Navigating Blackboard Learn at Boston University: A Comprehensive Guide

Blackboard Learn is Boston University's primary learning management system (LMS), serving as a central hub for residential and online courses, certificate programs, and clerkships. It offers convenience, accessibility, and flexibility, enhancing the value of modern residential courses and acting as a cornerstone of BU's online programs. This article provides a comprehensive overview of Blackboard Learn at Boston University, including its features, transition to Blackboard Ultra, and accessibility considerations.

Blackboard Learn: A Central Learning Platform

Blackboard Learn provides a unified space for course materials, assignments, communication, and grading. Instructors can manage all course materials and activities on Blackboard, where they are readily available to students. They can post documents, make announcements, create assessments and activities, and start discussions. Students can browse course content, complete assignments, submit files to their instructor, and view their grades directly.

Key Features of Blackboard Learn

Course Management: Instructors can easily manage course content, assignments, and grades within a single platform.
Communication Tools: Blackboard Learn facilitates communication between instructors and students through announcements, discussion boards, and email.
Assessment Features: Instructors can create and administer various types of assessments, including quizzes, exams, and assignments.
Gradebook: The feature-rich gradebook allows instructors to manage course grades and download them for other purposes.
Accessibility: Blackboard Learn is designed to be accessible to all students, including those with disabilities.

Accessing Course Materials

All course syllabi are typically posted on Blackboard Learn. Within Blackboard Learn, links to courses in which students are officially enrolled appear in the My Courses tab. Students who are officially enrolled in a course should have access to any posted materials about a week before classes start. Students who enroll after the initial enrollment period (e.g., during Add/Drop) will be added to the course overnight and should have access to course materials the next morning.

Students who are not enrolled in a course may also be able to view materials for the course through Blackboard Learn. Once students are logged into the system they should select the “All Blackboard Learn Courses” tab. Choose the School of Law folder on the right side of the page and then use the Browse Categories drop down menu to select “Fall 2023 [LAW]”. There will be a list of law courses with sites. Once the sites are set up students should have access to the content area with the syllabus and first assignments. JD students who cannot log in to the Blackboard Learn system, please visit the School of Law Registrar’s Office. Students who subsequently drop a course are not automatically dropped from the Blackboard Learn roster.

Transitioning to Blackboard Ultra

Boston University is transitioning to a new Blackboard interface, Blackboard Ultra, following the company’s decision to discontinue the original display. BU announced professors will be required to switch their courses to Ultra by December 2026, with a complete retirement of Blackboard Original planned. Blackboard Ultra is the newest version of Blackboard’s Learning Management System (LMS), designed to support a more intuitive, accessible, and student-centered teaching experience. With its modern interface and mobile-friendly design, Ultra simplifies course management while enriching the learning environment.

Read also: Learn about Blackboard Learn at UD

Benefits of Blackboard Ultra

Improved Accessibility: Ultra offers improved accessibility for students, addressing some of the accessibility concerns with the original Blackboard interface.
Modern Interface: The updated interface is more intuitive and user-friendly, making it easier for students and instructors to navigate.
Mobile-Friendly Design: Ultra's mobile-friendly design allows students to access course materials and participate in activities on the go.
Additional Features for Instructors: Ultra offers additional features for instructors to enhance their teaching experience.

Resources for Transitioning to Ultra

To help with the transition to Ultra, the BU Institute for Excellence in Teaching and Learning is holding several training workshops for faculty. The best thing is when faculty from different colleges enter the workshop space and they get to talk to each other about how they teach.

BU encourages faculty to explore the best strategies for transitioning their course to Blackboard Ultra, we encourage you to consult with our Institute Academic Technology & Innovation support team (CRC) or educational technologists (BUMC).

Migrating Course Content to Ultra

You can carry over content from past semesters. To copy from Original to Ultra, use the Blackboard Course Copy Tool.

Designing Courses in Ultra

It is important to consider how to best organize your course to enhance student learning. By using folders and modules as your primary tools for structure, you can align your course layout with your instructional goals and help students navigate content with ease.

Requesting a Blackboard Course Site

Blackboard serves as BU’s central learning management platform, offering a unified space for course materials, assignments, communication, and grading. Use the “Blackboard Course Selection” tool in MyBU to request your course site. Select Blackboard Course View. Blackboard Original will be retired by December 2026; therefore, we recommend building your course in Blackboard Ultra.

Accessibility Considerations

UMass Boston’s learning management system (LMS), Blackboard, has faced scrutiny regarding its accessibility. An audit determined that a significant number of Blackboard student features were not fully accessible. Specifically, 44 of the 59 student features tested were found to have accessibility issues related to user accessibility, keyboard accessibility, navigational accessibility, language, and error identification.

The Web Accessibility Initiative’s WCAG 2.1 outlines several success criteria relevant to LMS accessibility. These include:

Success Criterion 1.3.4 Orientation (Level AA): Content should not restrict its view and operation to a single display orientation, such as portrait or landscape, unless a specific display orientation is essential.
Success Criterion 1.4.10 Reflow (Level AA): Content should be presented without loss of information or functionality, and without requiring scrolling in two dimensions.
Success Criterion 1.4.4 Resize Text (Level AA): Text should be resizable without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality.
Success Criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard (Level A): All functionality of the content should be operable through a keyboard interface without requiring specific timings for individual keystrokes.
Success Criterion 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks (Level A): A mechanism should be available to bypass blocks of content that are repeated on multiple Web pages.

UMass management should review the accessibility statements and reports of its LMS vendor to determine instances of WCAG noncompliance. The University understands the importance of utilizing an LMS that is accessible. As noted in the report, the campus transition to Canvas, a new LMS vendor, was underway in the spring of 2023 before the start of this audit. Blackboard’s accessibility issues were one of the factors that led the campus to transition from Blackboard to Canvas. The university states in its response that it monitored Blackboard’s accessibility statements during the audit scope period. However, as part of our audit testing, we determined that 44 of the Blackboard student features out of the 59 Blackboard student features we tested (75%) were not accessible for user accessibility, keyboard accessibility, navigational accessibility, error identification, or color accessibility.

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