Blackboard Learn Ultra Adoption Builds Momentum Worldwide
Strategic investment, client involvement accelerate feature delivery as Learn Ultra adoption rises 30%
BOCA RATON, Fla. – July 11, 2022 – Anthology, a leading provider of education solutions that support the entire learner lifecycle, today announced a 46 percent increase in the number of courses designed using Blackboard Learn Ultra, and a 30 percent increase in the number of institutions deploying Learn Ultra courses, year over year.
Following the merger with Blackboard, Anthology tripled Learn Ultra development resources and increased opportunities for client feedback in the development process, a strategy that continues to power a rising cadence of new features and enabled the largest Learn Ultra release to-date delivered this July. These new features are accelerating adoption and helping institutions leverage data to better serve students when used alongside new tools like Blackboard Data Reporting.
In just the last six months, institutions that have selected or upgraded to Learn Ultra include Grand Valley State University, the Florida Department of Agriculture’s Division of Food, Nutrition and Wellness, Honoris United Universities, Rogers State University, the University of Mindanao, and the 711th Human Performance Wing, United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, among others.
“The pandemic expedited a paradigm shift in higher education. We’re going online and mobile and Anthology is here to help,” said Nick Hryhorczuk, Academic Director of Online Learning at Morton College. “They’re constantly releasing new features for Learn Ultra. They listen to the industry, get feedback from faculty and students and are on the cutting edge of higher ed tech.”
Learn Ultra Delivers New Research-Informed Features
With a research-informed approach that involves clients throughout the development process, Blackboard Learn Ultra users benefit from significant improvements to the learning experience aligned with the pedagogical preferences of instructors. The most recent releases of Learn Ultra have delivered new enhancements driven by this inclusive process, including:
- An improved and more personalized student test-taking experience, including student visibility into progress during a test, the option to hide the timer to help with test anxiety, filters to accommodate different test taking strategies and reminders about unanswered questions.
- Increased instructor control around how tests and assignments are displayed, like the ability to display one question at a time and prevent backtracking, and more engaging assessment experiences through inline file rendering. New features also increase instructor control over how a test should behave, allowing them to determine when the student can view their submission, instructor feedback and grades.
- Greater flexibility to support student self-expression, including the opportunity to provide a preferred name and pronouns, record a name pronunciation, and more control over how this information is presented to peers.
“Ultra is fantastic for providing flexibility and making sure that we provide an inclusive experience to all our students,” said Anne-Gaelle Colom, Assistant Head of School at University of Westminster.
In conjunction with accelerating feature development and deployment, Blackboard Data Reporting is now widely available to Learn clients to help institutional leaders tap learner data for actionable insights. Designed to lower the barriers to data-informed decision-making, Blackboard Data Reporting generates reports, dashboards and visualizations that look across all courses, instructors and students. This comprehensive view provides understanding about tool adoption, course design and student engagement, and ultimately enables leaders to build an experience that fuels learner success.
“Anthology’s Blackboard Learn Ultra is so much more than an LMS. When integrated with other core systems on campus, it becomes an essential tool in delivering the insights that institutions need to create more personalized experiences for students, and it will play a critical role in our Anthology iX™ product vision,” said JD White, Chief Product Officer at Anthology. “We’ve tripled the size of our Learn development team in the last year and are working with universities in more than 70 countries to help them realize its full capabilities. This is just the beginning of what we expect to see ahead.”
This news comes as education leaders and Blackboard Learn Ultra clients from around the world converge at Anthology Together, the company’s first combined user conference with Blackboard.