Call for Proposals: Learning and Teaching Conference 2024

We are now inviting proposals for the 12th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, Tuesday 10-Thursday 12 September 2024.

Submit and view the call for proposals online. 

The theme for this year’s conference is:

Equipping for Excellence: Pioneering Learning and Teaching Design.

The main strands of this year’s conference are:

  • Embedding employability skills across the curriculum and beyond
  • Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence and other technologies to enhance learning
  • Creating dynamic learning activities to motivate and engage
  • Designing inclusive learning for all

Staff, postgraduate teaching assistants, and students are welcome to propose sessions on any topic relating to learning and teaching, especially those that focus on the incorporation and use of technology. Even if your suggestion doesn’t fit a particular strand, other topics are welcome.

We seek to encourage presenters to consider using alternative formats that reflect and suit the content of their sessions. As such, we are not specifying a standardised presentation format.

Please complete this form no later than 24 May 2024.

If you have any questions, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit at lteu@aber.ac.uk.

Staff Workshop on Artificial Intelligence

Information Services is pleased to announce a special half-day event looking at ways in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used in academic contexts.

The event will be held on Thursday 11 April between 09:00-13:00 in the International Politics Main Hall.  

You can sign up for the event on the Session Booking page.

The aim of the event is to look across the 2 academic functions:

  • Research
  • Learning and Teaching

And to reflect on ways in which AI can be used to enhance these activities, increase productivity, and save time.

We’d also like to explore the challenges and obstacles that you face in using AI in these contexts and establish ways in which the University can best support you.

The session will be interactive, with participants encouraged to share their own experiences and examples of best practice. All colleagues are welcome to attend – from those who have been using AI for a while to those who haven’t used it before.

Attendees are welcome to join the session throughout the morning and a timetable for those who have registered will be circulated closer to the event.

Exemplary Course Award 2023-24

Exemplary Course Award image

Lauren Harvey and Caroline Whitby, from the Department of Law and Criminology, have been awarded the Exemplary Course Award for the module LC31520: Dispute Resolution in Contract and Tort

In addition to the winner, the following module achieved Highly Commended:

  • Panna Karlinger from the School of Education for the module ED20820: Making Sense of the Curriculum

The aim of the Exemplary Course Award, now in its ninth year, is to recognise the very best learning and teaching practices. It gives staff members the opportunity to share their work with colleagues, enhance their current modules in Blackboard, and receive feedback on to improve.

Modules are assessed across 4 areas: course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment, and learner support. The self-assessed nature of the award gives staff the opportunity to reflect on their course and enhance aspects of their module before a panel assesses each application against the rubric.

The panel and the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit would like to thank all of the applicants for the time and effort that they have put into their applications and modules this year.

We’re looking forward to receiving more applications next year and many congratulations to the recipients of this year’s award.

What’s New in Blackboard Learn Ultra – March 2024

This month Blackboard brings us the ability to see Gradebook item statistics, being able to set assessments with no due date and some tweaks to message notifications.

Gradebook item statistics 

Item statistics give insight to course members’ overall performance on a graded content. Now, instructors can select a column in the gradebook to access summary statistics for any graded item. The statistics page displays key metrics such as: 

  • Minimum and maximum value 
  • Range 
  • Average 
  • Median 
  • Standard deviation 
  • Variance 

The number of submissions requiring grading and the distribution of grades also displays. 

Image below: Access to item statistics from the Grid view. 

Access to item statistics from the grid view

Image below:  Access to item statistics from the Gradeable Items view.

Access to item statistics from the Gradable Items view

Image below: Item Statistics page.

Item statistics page

No Due Date assessment option

Due dates are an important aspect of the teaching and learning process. In some scenarios, such as self-paced learning, an instructor may not want to apply a due date. To make the option for not having a due date more evident, we’ve added a “No due date” option for Tests and Assignments. 

Image below: Test Settings panel showing the new “No due date” option. 

Test Settings panel showing the new “No due date” option

We also updated the default due date and time to tomorrow’s date at 11:59 pm. 

Image below: Test Settings panel displaying the new default due date and time. 

Test Settings panel displaying the new default due date and time

There may be cases when the “No due date” selection conflicts with the Assessment Results settings. When this occurs, the instructor is prompted to review the settings. 

Image below: A warning banner appears when the “No due date” selection conflicts with Assessment Results settings. 

A warning banner appears when the “No due date” selection conflicts with Assessment Results settings

Instructors can navigate to the Assessment Results section in the Settings via the link in the banner. 

Image below: Assessment results timing options when there is no due date. 

Assessment results timing options when there is no due date

Please note that for summative and high stakes assessment, we still advise having a due date and time. To discuss your requirements for test settings, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).  

Announcement indicators and mark announcements as read/unread

Announcements are an important communications channel within a course. It is important to help create awareness of new announcements and read/unread controls. 

Now, there is a number indicator next to the announcement tab in the course. The indicator signals the number of unread announcements available. 

Additionally, students can now mark announcements as read or unread. On the New Course Announcement pop-up, users have the option to mark the read state. Students can also mark announcements as read or unread from the Announcement page. 

Image below: Number of unread Announcements next to the Announcement tab 

Number of unread Announcements next to the Announcement tab

Image below: Announcements pop-up with the option to mark as read/unread 

Announcements pop-up with the option to mark as read/unread

Image below: Announcements page with the option to mark as read/unread. 

Announcements page with the option to mark as read/unread

Image below: Matching announcement and messages indicators for consistency 

Matching announcement and messages indicators for consistency

Reminder: Access the Course Activity Report and message students from within it. 

The Course Activity report helps you understand how well your students are performing and how much they are interacting with your course. The Course Activity Report enables Instructors to: 

  • Message students who are falling behind and encourage them to increase their course activity 
  • Identify struggling students based on their overall grade, missed due dates, the number of hours they spend in your course, and the number of days since their last access 
  • Congratulate students performing well in your course and ask them to be mentors 
  • Customize your course alerts to identify struggling students when their overall grade drops below a specific value, they’ve missed due dates, or they haven’t accessed the course for a certain number of days 
  • Download the table view to a CSV (comma-separated values) file to analyse the data with other tools 
  • Download the scatter plot as a PDF or image to share information with other instructors or mentors of the course 

To access the Course Activity Report select Course Activity in your course’s Analytics tab. 

Image below: Accessing the Course Activity Report from the Analytics tab 

The table view of the Course Activity report on the Analytics tab, with a blue box around Analytics and Course Activity.

Sending Messages 

Instructors can select students and send them messages from Course Activity by selecting the Send message button. When you send a message to multiple students, each student will receive an individual message and will not know which other students were included. 

Image below: A student selected to be contacted and the Send message button highlighted 

The table view of the Course Activity report on the Analytics tab, with a blue box around a student selection and Send message.

For more information on the Course Activity Report see the Blackboard Help Page on the Course Activity Report. 

Reminder: Grading Tests with Flexible Grading 

It is possible to grade tests either by student or by question —making it easy to compare answers across the course and ensure fairness and consistency in grading. Marking by student is currently limited to non-anonymous submissions. Marking anonymous submissions will be included in a future update 

For more information on Flexible Grading see the Blackboard Help Page on Flexible Grading. 

Weekly Resource Roundup – 15/3/2024

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. 

Online events and webinars

March

April

May

  • 25/5/2024 Student Belonging Community of Practice, Student Belonging Conference 2024 (hybrid online and in person at UEA). Call for proposals open until 29/02/2024

June

Resources and publications

Resources on Generative AI

Other resources

Other

  • Monthly series European Network for Academic Integrity, ENAI monthly webinars free open webinars on various topics related to academic integrity.
  • Subscribe to SEDA’s mailing list for email discussions about educational development and emerging teaching practices. This is one of the sources I use when identifying useful material for the Roundup.
  • Follow University of Birmingham’s Higher Education Futures institute HEFi on Twitter for daily posts with links to pedagogical literature and more. This is one of the sources I use when identifying useful material for the Roundup.
  • Join the #LTHEchat on Twitter Wednesday nights for one hour of lively discussion about learning and teaching in HE. I often find out about good resources for the Roundup from the chat.

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. You may also wish to follow my Twitter feed, Mary Jacob L&T.

Blackboard Learn Ultra Course Creation 2024-25

The recent Academic Enhancement Committee approved some changes to the annual course creation process:

  • Courses will be created blank with the University approved template
  • Course creation will always take place on the first Monday in June (this will be Monday 3rd June this year).

Some staff have asked for more information about why courses will be created blank. This blog post is designed to help explain the reasons for this decision.

Previous years’ course copy process was done using Building Blocks. Building Blocks are no longer supported by Blackboard and can’t be used (you may remember that this was one of the reasons for moving to Ultra). The Blackboard course copy tool hasn’t been updated, so we don’t have a technical way of copying courses.

The course copy workflow is easier in Ultra than it was in Original. And as we will be copying from Ultra to Ultra courses, you’ll be able to copy larger blocks of content.

Blank courses means that template updates and additional settings can be applied to  courses. Blackboard has changed a lot since last summer, and there are new settings that will be useful for next year’s courses. To use these staff would need to add them to each courses manually.

Previous course copies included gradebook columns. After several years this started to get confusing for staff and made the gradebook difficult to navigate. Copying over the links for Turnitin, Panopto and Talis also has the potential for confusion – it isn’t easy to tell whether these links have been updated or not, and staff would need to check each one manually.

Some courses won’t have been created in Ultra (for example courses that only run every two years). These need to be created blank as Ultra courses anyway.

Blank course creation will also help to avoid out-of-date content being copied over as standard.

Information about how to copy content can be found on the Blackboard help site. Guidance and support will be available over the summer, but if you have any questions, please contact us on elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Vevox webinar series

Vevox, our polling software, runs a series of webinars showcasing the best practices of integrating polling into learning and teaching activities.

These sessions take place online.

On 22 March at 3pm, Patrick Cadwell from Dublin City University will be showcasing how they use polling software for translation studies.

On 26 April at 3pm, Liam Bagley from Manchester Metropolitan University will be showcasing how they use polling software for real world scenario training within a health and healthy aging context.

For further information and to book a place, see Vevox’s webpage.

12th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Conference Theme Announcement

The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce the theme for our 12th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.
The Learning and Teaching Conference will be taking place from Tuesday 10 – Thursday 12 September 2024.
The theme and strands for this year’s conference are:
Equipping for Excellence: Pioneering Learning and Teaching Design

  • Embedding employability skills across the curriculum and beyond
  • Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence and other technologies to enhance learning
  • Creating dynamic learning activities to motivate and engage
  • Designing inclusive learning for all

Keep a look out for our forthcoming call for proposals and for booking onto the conference.

Digwyddiad Rhannu Arfer Da – Sharing Good Practice Event

Aberystwyth University will be running a two-day Digwyddiad Rhannu Arfer Da – Rhagoriaeth Academaidd on the 2nd (face to face) and 3rd (on-line) July 2024. The event will be held through the medium of Welsh only. This event has been made possible due to the Small Grant Project money from the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol.

The aim of the two-day event is to present papers under the theme of Teaching Excellence – for example:

  • Learning and Teaching
  • Dysgu trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg
  • Student Support
  • Supervision
  • Personal Tutoring

The academic papers will be an opportunity for staff across Wales to present their research, under the theme of academic practice – through papers, posters, panels etc. Presentations at the event are welcome from anyone teaching from staff to PhD students.

The Call for Proposals, at the following link Galwad am Bapurau – Digwyddiad Rhannu Arfer Da (jisc.ac.uk)  asks for submissions of no more than 500 words, through the medium of Welsh. We welcome contributions to the event in the form of:

  • 20 minutes presentations
  • 45 minutes presentations
  • An individual or a group presentation
  • Posters from individuals or groups
  • Sharing good practice Panels

The deadline for these proposals is midday on Wednesday 27 March 2024.

I would be grateful if you could share this more widely with colleagues who maybe in interested in attending this event. 

If you would like to discuss anything further, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Annette Edwards (aee@aber.ac.uk)  01970 622386

Blogpost: Blackboard Learn Ultra Organisations: Important Information

As part of the Blackboard Learn Ultra project, we are now turning our attention to Organisations ready for September 2024.

Organisations are Blackboard sites for non-academic purposes. They have the same functionality as a Blackboard Course and can be used to provide information, online training, and access to materials. Unlike Courses, Organisations are created with no template. Organisations have the same features and functionality as Courses.

There are 3 types of Organisations:

Departmental Organisations

Every department has got 3 departmental Organisations: 1 for Undergraduate students, 1 for Postgraduate students, and 1 for Departmental staff. These are automatically created.

Bespoke and Training Organisations

These are Organisations that have been requested by individuals. They can be created with automatic feeds, such as types of students, students on specific study schemes, or staff members in a particular department. Some of these Organisations hold training packages that we are asked to undertake.

Practice Organisations

These are individual for each staff member and have no students enrolled on them. As part of the move to Ultra, we created all staff their own Ultra practice Organisation.

As we move to Blackboard Learn Ultra for Organisations, we have worked on a new Organisation policy outlining the types of activities they can be used for as well as their retention period. This new policy was approved by Academic Enhancement Committee on 7 February and can be viewed on our webpages.

Departmental Organisations

New Ultra Departmental Organisations will be created shortly but  will not be made available to students until September 2024.

All departments will have a separate Organisation for UG, PG, and Staff in their department.  

These are in the form: 

DEPT-[departmental letter]-UG (e.g. DEPT-N-UG) 

New students and staff members will automatically feed onto the Organisation once they have activated their account. Once these Organisations are available, we will contact Departmental Directors of Learning and Teaching, Faculty Registrars, and Heads of Department to help facilitate the move to Ultra Organisations.

Bespoke and Training Organisations

These are Organisations that have been requested individually for a specific purpose. We have never removed or deleted Organisations before (unless this has been requested).

As part of this work, we will:

  1. Remove access to all bespoke Organisations that have not been accessed in 3 years with a view to retire the Organisation.
  2. Contact those who still have responsibility for an existing Organisation to see if they are required and facilitate the move to Ultra for these Organisations.

Practice Organisations

Staff members currently have access to two practice Organisations – one in Original and one in Ultra.

We will be retiring the Original Organisations in September 2024. Colleagues need to copy any materials they want to retain onto the Ultra version of the Organisation.

If you have any questions about Organisations, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).