A warm welcome to new students joining us and those who are returning to study at Aberystwyth University.

In this blogpost, we will outline the changes that have been made to your digital learning environment, Blackboard, ready for the start of the academic year 2025-26

If you need help using Blackboard, see our Student Guide which contains all kinds of useful information.

We’ve also got FAQs available for the other tools that we support, including Turnitin for e-submission and Panopto for lecture capture.

Updated Template

All courses have been created this year using a slightly different template.

Module Information

• Item about Lecture Capture (Panopto) under Module Information
• AberSkills

Assessment and Feedback

• Submission Guidance has been updated to include information on academic integrity and unacceptable practice and using Generative AI in your assessments.

Availability of Content

The Blackboard Required Minimum Presence, which is the policy that outlines to staff and students the minimum amount of content on a course, has been updated to request that teaching materials are uploaded at least one day before the session.

Automatic Captions in Panopto

Captions will now be added to all lecture recordings automatically in 2025-26 making them even more accessible. The quality and reliability of automatic captioning varies due to the language and subject matter of the recording.

Students should be aware that the captioning is not 100% accurate. For clarification on captions, students should speak to their lecturer.

Transcripts of ASR captions can be downloaded (see FAQ: How do I view Panopto captions?)

Name pronunciation and pronouns available in Blackboard

You can now add your name pronunciation and pronouns to your Blackboard profile. For further information, see our FAQ.

Accessible content

We are working to improve the accessibility of content in your Blackboard courses. This year the Required Minimum Presence has stipulated a requirement for a minimum accessibility score. This means that content is as compatible with Blackboard Ally as possible.

Blackboard Organisations

Organisations are like Courses in Blackboard but they are not modules that students take. Things like training and departmental information can be found in Organisations. For the first time, we have a Required Minimum Presence for Organisations which outlines to staff and students what they can expect to find as a minimum.

If you have any questions about using Blackboard, please contact us on elearning@aber.ac.uk.