While the clean, streamlined look of the Blackboard Ultra Course View is beneficial for creating a consistent experience for students, when every course looks the same, it may be difficult to differentiate one course from another. Fortunately, the new Course Banner feature in the Ultra Course View (introduced in the November 2021 release) will help you create a unique visual to brand your course and create a more welcoming environment.
The course banner also serves as the image on the course card on the Course page. These cards are visible when you switch from rows to the card view.
You can add a course image from the Courses page by clicking the three dots in the upper right corner of the course card, or from within a course by clicking the Edit display settings link under Course Image in the Details & Actions pane.
Once you have uploaded and scaled your image, it will automatically display as the course image on the Courses page. Be sure to click the toggle in the upper right to enable it as your course banner.
Course images must be at least 1200 x 240 px to allow for the image to be resized for devices with different screen sizes, like monitors, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The image is often cropped, so we recommend keeping the important content in the center of the image.
The course banner is automatically marked as decorative, which means a screenreader will skip over the image. The option to add alt-text is planned for the December release, but until then we strongly encourage you to avoid using the image to convey essential content or information.
