We’ve got topics on neurodiversity and ai, neurodiversity and employability, and improving teaching for neurodiverse students amongst many other topics.
In the afternoon, we are running a series of workshops which delegates can sign up to attend.
We are delighted to announce the winner of this year’s annual Exemplary Course Award.
Congratulations to our joint winners:
Dr Christopher Phillips from International Politis for the award-winning course: IP25320: Warfare after Waterloo: Military History 1815-1918
Dr Catrin Wyn-Edwards from International Politics for the award-winning course: IPM3120: Race, (Im)mobility, and Incarceration.
The panel noted exemplary practices in the following areas:
Community ethos and student co-creation activities
Seminar packs with clear guidance and additional materials to expand on the main topic
Ethos of the module as part of the welcome and orientation
Clear and accessible module structures
Variety of source types
A range of assessment and feedback opportunities
Optional exercises for developing essay writing and critical thinking skills
Reading list organised into different sections
Embedding learning outcomes throughout the course
Many congratulations to our highly commended and commended recipients:
Department of Geography and Earth Sciences’ Dr Tristram Irvine-Fynn and Dr Hywel Griffiths for the course GS25520: Glacial and Fluvial Processes and Theatre Film and Television Studies’ Dr Lara Kipp for the course FM22120: Production Design Skills.
These 2 courses demonstrated some excellent practices, including innovative virtual field trip activities, anonymous student feedback mechanisms, authentic assessment design, and clarity on generative AI usage. 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.
Please complete this form no later than 22 May 2026.
The theme for this year’s conference is:
Co‑Creating Inclusive Futures: Flexible, Diverse, and Competency‑Driven Learning
The main strands of this year’s conference are:
Diversifying the Curriculum for Equity and Belonging
Building inclusive, decolonised curricula that reflect diverse identities and experiences, advancing the Race Equality Charter.
Flexible Learning for a Changing Landscape
Hybrid, blended, and accessible learning designs that support varied learner needs through thoughtful pacing, structure, and technology.
Competency‑Driven Learning
Clear, meaningful integration of skills, graduate attributes, and real‑world application of competencies.
Students as Co‑Creators and Collaborators
Authentic student–staff collaboration in curriculum design, assessment, research, and decision‑making.
Staff 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 into 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.
We had the pleasure of recently presenting at the Blackboard User Group on the Exemplary Course Award that we run here at Aberystwyth University. Blackboard run their own Exemplary Course Programme which we use as the basis for our award.
The session title, Celebrating Excellence, Shaping Practice: Aberystwyth University’s Exemplary Course Award Programme, charted the history of the event here at AU.
We’ve been running the ECA since 2014. In that time, over 50 modules have submitted applications.
Since the start of the award, we’ve had applications from all sections of the University. Those that offer on campus teaching provision, Lifelong Learning Courses, Distance Learning Courses, Welsh language and English medium courses, large and small courses have all been recipients of the award.
In the presentation, we gave an overview of how we manage the process and discussed the impact of running the award over the last 12 years. The ethos of the process has always foregrounded reflection giving applicants the opportunity to enhance and refine their course before submitting.
We’ve looked at the ways in which we have marked success over the years, as well as the changes we have applied to streamline the process.
We also discussed how we might change this for the future. We are exploring ways in which the student voice can be brought into the nomination process. We’re also considering running smaller awards alongside the Exemplary Course Award – an award that focuses on each of the 4 criteria: Course Design, Assessment, Interaction and Collaboration, and Learner Support.
We were joined by previous award winners: Lauren Harvey (Law and Criminology) and Mari Dunning (Lifelong Learning).
Both Lauren and Mari spoke about their courses as well as their experience of engaging with the process.
We are pleased to announce our next Mini Conference taking place on Tuesday 14 April 2026.
In collaboration with the Department of Psychology, Student Accessibility and Wellbeing, and the Digital Education Team (Student Journey), we are looking for 15-minute presentations on the following topics:
Navigating university life as a neurodivergent student
Inclusive teaching and learning practices
The role of support services in fostering neurodivergent success
Please indicate in the proposal if you are comfortable taking questions for 5 minutes at the end of your presentation. Please submit your proposal before Friday 6 March.
Now that semester 1 teaching has finished and we are moving towards the assessment period, we wanted to write a blogpost to highlight the analytical reports that are available in Blackboard.
These reports can be used to monitor Blackboard usage and engagement and help you to re-enforce messages to students.
Progress Summary
By default, the student progress summary is enabled on all content items in Blackboard courses.
This allows Blackboard to record when content has been opened, and students are able to mark tasks as complete.
To access the report, click on the … to the right of the content item and select Student Progress:
There you’ll see the progress report:
From this page, you can also filter students by those who have unopened the content, those who have started it, and those who have marked it as complete.
If you apply a filter, you can message the highlighted students using the message button.
Test question analysis
Using Blackboard tests? You can run a report to analyse the questions with:
Average score
Possible questions
Completed attempts
Average time spent on the course
In addition to this, it also allows you to re-examine questions with the Discrimination report. This indicates how well questions differentiate between students across all levels.
The difficulty report indicates which questions are easy, medium and hard.
To view the report (once the test has ended), navigate to the test and select Question Analysis:
The report will run and you will receive an email once it has completed:
Discussion analysis
Making use of Discussions in your Blackboard course? Then you can run a report for the overview which will give you the total number of active students, the average number of posts per students, as well as the average wordcount for blogposts.
You can click on Student Activity for the overview:
You can use the message feature to contact students who haven’t engaged, as well as see the top participants, and the responses with the most replies.
Course Analytics
The Course Analytics page allows you to flag alert settings for students based on the amount of time spent in the course and the dates since their last access.
Choose Analytics from the top menu:
You have two views:
Student hours in the course against their overall mark
Student list view showing overall mark against missed due dates, hours in course, and days since last access
Thank you very much to our presenters from the Departments of Computer Science, Geography and Earth Sciences, and the School of Literature and Languages.
And a special thank you to our external speakers: James Fern and Richard Mason from Bath University who gave us a brilliant overview of the two-lane approach to assessment design that Bath is currently working through.
We look forward to welcoming you to one of our upcoming events.
