This year’s conference boasts a number of external speakers.
Keynote speaker:
Dr Neil Currant will be offering a keynote presentation on Compassionate Assessment. There will also be a masterclass workshop with colleagues being able to apply these principles to their own scenarios. See our blog update for further information.
External speakers:
We’ve got three other external speakers lined up. For further information, click the links below:
As leader of our PGCTHE programme, I keep an eye out for resources to help staff teach effectively. These include webinars, podcasts, online toolkits, publications and more. Topics include active learning, online/blended teaching, accessibility/inclusion, and effective learning design based on cognitive science. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.
Data Rescue Project (2025), ERICA to the Rescue! “ERICA is a rescue catalog which preserves over 500,000 Open Access publications originally hosted by the US Department of Education in the ERIC research repository.”
Dickinson, J. (8/5/2025), Academic judgement? Now that’s magic: Jim Dickinson questions whether academic judgment can hold in the AI era, as flawed detection tools create a system where students can’t challenge misconduct allegations, WonkHE
Monthly series European Network for Academic Integrity, ENAI monthly webinarsfree open webinars on various topics related to academic integrity.
Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff. I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. Social media: X.com, BSky.
Now, we’ve also got Professor John Traxler joining us for a special panel discussion on Generative AI.
This session will be taking place on the afternoon of Tuesday 8 July via Teams.
John Traxler, FRSA, MBCS, AFIMA, MIET, is Professor of Digital Learning, UNESCO Chair in Innovative Informal Digital Learning in Disadvantaged and Development Contexts and Commonwealth of Learning Chair for innovations in higher education. He is Academic Director of the Avallain Lab, leading research on ethical and pedagogic aspects of educational AI. His papers are cited around 12,000 times and Stanford continues to list him in the top 2% in his discipline. He has written over 40 papers and seven books, and has consulted for international agencies including UNESCO, ITU, ILO, USAID, DFID, EU, UNRWA, British Council and UNICEF.
He was a pioneer of mobile learning, starting in the 2000s with technology and pedagogy but, in the 2010s, concerned with the impact and consequences on societies, cultures and communities of mobility and connectivity, and on the nature of disadvantage. He is interested in the impact of AI on global and individual disadvantage and the decolonisation of the digital technologies of learning and education.
Our full programme will be announced in due course.
As leader of our PGCTHE programme, I keep an eye out for resources to help staff teach effectively. These include webinars, podcasts, online toolkits, publications and more. Topics include active learning, online/blended teaching, accessibility/inclusion, and effective learning design based on cognitive science. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.
Monthly series European Network for Academic Integrity, ENAI monthly webinarsfree open webinars on various topics related to academic integrity.
Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff. I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. Social media: X.com, BSky.
We’re delighted to be joined by colleagues from Higher Education Partners (HEP) on the final day of our conference (10 July).
Kate Lindsay from HEP will be presenting and leading a roundtable as part of the conference. Kate is currently SVP of Academic Services at HigherEd Partners, working with UK Universities to grow their capacity and capability in the the design of high quality online learning experiences.
Previously, Kate worked at the University College of Estate Management as Head of Digital Education, leading the transformation of fully-online programmes. Before that Kate was the Head of Technology Enhanced Learning / Director of Academic Services at the University of Oxford. Kate has experience working on teaching, learning and assessment strategy, digital education strategy, learning design consultancy, staff digital fluencies, curriculum design, and IT innovation programmes.
The University has partnered with HEP on the new online learning project as part of the invest to grow strand.
We’ll also be joined by colleagues in academic departments who are working with HEP for the first cohort of courses.
In the May update, we are particularly excited about auto-generate AI Conversations with the AI Design Assistant, Qualitative Rubrics, and Enhancements to Gradebook and Tests.
New: Auto-generate AI Conversations with the AI Design Assistant
The AI Design Assistant can now auto-generate AI Conversations. AI Conversations are conversations between students and an AI persona.
Socratic Questioning: Conversations that encourage students to think critically through continuous questioning.
Role-play: Conversations that allow students to play out scenarios with the AI persona, enhancing their learning experience.
Creating personas and topics for an AI Conversation can take a lot of time. To streamline this process, the AI Design Assistant can generate three suggestions at once. You can select what the AI Design Assistant generates. You can choose to generate:
AI Conversation title
AI persona
Reflection question
These suggestions provide inspiration for an AI Conversation. Instructors can refine the AI Design Assistant’s suggestions in several ways:
Provide additional context
Adjust the complexity of the question
Select context from the course
Manually revise the question
Image 1. The auto-generate feature is now available in AI Conversations.
Image 2. There are several ways to customise AI Conversations.
We recommend that you look closely at the AI persona to check for any biases that might be there and edit these.
We would love to hear about your use cases of AI Conversations – do let us know via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
New: Qualitative Rubrics
Lecturers can now create and use no-points rubrics for Blackboard Assignments. This rubric type allows instructors to assess student work based on criteria and feedback, rather than numerical values.
Instructors can select No Points as a rubric type when creating or generating a rubric. This option is available alongside existing percentage and points-based rubrics. Instructors can also edit rubrics to switch between different rubric types, including percentage, points range, and no points.
Image 1: No Points option is available in the Rubric Type dropdown.
The Markable Items tab in the Gradebook now features a redesigned interface to improve accessibility and navigation for keyboard-only and screen reader users. This enhancement supports an accessible experience for instructors grading student work, reducing the time and effort required to manage student grades.
With this update, the Gradable Items tab uses a table-based layout to enhance usability:
Screen reader users can now hear both header and row announcements, allowing for smoother navigation through student submissions.
Keyboard users can now move efficiently across rows or down columns using arrow keys.
Image 1: Gradebook with Markable items tab highlighted
Instructors can now create custom text-based columns in the Gradebook, giving them the ability to record information for an assessment, such as performance code, group membership, and tutoring information.
These columns allow instructors to record up to 32 characters. The column is not restricted to text input.
Colleague might want to use this to record dissertation supervision teams or markers.
Instructors can:
Create text-based columns via the Add workflow in both the grid view and Gradable Items page;
Name the column, control student visibility, and add a description;
Add and edit text information for a specific student using an inline eidt workflow.
Text-based columns exclude the following:
Points values (automatically set to 0 points)
Due dates
Categories
Gradebook calculations and related calculation UIs
Content in text-based columns auto-posts and supports sorting functionality within the Gradebook grid view. Instructors can also download and upload text-based columns using the Gradebook’s upload/download function.
Image 1: Instructors can select Add Text Item to create a text-based column.
Image 2: Instructors can enter column name, set visibility for students, and enter a description for the text-based column.
Students can access text-based columns and associated information in their Gradebook when the column is set to Visible to students.
New test setting: View submission one time
There is a new test result setting option, View submission one time.
When a student completes the test, they can review their answers and detailed feedback, such as which questions were answered correctly.
Image 1: Allow students to view their submission one time highlighted:
Instructors
To access this setting option, select Available after submission in the Assessment results section of the Assessment Settings, then select View submission one time from the Customise when the submission content is visible to students dropdown. This dropdown is available only if Allow students to view their submission is selected.
Note that this setting does not alter the recommended settings for online exams.
Ideas Exchange:
This section aims to keep you updated on progress of enhancements requested on the Blackboard Ideas Exchange.
We are pleased to see the Qualitative Rubric included in this month’s release as this is a feature that was requested as part of the SafeAssign pilot.
If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
Have you ever pressed stop on a Panopto recording rather than pause? Or realised there was something you forget to say in your recording?
Did you know you can resume any finished Panopto recording, and add more to it? You can do this from any computer that has the Panopto recorder on it – it doesn’t have to be the machine you used to create the original recording.
Click on the three dots (More Actions) on the recording preview
Select Resume > Resume in Panopto for Windows
If you want to do this from your office, you will need to install the Panopto recorder on your work computer. Alternatively, you can resume a recording from any teaching machine.
Following the announcement of our conference keynote, we’re pleased to confirm our next external speakers.
On Tuesday 8 July, Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE FAcSS and Beth Brooks from the University of Exeter will be joining us to showcase their pioneering work with social mobility in the South West.
Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE FAcSS is the country’s first Professor of Social Mobility, based at the University of Exeter. As one of the world’s leading social mobility experts, his work is dedicated to improving the prospects of young people from under-resourced backgrounds. Lee was formerly Chief Executive of the Sutton Trust and a trustee of the Education Endowment Foundation. He is focused on the impact of research, working closely with Governments, policy makers as well as schools, universities, and employers across the world, and advocates an ‘equity approach’ in schools based on principles set out in his book Equity in Education.
Beth Brooks is an Executive at the South-West Social Mobility Commission, where she leads on various social mobility projects. Before joining the Commission, Beth worked in Widening Participation at the University of Exeter, and as a secondary school teacher in the South West. She holds a PGCE with distinction from the University of Exeter.
Their University-led Tutoring Service is scalable, sustainable, low-cost tutoring model is a high-quality approach to tutoring with the potential to transform thousands of young lives across the country. Using programmes, undergraduate tutors boost key skills of school pupils, gaining work experience and credits towards their degree, forming invaluable relationships with pupils falling behind in class while considering a career in teaching. Unlike other programmes, it is free for schools. We call it the ‘win win win’ scheme.
On Tuesday 8 April, we co-hosted our latest Mini Conference with colleagues from Careers and Employability Services. We hosted 50 attendees from across the University and had 5 sessions.
The conference started with a welcome from Professor Anwen Jones, Pro Vice Chancellor for Education and Student Experience. Following Anwen’s address, Dr Aranee Manhoaran from Kings College London gave a fantastic keynote. In her keynote, Aranee identified an Employability framework that can be applied to the curriculum. As well as this, strategies were given regarding how to map this framework onto the curriculum to review assessment.
Dr Saffron Passam from Psychology gave a presentation which focused on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion as an integral employability skill.
Dr Louise Ritchie from Theatre, Film and Television Studies gave an overview of how the Drama and Theatre Curriculum partnered with the Careers and Employability Service to improve visibility and graduate outcomes.
The School of Education’s Annabel Latham outlined innovative assessment design with the Careers and Employability Service. The assessment included workshops, poster creation, and a post assignment discussion.
Finally, Careers and Employability Services’ Bev Herring and Jo Hiatt recapped the morning’s event and ran an interactive presentation for colleagues to reflect on how comfortable they felt integrating employability skills into their curriculum.
A big thank you to our presenters for such engaging sessions and to those who attended.
As leader of our PGCTHE programme, I keep an eye out for resources to help staff teach effectively. These include webinars, podcasts, online toolkits, publications and more. Topics include active learning, online/blended teaching, accessibility/inclusion, and effective learning design based on cognitive science. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.
Monthly series European Network for Academic Integrity, ENAI monthly webinarsfree open webinars on various topics related to academic integrity.
Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff. I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. Social media: X.com, BSky.
