Making the move to Learn Ultra – Top Tips!

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All courses taught in the 23/24 academic year need to be delivered using Learn Ultra. Before the start of teaching, courses need to be moved into their new Learn Ultra course instances. Course instances are the digital spaces in which you build your Learn Ultra courses.

We do not recommend you try to copy whole courses directly into Learn Ultra. Trying to do so will leave you with a messy structure and multiple errors which take time to correct. Instead, you should move your course content in sections and make changes to the content structure in order to fit it into the new accessible, flatter Learn Ultra course format.

To make this process as easy as possible, here are some things our Early Adopters suggest you should do.

Start rebuilding early

Moving content into Learn Ultra is an efficient and easy process, however there is an element of relearning the improved tools and updated processes. To mitigate this, begin the rebuilding process early to make sure you have time to ask for help and support if needed. If you haven’t already, we recommend beginning in May once your course instance has been created. This will give your plenty of time to attend the ‘10 things to Get Started in Learn Ultra’ training, attend any additional training you need, use the newly created suite of resources and guidance and ask for help if needed.

Key Actions

Find out who your School or Deanery Learning Technologist is if you don’t know already. They will be your first point of call if you need help or support.
Evaluate your current course content and do some housekeeping. Remove any out-of-date content.
Identify items or courses that you think may take more time and begin with these.
If you identify a complex course which you are struggling with, ask your Learning Technologist for advice. They may be able to help or can advise you of the central services available.

Get to know Learn Ultra

Taking time to get familiar with Learn Ultra makes the course building process easier.

Although you will notice similarities between the old version of Learn and the new ‘Ultra’ version, there are also many updates and improvements. As with all change, this will require a period of adjustment.

The best way to get to know Learn Ultra is to engage with the ongoing programme of training and support. There are in-person training sessions and online sessions available. Start by attending the ‘10 things to get started in Learn Ultra’ training session. This will introduce you to everything you need to know to begin to use Learn Ultra. To book your place, visit the Learn Ultra training page and click on the ‘Learn: 10 things to get started in Learn Ultra’ button. 

During this training session you will be given a practice Learn Ultra playground course. You can use this to explore the updated tools and features at your own pace once your session has finished.

Further task-focused training will be available in the coming weeks.

Key Actions

Attend the ‘10 Things in Ultra Training’ session.
Use your own personal playground course to try out the new features or start to plan your course.

Plan your Structure

One of the main changes you will notice in Learn Ultra is the maximum 2-folder depth within courses. This change improves the accessibility of courses. Whilst it greatly helps your students to find materials quickly, it will require you to rethink how some courses are laid out.

To support colleagues with the move to Learn Ultra, the project team’s Instructional Designers have created resources to showcase solutions for rethinking and reorganising content in Learn Ultra; particularly for tackling deep folder structure. You can read more about this work on the Learn blog.

As courses do not map like-for-like between the old version of Learn and Learn Ultra, we worked on some of the most challenging courses and created this Learn Ultra: Course Structure Solutions resource to showcase solutions for reorganising content in Learn Ultra.

Key Actions

Review the resources created for complex Early Adopter course for ideas on what may suit your content best
Try planning out or creating one part of your content to see how well it works
Plan your structure for when you are ready to move content by creating a template
Look at the learning design resources available and ask for help if you need it