MANAGER OF ONLINE LEARNING
As the Marshall University community prepares to resume face-toface classes, the health and safety of everyone – students, faculty, staff and visitors — remains our highest priority. Please review Marshall University’s Return-to-Campus Plan at marshall.edu/coronavirus. Let’s continue to build on the momentum created during the last year and stay on top of updating course materials and resources in Blackboard course sections so that students can always access at least the course Syllabus on Blackboard. Now that you have seen what options are available for presenting course materials and student assessments on Blackboard, we can grow on what you have learned and you can continue to provide yourselves with more classroom time for activities. Over the next year, we are preparing for a move to the newest version of Blackboard: the Ultra Experience. We have spent several years preparing for this upgrade, and have taken a slower approach to updating our learning management system than we have in the past. By approaching this methodically, we can assist with this transition in such a way that will allow faculty to have more opportunities to view Ultra courses, take part in training (live and selfguided), and prepare mentally for the conversion to Ultra view. Speaking with faculty and directors around the country at other institutions, we have learned that the majority of the faculty enjoy Ultra view more, and students have been overwhelmingly in favor of the new system. These institutions range from having had Ultra for five years, to newly-updated campuses. (Continues on page 4) 3
