Now that the 2022-23 modules are available to staff, we can link them together at the module co-ordinator’s request. This process is known as parent-childing. Linking modules together is an effective way of dealing with separate modules with the same content so you don’t have to upload materials to two or more different modules.
This process makes one module the parent, whilst the other module(s) become a child. There’s no limit on how many modules you make a child but there can only be one parent.
If you’d like to parent-child your modules, and you’re the module co-coordinator, contact elearning@aber.ac.uk with the module codes for the parent and child modules.
Examples from Aberystwyth
Many members of staff are currently using parent-child modules across the institution. Some examples are:
Modules are taught the same content but there’s a module available for different years
Modules that bring together different degree schemes and have different module IDs, for example dissertation modules
Essentially, any module that shares the same content is ideal for parent-childing.
This year marks the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit’s 10th year of organising the annual learning and teaching conference. To celebrate, we’ve made all of our materials from our previous conferences available on our conference webpage.
We’ve also been looking over our stats and brought together a number of facts for you.
Since the first conference in 2013, we have had:
Over 400 different members of staff and students from Aberystwyth University present at the conference
Over 1000 attendees
Most sessions by Department:
Our top 10 academic departments presenting at the conference are:
IBERS with 41 sessions
Education with 28 sessions
Lifelong Learning with 26 sessions
Psychology with 21 sessions
Computer Science with 18 sessions
Aberystwyth Business School with 17 sessions
International Politics with 14 sessions
Physics with 13 sessions
Geography and Earth Sciences with 12 sessions
Law and Criminology with 11 sessions
Most sessions by a presenter
We’ve got a tie for first place with the greatest number of sessions run by an academic member of staff. With a total of 8 sessions, we have Education’s Steve Atherton, Psychology’s Antonia Ivaldi and Gareth Norris. Tied in fourth place, with 7 sessions, we have IBERS’ Basil Wolf and Physics and the Graduate School’s Maire Gorman. Big well done to them.
We’re really looking forward to the next 10 years of conferences. We hope you can make the conference between 12 and 14 September with a mixture of online and in-person sessions. Book your place online.
Modules for the academic year 2022-2023 are now available for staff teaching on modules. This is in order to assist staff in preparing for the new academic year.
You may have noticed that a new tab has appeared on the top menu of your Blackboard screen:
If you’re enrolled as a staff member on the module in Astra then you should be able to view your modules for next academic year. If you’re not able to see a module that you are enrolled on then contact your Departmental Administrator. Students won’t be enrolled on the module until registration is complete.
If you have any queries regarding Course Copy, or need further assistance, please email elearning@aber.ac.uk.
We are pleased to announce this year’s annual learning and teaching conference keynote (12-14 September 2022).
Kyra Araneta, Jennifer Fraser, and Moonisah Usman from the University of Westminster will be joining us virtually for their keynote speech, Navigating power lines: Developing principles and practices to support socially just student : staff partnerships.
In this keynote Kyra, Jennifer, and Moonisah will be discussing their successful staff-student partnership projects.
Session Abstract
For many of us universities and classrooms are sites of possibility (hooks, 1994) that we invest with hopes for different futures for students and ourselves. They are also sites of tension as we navigate complex relationships and power dynamics. How we live education for liberation has become even more pressing in recent years with mobilisations for Black Lives Matter and calls to decolonise universities. In Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances Aimee Carrillo Rowe asks ‘How do we build power lines that connect us to others in, through, and for justice?’ (2008, p. 2). Our keynote engages with this question to explore how we develop principles and practices to support socially just student : staff partnership relationships. We argue that, if designed for social justice, partnerships can create anti-racist and decolonial atmospheres (Bell, 2018) that become sites of possibility. Using examples from our work at the University of Westminster we engage with the intersections of power, allyship, social justice and partnership to consider strategies for building programmes that centre transformative relationships. We share examples of how we have built relationships, co-created programme values and enacted these in partnership projects. To illustrate how we can build partnerships with power lines that connect us for social justice we will use the example of the Pedagogies for Social Justice Project (https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/psj/). This project is committed to centring student voices in its values, beliefs and experiences and in using these to dismantle contemporary forms of coloniality in curricula, relationships and research. We argue that partnerships are pivotal to this work as they co-produce knowledge; develop new and critical ways of understanding disciplines; and undertake sustained collaboration, experimentation and dialogue. Understanding that these are challenging and complex processes, we offer this keynote as a step in your University’s and your own journeys toward creating socially just pedagogical spaces for students and staff.
Towards the end of July we will start to create Blackboard modules for 2022-23.
Unlike previous years, there will be no existing courses created blank. This decision was made at the recent Academic Board.
Course content and files will be copied over from the version of the module in the previous academic year. Turnitin submission points, Panopto recordings, and interactive Blackboard activities are not included in the copy; these will need to be rebuilt. We’ve got lots of FAQs to assist staff with this.
If you are running a new module then these will be created using your pre-agreed Departmental Templates. Similarly, if you are running a module that hasn’t run in the past couple of years then these will also be created blank.
If you have any questions about this process, please contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk). Once the modules have been created, we will let you know.
On 20 May, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit were joined by Dr Mary Davies, Stephen Bunbury, Anna Krajewska, and Dr Matthew Jones for their online workshop: Contract Cheating Detection for Markers (Red Flags).
With other colleagues, they form the London South East Academic Integrity Network Contract Cheating Working Group and have been doing essential work and research into the increased use of essay mills and contract cheating.
The session included lots of practical tips for colleagues to help detect the use of Contract Cheating whilst marking.
The resources from the session are available below:
Further information on Unfair Academic Practice is available in the Academic Quality Handbook(see section 10).
Many thanks to the presenters. We’ve had such great external speaker sessions this academic year; take a look at our External Speakers blogposts for further information.
Our webpages and help guidance will be updated to reflect these changes. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
We’re pleased to announce our first guest speaker for this year’s annual learning and teaching conference (12-14 September 2022).
Dr Alex Hope will be joining us to talk about how to embed sustainability meaningfully into the curriculum.
Dr Hope is Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor (Education) and Associate Professor of Business Ethics at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. He is responsible for the strategic leadership of education across the faculty and undertakes teaching, research and consultancy across topics such as education for sustainable development, responsible business, business ethics and the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Alongside his work at Newcastle Business School Dr Hope is Co-Chair of the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (UN PRME) Climate Change and Environment working group and past Vice-Chair of the UN PRME UK and Ireland Chapter. He is a member of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Learning and Teaching Committee and sits on the Northeast board of Business in the Community, the Prince of Wales responsible business network. He holds a PhD in Sustainable development, an MA in Academic Practice and BSc (Hons) in Environmental Management.
