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Welcome to new students (and welcome back to our returners) – some top tips on using our E-learning Systems

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, E-submission, Panopto, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment

Welcome to all our new students

We’d like to say hello to all new students and welcome back to those who are joining us again for another year. With the start of term approaching, we thought we’d provide you with some advice and top tips on using our E-learning systems. In this blogpost, we’ll be introducing our main services to you. E-learning support and advice is provided by the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit located in Information Services.

Here are some top tips to help you get started.

  • Use Chrome or Firefox to access our systems
  • Make sure you have your Aberystwyth username and password handy.
  • Over the next few weeks take time to familiarise yourself with these systems so that you are ready to use them

If you’ve got any queries regarding IT or library services, email is@aber.ac.uk or call 01970 62 2400.

Virtual Learning Environment

Blackboard Logo

Firstly, Blackboard is the University’s Virtual Learning Environment. You can access Blackboard by going to blackboard.aber.ac.uk. You’ll need your Aberystwyth Username and Password in order to login. Your language preference for using Blackboard is taken from your preferred language of choice in your student record (Welsh or English). Every module that you’re studying has its own Blackboard site. Here you’ll find materials that will support your learning and teaching.  In addition to this, you’ll be able to access your lecture recordings and submit your assignments electronically. You can navigate to the different areas of a module by clicking on the left-hand menu.

In addition to accessing your teaching materials, you might be asked by your lecturer to undertake some other activities in Blackboard such as tests or quizzes, wikis, blogs, or reflective journals. You’ll also have Departmental sites which will include important information regarding your assignments and further support that you might have.

E-submission

Turnitin logo

All text-based word-processed work will be submitted electronically whilst you’re here at Aberystwyth University via Blackboard. You’ll also receive your marks and feedback electronically as well. There are two different types of electronic submission available: Turnitin and Blackboard Assignment. We’ve got specific advice available on our FAQs for submitting via Turnitin and also via Blackboard Assignment. See below for some top tips on submitting your work electronically:

  • Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to submit your assignment before the deadline
  • Most of the work that you submit will be marked anonymously so don’t put your name on your assignment
  • Save and name your assignment as something meaningful to you
  • Double-check that you are submitting to the correct module
  • Check your emails after you’ve submitted to make sure you’ve got an email receipt
  • Give yourself time to read your feedback carefully after you’ve got your marks

Lecture Capture

Panopto logo

Aberystwyth University makes use of lecture capture software called Panopto. This means that you are able to access recordings from your lectures via Blackboard. There’s a great infographic by Nordmann et al (2018) on how best to make the use of lecture capture to support your learning. Their advice is summarised below:

Firstly, make sure you attend your lectures. Whilst lecture recordings are available for you, this is no replacement for being live at the teaching session. Here you’ll have opportunities to ask questions and also learn from your peers. Think of the lecture capture as supplementing the live teaching sessions. In your lectures, make sure that you make notes and attempt to summarise the discussions in your own words.

When watching the lectures back, be specific and go to the bits that you don’t understand or don’t remember. Don’t watch the lecture as a whole – you should ideally do this within a few days of the lecture taking place to see how much you do remember. Make sure you have your lecture notes handy so that you can add to them.

If you are unable to attend the lecture for valid reasons, make sure you watch the recording within a week so that you can keep up to date with the content – don’t binge watch at the end of the semester. If you are making use of the recording, make sure you watch it at its normal speed and don’t fast forward. Give the recording your full attention and don’t do other tasks such as the Go back to the bits that you don’t understanding and re-watch these sections.  You can find the full article online.

References

Nordmann, E., Kuepper-Tetzel, C. E., Robson, L., Phillipson, S., Lipan, G., & Mcgeorge, P. (2018). Lecture capture: Practical recommendations for students and lecturers. [online]. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/sd7u4. Last accessed: 03.10.2019.

 

Parent-child modules

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Image of Blackboard logo and parent-child

Now that the 2019-20 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:

  1. Modules are taught the same content but there’s a module available for different years
  2. Modules with the same content delivered in English and Welsh
  3. 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.

What do students see?

Students will see the name of the module that they are enrolled on (even if it’s the child module) when they log into Blackboard but they will see all the content placed in the parent module. Instructors will not be able to place content in the child module.

Things to consider

Now, before the start of term and whilst module content is being built, is the perfect time for linking your modules. Whilst the linking of modules does save time in the loading of materials, there are some things to consider:

  • All content is able to be viewed as soon as the modules are merged (as long as students are enrolled on the module). In addition to PowerPoints, lecture materials, this also includes Announcements and other interactive tools on your parent module
  • Historical student interactions on a child module (such as using blogs or posting in discussion boards) won’t be available once the modules have been merged
  • Any submission points created on a child module before the merge takes place will no longer be able to be viewed. We would advise creating these again in the parent module

How do I control content so that it is only viewable to a module cohort?

Whilst all content is automatically visible once the modules are merged, you can use groups and adaptive release if you only want the content to be visible to a specific module cohort. This might be useful, for example, if you have a 2nd year and 3rd year module merged but your students on the different modules have separate assignments. You can use groups – 1 for the 2nd year students and one for 3rd year students and limit who can see the assignment information and submission point. Follow our guidance on creating a group and adaptive release if you wish to do this.

Parent-Child Grade Centre and Component Marks Transfer

Once the merging takes place, all students will appear in the Grade Centre of the parent module. You can, however, determine whether they are enrolled on the child module as this information displays against the student in the Grade Centre columns. We would advise creating different submission points (using adaptive release) so that the component marks transfer can be managed more easily. If there is one submission point for all students then Component Marks transfer can only be used on one of the module codes.

If you’d like further information on this process or have specific questions then please contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

 

Creating Accessible Learning Materials

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Accessibility icons showing 3 images: a checklist, a computer workstation, an image

New digital accessibility legislation came into effect in 2018. It covers all material on public sector websites as well as documents uploaded into VLEs, such as our Blackboard site. For details of the new law, please see Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No.2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. See the Accessible Virtual Learning Environments Report for information about how we can make our modules more accessible and inclusive.

Over the past few months, members of staff in the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit have been working with colleagues across the University to prepare for the introduction of the legislation. For details about how the university is responding to the legislation, please see the university’s Digital Accessibility Statement. From that page, click on Guidance for Staff (you will need to log in to view these materials).  Guidance for Staff includes two sections – one for CMS users (website builders) and one for any staff who create learning materials or other documents for the web or Blackboard.

The Guidance on Creating Accessible Learning Materials page includes a checklist for making your Word documents, PowerPoint files, PDF documents, and embedded media clips more accessible for your students. You can also access the handout from the Creating Accessible Learning Materials training session that is run by the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit in collaboration with Student Support.

In addition to the Creating Accessible Materials training sessions (that can be booked online), the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is also happy to offer bespoke training for staff in departments. If you have any queries about creating accessible materials for your learning and teaching, or you’d like to book a bespoke session for yourself and colleagues in your Department, please contact us (lteu@aber.ac.uk).

 

Changes to Video Conferencing

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Information Services is changing its Video Conferencing provision to Skype for Business. The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit have been working with colleagues across Information Services on the change to this provision.

Skype for Business has the capability to have up to 250 participants attend the webinar. You can attach documents for participants to review beforehand. In addition to this, you can choose the content that you display to your participants, from just audio calls, through to screen casts and PowerPoint presentations. Skype for Business is fully integrated with Office 365 and conference attendees only need an Internet connection to participate in the meeting.

Current Video Conference suites will be updated with new equipment for Skype for Business. You can already download Skype for Business. We’ve got further advice available here.

We will be offering 2 different training sessions on using Skype for Business and you can sign up here.

  • Skype for Business for Meeting Organisers

This session is for those who arrange and set up meetings. We will be looking at how to arrange a meeting using Outlook, how to send the meeting request to participants, control participant interaction, and share documents with participants before the meeting.

  • Skype for Business for Teaching Activities

In addition to covering the above, we will also look at the interactive features of Skype for Business that can enhance Learning and Teaching. We will give advice on strategies you can use for teaching virtually.

Webinars can enhance learning and teaching provision, particularly for students who aren’t studying on campus. JISC have got some guidance on using Webinars in education which you can access here.

We’ve helped the Department of Education run a couple of webinars which you can find out more about here. In addition to this, we’ve also run a couple of webinars on E-learning tools and provision.

 

 

2019/2020 Modules now available (staff)

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Modules for the academic year 2019/20 are now available for staff teaching on modules. 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.

We’ve created 2019/20 modules earlier this year in order to assist staff in getting their modules ready following the second phase of Blank Course Copy, following last year’s Blank Course Copy for all Year 1 on campus modules.

This year, Blank Course Copy applies to all on-campus Year 2 and Year 3 modules. Year 2 and 3 modules created blank last year with your Departmental Template will be copied over into this year’s module.

We’ve got the following support available to help with Blank Course Copy:

If you have any queries regarding Blank Course Copy, or need further assistance, please email elearning@aber.ac.uk.

A reminder, that Blackboard will be unavailable on Thursday 29th August, 09:30-12:30 and will be at risk until 14:00 whilst we complete our work to migrate to SaaS. Blackboard will then be read only until Monday 2nd September.

Exemplary Course Award: Winners

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We are pleased to announce this year’s recipient of the Exemplary Course Award run by the E-learning Group. Come and see the winners present their modules at next week’s Learning and Teaching Conference. Further information here.

Alison Pierse, Lifelong Learning Tutor in Art, has been awarded the Exemplary Course Award for the module XA15220 Figuratively Speaking: The History of Western Figurative Sculpture. The panel commended this module for its innovative approach to co-design with students as well as its ability to create a 3 dimensional learning experience for students who might not be studying on campus, in addition to ensuring all aspects of this module was fully accessible.

In addition to the winner, the following modules achieved Highly Commended:

  • IBERS Distance Learning Team for BDM0120 Research Methods
  • Stephen Chapman for BDM1320 The Future of Packaging
  • Alexandros Koutsoukis for IP12620 Behind the Headlines
  • Jennifer Wood for SP10740 Spanish Language (Beginners)

The diverse range of teaching and learning styles evidenced in this year’s applications reflects the innovative work that is taking place across the institution.

The aim of the Exemplary Course Award, now in its sixth year, is to recognise the very best learning and teaching practices by giving staff members the opportunity to share their work with colleagues, enhance their current modules in Blackboard, and receive feedback on their modules. Modules are assessed across 4 areas: course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment, and learner support. The self-assessed nature of the award gives staff the opportunity to reflect on their course and enhance aspects of their module before a panel assesses each application against the rubric.

The panel and the E-learning Group would like to thank all of the applicants for the time and effort that they have put into their applications and modules this year.

We’re looking forward to receiving more applications next year and many congratulations to the recipients of this year’s award.

 

Spellcheck your feedback in Turnitin

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If you’re anything like us, we have been a little bit obsessed with Line of Duty recently (no spoilers here) and understand how the misspelling of the word ‘definately’ can have potentially catastrophic consequences and we wouldn’t want anyone to be accused of being in league with OCGs.

We’ve found a way in which you can add a dictionary to spellcheck your feedback to the browser that you use to mark. We’ve got step by step instructions below for Chrome and Firefox (as you know, we recommend that you use these browsers to access our E-learning tools).

Install the Spell Checker Add-on in Chrome

If your preferred browser of choice is Chrome, install the spellchecker:

  1. Launch Chrome
  2. Click on the three dots in the top right hand corner of the screen:
  3. Select Settings and a new window will open
  4. Click on the three lines in the top left hand corner of the browser next to Settings
  5. Expand Advanced and select Languages
  6. You can add languages (Welsh-Cymraeg and English UK) by clicking on Add languages
  7. You can then choose which languages you’d like to Spellcheck by turning them on so they are blue
  8. You’ll then be good to go

Install the Spell Checker Add-on in Firefox

If your preferred browser of choice is Firefox, install the spellchecker:

  1. Launch Firefox
  2. Click on the three lines in the top right hand corner of the screen:
  3. Select Add-ons
  4. Select Get Add-ons
  5. In the search box enter Geiriadur Cymraeg or British English Dictionary and select the relevant dictionary
  6. Click Add to Firefox
  7. You’ll then be good to do

As these are browser based, you’ll have to add these onto each browser that you use to mark, but once you’re up and running there’ll be no suspicion cast on being ‘H’.

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference Keynote Announcement: Helen Beetham

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We are very excited to announce that this year’s keynote for the Annual Learning and Teaching Conference will be Helen Beetham.

Helen is an education consultant, researcher, writer, and digital project leader, with a particular focus on learners’ digital literacies. Recently, Helen helped to develop the Jisc Digital Insights survey. Aberystwyth University was one of the Universities that took part in this project (you can read more about the digital insights findings and the project on our blog).

The third edition of Helen’s co-edited collection with Rhona Sharpe is due to be published in July this year and happens to coincide with the dates of the conference. The book, entitled Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age, brings together recent developments and critical theories on designing learning activities that are learner-focused and accessible, and incorporates case studies and research from across the sector.

In addition to delivering a keynote on the topic of curriculum development and digital learning, Helen will also be offering a workshop to delegates so that they can apply what they have learnt to their own specific contexts and curriculum. We will be using the data and findings from the Digital Insights project to support this work.

The conference is running 8th-10th July 2019 and delegates can book onto the conference here.

A draft conference timetable will be available on our webpages shortly.

Helen tweets at @helenbeetham and blogs (sometimes) at digitalthinking.org.uk.

 

Conference Registration now open

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Registration for the seventh annual Learning and Teaching conference is now open. This year’s Learning and Teaching conference has the theme Learning from Excellence: Innvate, Collaborate, Participate! and will be taking place between Monday 8th and Wednesday 10th July 2019.

You can register for the conference by filling in this online form: https://aber.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/7th-annual-learning-and-teaching-conference-registration

This year, we’ve got an exciting and varied programme with activities, workshops and presentations demonstrating the innovative teaching practices that are taking place across the University. A draft copy of the programme will be available on our webpages shortly.

If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

 

E-learning Group’s Reflections on the recent Mini Conference

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E-learning Group

Following the recent Mini Conference on Inclusive Education, we have been reflecting on our experience of the event. Each member of the E-learning Group has written a short piece on one aspect of the Mini Conference.

Neurodiversity

Janet and Caroline’s session was interesting both in terms of the subject matter and the way it was presented. As a trainer, I’m always looking for new ideas and new ways of presenting information, and this session had lots of those. From matching exercises to group work, this was an incredibly active presentation.

As well as helping understand the human brains work very differently, and that those with neuro-diverse conditions often have to work very hard to achieve tasks that those who are neuro-typical take for granted. Whilst this has the potential for increasing stress and workload, its flipside is that those with neurodiversity can be resilient, creative and find new and innovative ways to work achieve their outcomes.

The session highlighted that may of the outward signs of neurodiversity are very similar, and small changes to the way in which we teach can help.

Janet and Caroline presented their session in an engaging and interactive way – and I shall certainly remember the exercise where we tried to explain a holiday without using the letter e! Try it … it will give you a very quick idea of how working around something that everyone takes for granted leads to very hard-work, a lot of false starts – but also a new and different way of expressing yourself.

Accessibility Checker

I have taken away a new attitude and approach to the tools I use and the materials I produce for my students as an educator.
I will endeavour to stop thinking about students with specific learning differences as individuals to whom I have to tailor my materials on a case by case basis. Students with specific learning difficulties do not have a unique learning style. They have a preference that is shared with the rest of the student body to some extent. It is better to think that their particular learning styles or preferences can benefit the student body as a whole.

I will utilise built in tools such as accessibility checker in word. I don’t need to send my work off to a specialist or use elaborate programs. Indeed, the simpler the materials I produce the more compatible they are with assistive technology. Accessibility does not mean I have to use comic sans for everything. Simple things like adding alternative text to an image, using titles and headers correctly rather than messing around with fonts. Everything I produce does not have to resemble a gilded manuscript. It just needs to be functional to serve its purpose of conveying information which is what my teaching is all about anyway.

What do you hope to do differently (part 1)?

Using Blackboard Tests to widen access to learning

Blackboard Tests are a great way to create a learning resource for students. As a learning technologist and someone who often only sees the technical side of tests, it was really useful to hear Jennifer Wood giving a first-hand account of the many benefits of using this tool. Jennifer teaches Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and using tests has allowed Jennifer to free up precious class time to focus on more useful discussions. Before using Blackboard Tests, students would spend a portion of their class time being tested. Now students are able to test their knowledge and learning outside of class time in an environment in which they feel comfortable. Depending on the question type you select (there are many types of questions), means that the tests can be marked automatically and that feedback be released to the student after they have taken the test. Of course, tests do require some work and you need to be sure what you wish to use the test for to make it useful for yourself and students.

Just like most content in Blackboard, there are many settings that you can use to match the test to your learning need and requirement. The E-learning Group are always happy to check a test, run through settings or also assist in choosing the right type of question for your learning activity. Why not create a test to help your students with revision activities?

What are you going to do differently (part 2)?

Public Speaking and access to core skills

Rob Grieve’s talk helped me to appreciate how big of an issue public speaking can be for some individuals. I found the advice to be a ‘genuine speaker’ particularly useful. Not prioritising style of over substance, focusing on the information I want to convey and trying to speak in a natural for me way are strategies which I am planning to use to enhance my public speaking abilities.

I was also inspired by Debra Croft’s presentation on the Summer University. It is a project giving an invaluable opportunity to young people participating in it. I was particularly impressed with the variety of subjects covered during only 6-weeks, including not only academic subjects but also life skills. The flexible and creative design of the activities and assessment tailored to students’ needs was equally impressive. This presentation really showed how accommodating the differences can make a significant impact on peoples’ lives.

Submit a proposal for this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference

There were so many useful tips and reflections that choosing one for each of us was quite a task! You can see a full report on the mini conference which is split into two blog posts (Part 1 and Part 2). A reminder that we currently have an open Call for Proposals for our main Learning and Teaching Conference. 

What are you going to do differently (part 3)?