Author: WordPress User [jbw]

Education and Student Experience Awards Mid Check-in Event

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Last month we had the pleasure of welcoming our Education and Student Experience Award recipients to an event.

The Education and Student Experience Award fund was launched last year at our Education and Student Experience Conference.

The event aimed to give colleagues undertaking these projects and their supporters, as well as the panel, an update on progress – to share successes, as well as identify any challenges that colleagues might have come across.

Each of the four projects gave a presentation.

Please read below for an overview of each project and the PDF files associated with each presentation.

Project 1: The Aber Medieval Physic Garden

Led by Elizabeth New (History & Welsh History), alongside Sian Nicholas, Eleri Phillips, and a student steering committee. The aim of this project is to create an outdoor amenity for staff and students that support education and recreation on campus. The project seeks to enhance students’ learning through collaborative mentored historical research, gardening, and public engagement.

Eleri Phillips presented at the event.

Please see below for Eleri’s slides.

Medieval Physic Garden_Mid-progress UpdateDownload

Project 2: Developing a Sustainable Student Gear Hub

This project is led by Emma Sheppard (DGES), alongside Toni Beardmore, Eleri Phillips, Morgan Jones, Emma Butler-Wray, Hywel Griffiths, and Tom Holt.

The aim of the project is to promote accessibility, inclusivity, and sustainability in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences by developing a ‘library of things’ for student borrowing and use.

The library will make use of second-hand useable resources and students will be able to participate in repair cafes, making the library sustainable.

Toni Beardmore and Eleri Phillips presented at the event. Please see their slideshow below:

Library of Things halfway presentation for 4th MarchDownload

Project 3: Inclusivity and Accessibility in Assessment Design and Feedback Practices

This project is led by Theatre, Film, and Television Studies’ Kate Woodward.

The aim of the project is to ascertain student understanding of the role of feedback and to maximise student engagement with feedback.

The department is also looking to ensure staff familiarity with inclusive and compassionate feedback design and assessment criteria.

They are changing current practices by adapting and standardising rubrics, feedback and assessment criteria.

See below for Kate’s presentation from the event.

ESE mid report KWDownload

Project 4: Pulling together – supporting teamwork assessment more effectively

Department of Life Science’s Scott Tompsett is collaborating with Cal Walters-Davies and Caroline White from Student Journey to identify common issues for students in relation to group work.

They are investigating how to make groupwork more accessible to neurodivergent students.

They aim to develop a suite of resources for students and teaching staff to better facilitate group work and will test these in several modules.

Scott presented at the event and the slides from the presentation are below.

Working together mid-term progress presentation FINALDownload

Next steps

We’re sure that you will agree that these are such worthwhile projects.

You can hear more about these projects at the 14th Education and Student Experience Conference between 08 and 10 September.

Bookings for the conference, as well as the call for proposals is now open. You can find further information on our blog.

We are delighted to announce that we will be running the Education and Student Experience Awards again next year. The awards will be tied to the conference theme and will be open to conference attendees.

Further information on the Education and Student Experience Awards is on our webpage.

Mini Conference: Neurodiversity, Tuesday 14 April: Programme Announcement

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On 14 April, Student Journey with the Department of Psychology will be hosting their next Mini Conference, this time focusing on Neurodiversity.

This event will take place in person.

We’re excited to announce our programme.

The programme is available on our webpages.

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.

There is still time for colleagues to sign up.

Please sign up via the training booking site.

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

Exemplary Course Award Winners 2025-26

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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.

Exemplary Course Award

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

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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

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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.