Weekly Resource Roundup – 29/6/2023

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

June

July

August

Resources and publications

Resources on Artificial Intelligence

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 Ultra Project Update

The big news since our last update on the Blackboard Ultra project is that we have started departmental training sessions. It’s been great getting to meet staff and demonstrate the basics of using Ultra. To date 200 people have attended a session, and we’ve got more sessions lined up over the summer.

If you’re not able to attend your departmental training session, then we’ve got a number of centrally organised ones for you to join.  

In addition to this, and to make sure that colleagues have access to full Ultra functionality, we’ve got the following sessions scheduled (available in Welsh and English): 

  1. E-learning Enhanced: Using Tests
  2. E-learning Enhanced: Designing Wiki Alternatives
  3. E-learning Enhanced: Using Discussions
  4. E-learning Enhanced: Using Journals
  5. E-learning Enhanced: Designing Blog Alternatives

You can view our sessions and book your place on the course booking page.  

We’re also working behind the scenes on our integrations with other tools. At the moment, we are working on making it easier for you to find the correct academic year Panopto folder when you create recordings. We think that this is going to make things much easier when teaching starts again. Keep an eye out for news on this.

We’re looking forward to welcoming colleagues from Anthology / Blackboard and Bangor University to the annual learning and teaching conference. We’ve got a whole day of Ultra-related events on 4th July. If you haven’t booked your place at the conference, you can do it on our conference webpages.

If you’ve got any questions about Ultra, contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).  

Weekly Resource Roundup – 22/6/2023

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

June

July

August

Resources and publications

Resources on Artificial Intelligence

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.

External Speakers at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference: Part 2: Bangor University

To complement the keynote sessions from Blackboard, we’re delighted to welcome colleagues from Bangor University: Bethan Wyn Jones and Alan Thomas.

View our full programme and book your place online.

One thing that we were keen on having as part of the conference is to hear about colleagues’ experience of moving over to Blackboard Ultra. Bangor have been using Ultra since 2020.

Please see below for their biographies:

Read More

Weekly Resource Roundup – 15/6/2023

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

June

July

August

Resources and publications

Resources on Artificial Intelligence

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.

External Speakers at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference: Part 1: Blackboard

We’re delighted to welcome a number of external speakers at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference.

View our full programme and book your place online.

On Tuesday 4 July, we’ll be joined in person by colleagues from Blackboard.

Colleagues will have the opportunity to hear about future developments, work on and enhance their blackboard ultra modules, and provide feedback to the company on enhancements.

Please see below for our speakers’ biographies.

Read More

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Stands at the conference

The Annual Learning and Teaching Conference is fast approaching (4-6 July). We’re delighted to have a couple of stands during the second day of the conference, 5 July.

Located in the Think Tank, colleagues can speak to the Tell us Now team about upcoming changes to the MEQ process and Student Services about the plans for teaching and learning through a trauma-informed lens.

Our full programme is available on our webpages and you can book your place online.

Free Trial with Talis Elevate for social annotation

We are excited to invite teaching staff to join a free trial of Talis Elevate for collaborative annotation. It is designed to encourage students to engage with course reading and learn actively by collaborative and individual annotation. It features detailed analytics to help you keep your students on track.

Our free trial of this tool is currently underway and will run through November 2023. Depending on staff response and budgetary considerations, the university may be able to acquire Elevate for longer-term use.

Please contact us at thestaff@aber.ac.uk to join the pilot.

Here is a screenshot from the main Elevate page to show you what it looks like:

Many thanks,

Mary Jacob & Julie Hart

Parent-child modules 2023-24

Now that the 2023-24 modules are available to staff, we can link them together at the module co-ordinator’s request. This process is known as parent-childing. Linking modules together is an effective way of dealing with separate modules with the same content so you don’t have to upload materials to two or more different modules.

This process makes one module the parent, whilst the other module(s) become a child. There’s no limit on how many modules you make a child but there can only be one parent. The parent-child facility works in the same way with Blackboard Ultra.

If you’d like to parent-child your modules, and you’re the module co-coordinator, contact elearning@aber.ac.uk with the module codes for the parent and child modules.

Examples from Aberystwyth

Many members of staff are currently using parent-child modules across the institution. Some examples are:

  1. Modules are taught the same content but there’s a module available for different years.
  2. Modules that bring together different degree schemes and have different module IDs, for example dissertation modules.

Essentially, any module that shares the same content is ideal for parent-childing.

What do students see?

Students will see the name of the module that they are enrolled on (even if it’s the child module) when they log into Blackboard but they will see all the content placed in the parent module. Instructors will not be able to place content in the child module.

Things to consider

Now, before the start of term and whilst module content is being built, is the perfect time for linking your modules. Whilst the linking of modules does save time in the loading of materials, there are some things to consider:

  • All content is able to be viewed as soon as the modules are merged (as long as students are enrolled on the module). In addition to PowerPoints, lecture materials, this also includes Announcements and other interactive tools on your parent module.
  • Historical student interactions on a child module (such as using blogs or posting in discussion boards) won’t be available once the modules have been merged.
  • Any submission points created on a child module before the merge takes place will no longer be able to be viewed. We would advise creating these again in the parent module.

How do I control content so that it is only viewable to a module cohort?

Whilst all content is automatically visible once the modules are merged, you can use groups and adaptive release if you only want the content to be visible to a specific module cohort. This might be useful, for example, if you have a 2nd year and 3rd year module merged but your students on the different modules have separate assignments. You can use groups – 1 for the 2nd year students and one for 3rd year students and limit who can see the assignment information and submission point. Follow our guidance on creating a group and adaptive release (known as ‘release conditions’ in Ultra) if you wish to do this.

Parent-Child Grade Book

Once the merging takes place, all students will appear in the Grade Book (previously known as Grade Centre in Blackboard Original) of the parent module. You can, however, determine whether they are enrolled on the child module as this information displays against the student in the Grade Book columns. 

If you’d like further information on this process or have any specific questions then please contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

Weekly Resource Roundup – 7/6/2023

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

June

July

Resources and publications

Resources on Artificial Intelligence

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.