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.
We are delighted to announce our keynote for our forthcoming Education and Student Experience Conference (8-10 September).
Dr Hardeep Kaur Basra will be joining us in person for a keynote presentation and a workshop.
We will get so much valuable input from Dr Basra that will really help us to enhance our education and student experience offering as well as build on the incredible work of the Race Equality Charter.
See below for Dr Basra’s biography.
Dr Hardeep Kaur Basra (PFHEA, NTF, CATE) is an Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning and Inclusive Education Lead at De Montfort University. With over two decades of experience in higher education, she is a nationally recognised leader in inclusive, anti-racist and decolonising pedagogies. Her work spans institutional strategy, curriculum transformation and academic development, with a sustained focus on improving student outcomes, belonging and equity.
Hardeep has led major institution-wide initiatives, including advancing inclusive curricula, addressing awarding gaps and shaping Access and Participation strategies. She has played a key role in sector-leading work such as Decolonising DMU, contributing to Race Equality Charter success, and designs impactful staff development programmes including the PG Cert in Empowering Education.
As a Principal Fellow of Advance HE, National Teaching Fellow and CATE award holder, she contributes to national conversations on equity, excellence and transformational change in higher education.
Our guidance is split into the following sections:
Advice for prompt design with Generative AI
Prompt Library for Students and Subject Librarians
Prompt Library for Staff
Prompt Library for Researchers
If you use a prompt in your studies or work that you would like to share, please contact us on librarians@aber.ac.uk. We’d love to include it in our AI Prompt Library.
As we start to move to the assignment period for semester 2, we start to look at creating courses ready for 2026-27.
We will create courses for 2026-27 on Monday 3 June 2026.
The courses will be available to staff as soon as we create them.
Students will not be enrolled on the courses until they complete registration in September.
As with previous years, there will be one standard template for all courses at Aberystwyth. The language of the template depends on the language of delivery in AStRA. If the course is delivered 100% through the medium of Welsh, then a Welsh template will be used. For 1-99% through the medium of Welsh, a bilingual template will be used. If the course is registered to be delivered 0% through the medium of Welsh, then an English template is used.
Our Blackboard Required Minimum Presence, E-submission, and Lecture Capture policies are in the stages of being finalised.
We will communicate these in due course.
If you have any questions about course creation, please don’t hesitate to contact us on elearning@aber.ac.uk.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
