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Call for Proposals: 14th Education and Student Experience Conference, 8-10 September 2026

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We are now inviting proposals for the 14th Annual Education and Student Experience Conference, Tuesday 8-Thursday 10 September 2026.

Submit and view the call for proposals online.

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.

Booking already open

Colleagues can already book their place at this year’s Education and Student Experience. Please complete this booking form.

If you have any questions, please contact the Digital Education Team: elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Blackboard User Group: Exemplary Course Award Presentation

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

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.

Colleagues are welcome to submit a direct application to Blackboard’s Exemplary course Programme.

Slides from our presentation can be downloaded here:

PresentationDownload

Call for Proposals: Mini Conference: Neurodiversity Network Conference

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Inclusivity and Accessibility banner

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
  • Neurodiversity in the workplace

Please fill out this form to submit your proposal.

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.

Booking for this in-person event is already open. You can book your place via the staff booking system.

We will be providing light refreshments. Please include any dietary requirements in the additional requirements field of the booking form.

Measuring Course Engagement with Blackboard Tools

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard Leave a comment
Inclusivity and Accessibility banner

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:

Image showing student progress for content.

There you’ll see the progress report:

Image showing Progress Summary page.

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:

Image showing Question Analysis menu item.

The report will run and you will receive an email once it has completed:

image showing test question analysis

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:

Image showing student activity 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:

image showing the top menu of the course with Analytics highlighted.

You have two views:

  • Student hours in the course against their overall mark
Image showing student hours in the course against their overall grade
  • Student list view showing overall mark against missed due dates, hours in course, and days since last access

For further information on using the Analytics feature, see Blackboard Help: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Performance/Course_Reports/Course_Activity_Related_to_Grades

If you are interested in looking in more detail at course analytics, we are holding an online training session on Monday 9 February between 15:10-16:00. You can book your place online via the training booking page.

Generative AI Mini Conference: Materials Available

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Happy New Year!

Just before the Christmas vacation period, we hosted our final event of the year: a mini conference on Generative AI.

The materials from this Mini Conference are now available on our webpages.

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.

Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year from the Digital Education Team

WordPress User [jbw] Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2025, Blackboard, Conference, E-submission, Events and Networks, Exemplary Course Award, Generative AI, Mini Conference 2025 Generative AI, Panopto, Technical Updates, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment
Nadolig Llawen / Merry Christmas

We’ve had some fantastic experiences and milestones this year.

Back in March, we announced our 2025 Exemplary Course Award and highly commended recipients.

In April, we hosted a Mini Conference on Employability and the Inclusive Curriculum in collaboration with colleagues in Careers and Employability.

In July, we had our 13th Annual Education and Student Experience Conference with over 200 attendees across 3 days.

At this event, a new Education and Student Experience Award Fund was announced, and we confirmed the recipients of these in November.

In November, we took part in Blackboard Ally Fix your Content Day, making the content of our Virtual Learning Environment even more accessible. We placed 3rd in the UK and 60th on the international leaderboard. 

From a technical perspective, we’re really pleased with the introduction of automatic captions on lecture recordings, Blackboard’s Learning Object Repository, badges and achievements, and the e-submission review.

And we’re rounding the year off with a Mini Conference on Generative AI on Thursday 18 December. We’ve got a fantastic programme and there is still time to book your place.

We’re excited about what 2026 will bring in the Digital Education arena.

Some initial things that we’ll be working on and want to draw your attention to.

Applications for the Exemplary Course Award 2026 will close on Friday 30 January.

On January 8 there will be a minor update to the Blackboard interface.

We’re planning our next Mini Conference in collaboration with colleagues in Student Journey for April 2026. Further information will be made available soon.

And our 14th Education and Student Experience Conference will take place between 8-10 September 2026. Keep an eye out for updates, call for proposals, and external speaker announcements.

We’ve got our training programme available on the booking system for Semester 2 for colleagues to book onto.

We’re looking forward to working further with you in 2026.

We hope you have a restful break.

Kate, Keziah, & Jim

Blackboard Interface Update, January 2026

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Technical Updates Leave a comment
Blog Banner

On Thursday 8 January, there will be a minor update to the Blackboard interface.

There is no downtime associated with this update, and Blackboard will continue to function normally during this period.

These changes include:

  • Change in order of menu items on the main navigation menu:
new Blackboard main navigation menu
  • A new home button in a course to take you back to the landing page:
home button highlighted from the Course view
  • A quick link to navigate to your recently accessed courses
Courses button highlighted showing dropdown to recently accessed courses

In addition to this, to maximise screen space, Blackboard will remove the nested folder view.

If you have any issues, please contact the Digital Education Team on elearning@aber.ac.uk.