Month: June 2026

14th Annual Education and Student Experience Conference: Programme Announced

WordPress User [jbw] Annual Education and Student Experience Conference 2026, Conference, Uncategorised Leave a comment

We’re delighted to announce the programme for our 14th Education and Student Experience Conference taking place between 8 and 10 September 2026.

You can book your place online.

Tuesday 8 September will be online. Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 September will be in person.

See our webpages for the full programme.

Our keynote will be delivered by Dr Hardeep Kaur Basra who is Head of Educational Development at De Montfort University.

Dr Kaur Basra has led the Decolonising DMU project. This keynote and workshop will build on our own Race Equality Charter work. This session will be complemented by colleagues engaged in decolonising the curriculum at Aberystwyth.

We’re welcoming Professor Ruth Healey from Chester University who is an expert on students as co-creators.

UndebAber will be delivering a session on skills alongside WONKHE’s Jim Dickinson.

Colleagues from Blackboard will be joining us to highlight new accessibility initiatives with Blackboard Ally and roadmaps of new features. We’ll be presenting with the Department of Life Sciences on using achievements to record skills.

Recipients of the inaugural Education and Student Experience Awards will provide updates on their 4 projects and we’ll be launching the 2nd year of this initiative at the conference.

There are workshops and presentations across the 3 days – thank you to our colleagues and students who are contributing.

We hope to see you there and we’re looking forward to what promises to be an amazing event.

What’s new in Blackboard June 2026

WordPress User [dab166] Blackboard, Monthly Update Leave a comment

In the June update, we want to draw your attention to the following Blackboard enhancements:

  • Grading with rubric
  • Student engagement with announcements

Changes to grading with rubric

To improve rubric usability, instructors can now edit the rubric grade directly. Changes to the rubric component grades will also update the overall grade immediately.

Image 1: Improved rubric usability when adding or adjusting grades.

In the past, instructors would have been blocked from changing the overall grade via the rubric. Now, the locking mechanism that previously prevented instructors from using the rubric to override a grade has been removed. Otherwise, grades entered into the rubric grade components will update the overall grade immediately.

The update also includes some changes in wording, such as updating the rubric score box label from “Submission” to “Rubric Score”, in order to improve consistency with the Flexible Grading page.

Student engagement with announcements

Instructors can now check which announcements a student has read or not read on the new ‘Announcements’ tab of the Student Overview page.

To access this feature, instructors should go to the ‘Class register’ under the ‘Details & Actions’ items on the right-hand side of a course landing page. After selecting a student, a log of whether or not a student has accessed an announcement will be visible for instructors under the new ‘Announcements’ tab of the Student Overview page.

Image 2: The Announcements tab on the Student Overview page shows when an Announcement was posted and when it was read.

If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Course Creation 2026-27

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Technical Updates, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment

All courses for 2026-27 have been created and are available to staff in Blackboard. 

All AU Blackboard course sites use an agreed template with areas for core information along with agreed content for university-level policies.

The course template is agreed by the Quality and Standards Committee annually. Module Coordinators have responsibility for the organisation of materials in their courses. Staff should not delete template content.  

Consult the Required Minimum Presence for what should be included in the course.  

If you need any assistance with Blackboard courses, see Staff Blackboard Guide.

Once courses have been created, we will run a weekly feed between the Module Management System and Blackboard to reflect any updates or changes.  

Students won’t come onto courses until registration has been completed in September.