Author: WordPress User [jbw]

Minor change: Teaching Room Machines

WordPress User [jbw] Panopto, Teaching Rooms, Technical Updates Leave a comment

We have experienced an issue with the Panopto Recorder that has affected some people from having folders to record into.

We believe that we now have a solution to this issue, which we have tested in a number of rooms.

We are now rolling out this fix to all teaching room machines.

User profiles will now be refreshed every 5 days (rather than 10 days). The refresh will mean any local copies of materials copied to the desktop will be removed after 5 days.

Apologies for the inconvenience to those who have experienced this issue.

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Keynote Announcement

WordPress User [jbw] Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2025, Conference Leave a comment

We are delighted to confirm our keynote for this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference. Bookings for the conference are already open.

Dr Neil Currant will be joining us for an in-person keynote presentation and masterclass workshop on the second day of the conference, Wednesday 9 July.

Neil will be discussing the important role of compassionate assessment, belonging, and inclusive assessment practices.

In the workshop, colleagues will be given the opportunity to reflect on their own assessment practices and ways in which they could incorporate and adapt them based on Neil’s keynote. This work builds on the vital work being undertaken in Student Support Services.

Dr Neil Currant

Please see below for a speaker biography and links to selected works and projects:

Dr Neil Currant is a Senior Educational Developer at the University of Bedfordshire. He was previously Head of Educational Development at Oxford Brookes University and the Royal Veterinary College. Neil has been supporting teaching, learning and assessment practices in higher education for twenty years with expertise in inclusion and assessment.

Neil has been involved in JISC funded research projects on the use of learning technology, an Advance HE funded project on global citizenship, institutional research on awarding gaps and QAA funded projects on belonging and compassion.

Neil is a reviewer and accreditor for Advance HE. Neil co-founded the Compassionate Assessment Network in HE and is currently researching assessment practice related to compassion, the affective impact of feedback and ungrading.

Belonging research – Teaching Insights journal.

Rethinking assessment? Research into the affective impact of higher education grading

Belonging project – https://www.qaa.ac.uk/membership/collaborative-enhancement-projects/assessment/belonging-through-assessment-pipelines-of-compassion

Compassionate Assessment Project – https://www.qaa.ac.uk/membership/collaborative-enhancement-projects/assessment/compassionate-assessment-in-higher-education

We will be announcing further external speakers in due course.

Call for Proposals

Our Call for Proposals is still open, and closes on April 8. We welcome proposals that speak to the conference themes, but also those which showcase the excellent teaching practices taking place at Aberystwyth University.

Bookings Open

Bookings for the conference are already open. Please complete our online survey to book your place.

If you have any questions about the conference, please contact the conference organisers via elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Vevox Update: March 2025

WordPress User [jbw] Polling Software, Technical Updates, Vevox Leave a comment

There are some new features available in the latest Vevox (Polling Tool) update that we wanted to draw your attention to.

For those unfamiliar with Vevox, the polling software can be used to ask students questions and for them to respond live using their mobile devices. For information on how to use Vevox, see our webpage.

The update includes:

If you are using Team polls and quizzes, you can now set up a Leaderboard. This enhancement is great for end of term or revision style activities.

If you create questions on a spreadsheet, you can upload them from an excel template.

This feature was introduced in the last release but there are some improvements to the workflow. You can conduct a demographic poll to gather key information or characteristics for your responders, before asking further questions to disaggregate the results.

The AI quiz generator now can create 10 questions at a time.

The updated PowerPoint add-in includes improvements to LaTeX and KaTeX rendering, rich text options for question formatting, and improved Pie Chart and numeric poll updates.

Take a look at Vevox’s latest product update: March 2025 for the full update.

If you have any questions on using Vevox please contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

Mini Conference: Programme Announcement

WordPress User [jbw] Uncategorised Leave a comment

We are pleased to announce the programme for our forthcoming online Mini Conference: Employability and the Inclusive Curriculum.

Taking place between 09:15 and 13:00 on 8 April, in collaboration with colleagues in the Careers Service, places can be booked online.

We will start the conference with a welcome from Professor Anwen Jones at 09:15 before moving onto Dr Aranee Manoharan’s keynote. Dr Manoharan is joining us from King’s College, London. You can read further information on Dr Manoharan’s pioneering work on our blog.

Psychology’s Dr Saffron Passam will be leading an interactive workshop on Future-Proofing Graduates: Embedding Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion as a Core Employability Skill between 10:20 and 10:50.

Theatre, Film and Television Studies’ Dr Louise Ritchie will be leading a session on Staging Success: Integrating Employability in the Drama and Theatre Curriculum (Part 2) between 10:50 and 11:20.

Following a break, School of Education’s Annabel Latham will be joining us for their session Professional Partnerships in HE: a discussion around the co-creation of assessment to embed employability in the curriculum between 11:35 and 12:05.

The event will close with Careers’ Service’s Bev Herring and Jo Hiatt, who will showcase collaborative efforts and plans to enhance employability integration at Aberystwyth University.

We hope that you can make this special event.

Full programme and session abstracts are available on the webpage.

Exemplary Course Award Winner 2024-25

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Exemplary Course Award Leave a comment
Exemplary Course Award

We are delighted to announce the winner of this year’s annual Exemplary Course Award.

Congratulations to Mari Dunning from Lifelong Learning for the award-winning course: XM18210: Writing Women: Feminism in Poetry and Prose.

The panel noted exemplary practice in the courses’ clear introduction and design, strong support and guidance, active and engaging participatory activities, and creative tasks. This was all achieved through an accessible and enthusiastic online learning environment.

Many congratulations to our highly commended and commended recipients:

  • Law & Criminology’s Dr Kathy Hampson for the course LC37120: Critical and Radical Criminology
  • Lifelong Learning’s Henrietta Tremlett for the course XM15710: Autobiographical Writing
  • Computer Science’s Dr Yasir Saleem Shaikh for the course CSM0120: Programming for Scientists

These 3 courses demonstrated some excellent practices, including: clear and accessible structures, effective use of weekly quizzes, engaging and varied activities, clear marking and feedback processes, creative assessment design, and well-designed learning objectives communicated with clarity.

The award is assessed based on a rubric across four areas:

  • Course Design
  • Interaction and Collaboration
  • Assessment
  • Learner Support

The courses were of such a high standard, and we look forward to sharing their practices with you in due course.

Many congratulations to this year’s well-deserved recipients.

Panopto: Automatic Speech Recognition Captioning

WordPress User [jbw] Accessibility, Panopto, Technical Updates Leave a comment

We are pleased to announce that Panopto Automatic Speech Recognition Captioning was approved at the recent Quality and Standards Committee.

This means that for the academic year 2025-26 and beyond, automatic captions will be applied to your Panopto recordings.

Viewers see the captions appearing at the bottom of the screen or can download a transcript:

Screenshot showing a Panopto recording with captions

Whilst captions will appear automatically next academic year, colleagues can already apply automatic captions to all the recordings in a Panopto folder. Consult Panopto’s guidance on how to do this.

We have been working to enable automatic captions for several years, so we welcome this development. As part of this work, we have taken mitigating steps to address some of the challenges and concerns, including:

  • Inaccuracies of automatic captions
  • Clear expectations for staff and students
  • Managing multi-language courses

Automatic Captions are applied to all recordings on the site once we enable this feature. The default language that will be applied to module folders is English. Modules delivered 100% through the medium of Welsh will have their folder settings manually updated to generate Automatic Captions in Welsh.

We have also undertaken an Equality Impact Assessment to address some of the challenges posed by Automatic Captioning which is available by request (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

To facilitate the enabling of automatic captioning, the Lecture Capture policy has been updated. We review all of our policies (Lecture Capture, Blackboard Required Minimum Presence, and E-submission) annually. We will release further communications regarding these updates in due course.

We will now start work on updating Panopto to enable Automatic Speech Recognition captioning for 2025-26.

Blackboard Achievements

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Technical Updates, Uncategorised Leave a comment
Screenshot of the Achievements tab and associated badges in a Blackboard course

We have enabled a new feature on Blackboard called Achievements.

Achievements allow instructors to link student achievement to badges to help recognise their accomplishment or proficiency.

See Blackboard Help for an overview of achievements. The help site will give you advice on the types of activities they can be used for as well as how to set them up.

To create a badge, you need to associate it with a Gradebook column – such as a test, assignment, or Turnitin. You can specify a certain level that needs to be attained to generate the badge. 

Students can then view their achievements on the course or organisation from the Achievements tab. We’d welcome working with colleagues to explore how achievements could be used at a scheme or department level.

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Registration now open

WordPress User [jbw] Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2025, Conference, Uncategorised Leave a comment

Registration for the thirteenth annual Learning and Teaching conference is now open.

This year’s Learning and Teaching conference has the theme Innovative Pathways to Empowering Learners: Adapting, Engaging, and Thriving and will be taking place between Tuesday 8 and Thursday 10 July 2025.

You can register for the conference online.

Call for Proposals

Staff, postgraduate teaching assistants, and students are invited to submit proposals for the 13th Annual Aberystwyth University Learning and Teaching Conference held 8-10 July 2025.

Submit and view the call for proposals online.

Please complete this form no later than 8 April 2025.