify your Blackboard Learn course – Ultrafy it!
Blackboard Learn Ultra Course View (“Ultra”) offers a simple, modern, intuitive, and consistent interface across devices and a more streamlined experience for instructors and students. All Blackboard courses will be designed and delivered in Ultra by Spring 2026, and instructors of non-OTIDE courses can teach with Ultra now. Visit ultra.ua.edu to learn more about Ultra and UA’s plans, join or watch a recorded demonstration/information session, or request a practice course.
Ultra Good Feature: Course Activity Report
Table view of the Course Activity Report in an Ultra course.
Ultra’s Course Activity Report helps you understand how well your students are performing and how much they are interacting with your course. When you use the report in conjunction with the Overall Grade, you can:
- Identify potentially struggling students based on their overall grade, missed due dates, the number of hours they spend in your course, and the number of days since their last access.
- Message students who are falling behind and encourage them to increase their course activity.
- Congratulate students performing well in your course and ask them to be mentors.
- Customize your course alerts to identify potentially struggling students when their overall grade drops below a specific value, they’ve missed due dates, or they haven’t accessed the course for a certain number of days.
- Download data to analyze with other tools or share with other instructors or mentors of the course.
Check out the Course Activity Report and other Ultra good features: Request a Blackboard Ultra Practice Course.
Adobe Academic Essentials for UA Faculty
Looking for ways to explore how you can supercharge your creativity in Higher Education and learn the essentials of digital creativity, focusing on presentations, podcasting, video, data visualization and how Adobe tools can support student outcomes? The Adobe Academic Essentials series is for you.
Join us starting on February 6 for the Academic Essentials learning series hosted by Adobe’s Authorized Training Professional Learning Partner EdgeGain.
This series is free, with workshops from 60 to 90 minutes, created by faculty for faculty.
Go to Adobe’s live Professional Learning calendar and sign up today.
CIT Technology and Tool Highlights
Hypothesis
Looking to increase student engagement? Check out the upcoming events hosted by Hypothesis, UA’s platform for social annotation.
AI and the Future of Learning – Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities
This session is designed to offer valuable insights on AI in your classroom and provide strategies for AI and social annotation for 2024. Expect to gain practical tips and immediately applicable strategies for your courses.
Feb 15, 12:00-1:00 pm
CIT Knowledge Base
Need a quick answer? There’s a guide for that.
You’re in luck, CIT offers a self-serve information library called the Knowledge Base. The CIT Knowledge Base supports all UA users seeking help or answers to instructional technology questions.
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 technology 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
- Blackboard Learn Ultra Demonstration and Information Session
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- Thursday, February 8, 11 – 11:30 AM, Online
- Monday, February 19, 2 – 2:30 PM, Online
- Blackboard Learn Basics
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- Thursday, February 15, 2 – 3 PM, Online
- Creating Accessible Course Content
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- Friday, February 9, 10 – 11 AM, Online
- Fostering Student Engagement in Learn Original
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- Friday, February 2, 10 – 11 AM, Online
- Grading and Managing the Gradebook in Learn Original
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- Thursday, February 29, 2 – 3 PM, Online
- Using Groups in Learn Original
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- Thursday, February 8, 2 – 3 PM, Online
Register for CIT-led Teaching with Blackboard workshops and webinars.
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.
- Turnitin Basics
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- Tuesday, February 5, 2 – 3 PM, Online
- Thursday, February 22, 2 – 3 PM, A232 Gordon Palmer Hall
- Friday, February 23, 10 – 11 AM, Online
- Understanding Similarity Reports and Scores
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- Monday, February 12, 2 – 3 PM, Online
Register for CIT-led Teaching with Turnitin workshops and webinars.
Teaching with Gradescope Sessions
Gradescope helps instructors quickly grade and provide feedback on paper-based and online assessments: exams, quizzes, bubble sheets, homework, problem sets, programming assignments (graded automatically or manually), and more.
- Gradescope Basics
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- Thursday, February 22, 11 AM – 12 PM, Online
Register for CIT-led Teaching with Gradescope workshops and webinars.
People.ua.edu Workshop
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.
Wednesday, February 7, 10 – 11:30 PM
Register for the People.ua.edu workshop.
Introduction to Panopto
This webinar aims to cover the basics of using the lecture capture and video platform, Panopto.
Thursday, February 8, 1 – 2 PM
Register for the Introduction to Panopto workshop.
Flip Tech Support Office Hours
Join CIT for a virtual Flip office hour pop-in session. Drop-in at any time during the virtual session to receive personalized assistance or guidance for using Flip.
Tuesday, February 27, 2 – 3 PM
Join the FLip Support Office Hours for February.
As always, we are available Monday-Friday, 8:00 AM – 4:45 PM to help you. We look forward to working with you soon.
Email – cit@ua.edu | Phone – 205-348-3532 | Website and Knowledge Base