Regarding Blackboard Original Courses and Organizations
The Blackboard Ultra view is here to stay! As you may be aware, the University migrated all academic courses to Ultra starting in Spring 2025. However, many non-academic term-related Blackboard shells still use the original Blackboard view.
Blackboard is deprecating the Original view as of December 31, 2026.
- On January 1, 2027, all Blackboard Original content will be converted to read-only with no ability to change content or enroll anyone. Students in these courses will not be able to make submissions.
- On January 1, 2028, all Blackboard Original content will all be converted to Ultra, which will eliminate or alter much content due to incompatibility between Original and Ultra.
If you need long-term access to anything in Blackboard Original format, we strongly encourage you to gather it before the end of the year. You can do so either by
- putting it through a manual conversion process to a new Ultra Organization or Course
- downloading the content
Both of those options will require you to invest your time and effort, as there is no automated option or an option that can be executed by someone other than you. Hence, it is a good idea to start planning now if you need to do so.
If you have a Blackboard shell in Original view that is still in use and need to migrate to Ultra, please request assistance with a migration to Blackboard Ultra by submitting a help desk ticket via email to UnivITHelp@rochester.edu.
Note that student activity cannot be migrated directky, so you will want to plan a migration time when students start new work in the new shell.
Workshops and Resources for Ultra are available now