This new look for Blackboard will make it much easier for students to navigate their classes and assignments with a modern, sleek landing page. “All institutions within the North Dakota University System (NDUS) will experience this change at the same time as part of the transition to Ultra Base Navigation (UBN),” according to Teaching Transformation and Development Academy.  

Although the features and functionality will not change on Blackboard, the color scheme and icons will be updated along with several other updates to make the site more accessible and mobile friendly. On January 4th, when you log into Blackboard, you will see all these new updates come to life.  

According to the University of North Dakota, these other updates include Activity Stream for a customizable view of activity in all your courses, Courses with links to access your past, current, and future courses and sort for a cleaner look and feel, Calendar for displaying dates and events from multiple courses including due dates and meetings, Messages where you can send and receive messages for all your Blackboard courses, and finally, Grades for students to see a list of recent grades and their overall grades for each course. 

There is a virtual “Show and Tell” session on Wednesday, December 8th from 11 am to 12 pm “to see a demo of the new look and learn about some new navigation and information features that will be available as part of the update,” according to UND Events Calendar where you can also register to attend.  

If you are unable to attend the virtual session, there is a PowerPoint link on the UND website under Academics > TTaDA > Academic Technologies > Blackboard for 10 Things to Try in Ultra Base Navigation along with several instructor and student resource videos.  

Kelsie Hildebrand is a Dakota Student General Reporter. She can be reached at [email protected].