Progress Tracking in Blackboard Ultra is a feature that shows how students interact with your course materials. Each item displays a clear status: not started, in progress, or completed.
With the Student Progress Reports, you can quickly see:
- Which students are keeping up
- Who may be falling behind
- How much of the content each student has completed
This feature helps you monitor engagement and support where needed.
You can enable this function to give your students an easy way to track what they have completed in your course.
Note: If you turn on progress Tracking after the course has already begun:
- Participatory items (like assessments already submitted) will be marked retroactively complete.
- Non‑participatory items (such as Ultra Documents) will still need to be manually marked by students.
Turn on Progress Tracking
Turn progress tracking on for your course:
- Select Courses Settings in your course. Course Settings is on the top corner of a course page.
- On the Course Settings page, in the Progress Tracking session, use the Track Student Progress switch to turn the tool on or off.
When turned on, your students see their progress in the course. All content displays an icon showing a student's progress. When all content in a folder or module has been completed, the entire folder is automatically marked as complete.
Before a student has accessed content, the Progress icon is an empty circle:
After a student has accessed content, the Progress icon is a half-filled circle:
For items that are submitted, the Progress icon turns to a green checkmark to indicate that the item is completed. If the item does not have a submission option, such as an Ultra Document, students will have to mark the item as complete themselves.
The Student Progress tab
The Progress tab helps you track individual student progress in a course. You can see completed and uncompleted tasks for each student. You can access the tab by selecting “Progress” in a student’s Student Overview from the Gradebook.
The content is displayed on the Progress tab depends on the content availability. By default, the Content availability filter is set to “Visible to students”. Select “All” from the Content availability menu dropdown to see content that isn’t visible to students in addition to visible content. Content that isn’t visible to students has a lock icon beside it.
Student Progress Report for Course Content
Instructors need insight into how students engage with course content beyond assignments to make improvements or reach out to inactive students. There are two ways to access the Student Progress report:
- Select the ellipsis menu next to the content, then choose Student Progress.
- Open the content’s page and select the Student Progress tab.
The report shows which students haven’t opened the content, those who have accessed it, and those who marked it complete. It also includes the date and time of these actions. You can sort by student name or progress status and send individual or bulk messages based on the data.
The Student Name list includes extra details like name pronunciation, accommodations, pronouns, and name recordings if provided by students, helping personalize your interactions.