The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce that Information Services has procured Blackboard Ally as part of our move to Blackboard Learn Ultra.
Blackboard Ally integrates into our Blackboard Learn Ultra environment and focuses on making digital content more accessible.
For colleagues creating content you will be able to amend the accessibility of your content. This means that your content will be more accessible to assistive technologies, such as screen readers.
Another benefit of Blackboard Ally is that content can be downloaded in multiple formats. This means that your lecture notes, PowerPoints, and other documents can be converted into many different formats, including:
Immersive readers
Audio files
Electronic braille
There’s nothing that you need to do to enable Ally on your course. It will automatically be enabled on Monday 11 September on 2023-24 Courses onwards and Organisations.
For more information on using Blackboard Ally, take a look at ourstaff or studentFAQ.
If you want to know further information about creating accessible learning materials, take a look at our resources.
We’ve also got a training session taking place on Monday 18 September, 14:00-15:00. This session is run by colleagues from Vevox. Book your place online.
Vevox is a great way to make your teaching interactive and further student’s learning.
Learning Modules offer a way for you to organise your content. For further information, see Learning Modules guidance.
3. Ultra Accessibility Checker
To ensure that your content is as accessible as possible, use the accessibility checker.
As you create your content, your accessibility score will be generated to alert you to any changes that you might want to make.
4. Flexible Test grading
When it comes to grading tests, you can now grade by question or student in Ultra. See Blackboard’s test guidance and flex grading for further information.
In the latest update to Vevox, our polling software, an AI Question Generator has been added. Colleagues can now create questions using the AI Question Generator.
Further information (including how to use it) is available on Vevox’s webpage.
As with all AI generated material, checking for accuracy and editing content is key before releasing it to students. See LTEU’s Generative AI support materials for further information.
There is another change coming to Vevox. The PowerPoint add in has been updated. We will be contacting all colleagues who make use of the PowerPoint add in via email before the start of September.
If Vevox is new to you, we’ve got a whole host of support materials onour Vevox webpage.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit has now completed their cycle of departmental training sessions for E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Blackboard Ultra.
This training session was designed to ensure that staff had the opportunity to familiarise themselves with Blackboard Ultra and achieve the Blackboard Required Minimum Presence.
Since May, we have trained over 300 members of staff in both in person and online sessions.
For those of you at the first day of the conference you will have seen the exciting features that are coming to Blackboard Ultra over the next few years.
If you haven’t managed to attend one of your departmental sessions or would like a refresher, then we are running the sessions in English and Welsh online.
We would like to thank all of our contributors and attendees. The sessions were of such high quality.
Across two in person days and one online day, delegates heard about the developments for Blackboard Learn Ultra, Chat GPT and AI, and creative approaches to assessment design.
We’re already heading into planning our 12th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference which is scheduled to take place in September 2024 (date TBC).
The big news since our last update on the Blackboard Ultra project is that we have started departmental training sessions. It’s been great getting to meet staff and demonstrate the basics of using Ultra. To date 200 people have attended a session, and we’ve got more sessions lined up over the summer.
If you’re not able to attend your departmental training session, then we’ve got a number of centrally organised ones for you to join.
In addition to this, and to make sure that colleagues have access to full Ultra functionality, we’ve got the following sessions scheduled (available in Welsh and English):
We’re also working behind the scenes on our integrations with other tools. At the moment, we are working on making it easier for you to find the correct academic year Panopto folder when you create recordings. We think that this is going to make things much easier when teaching starts again. Keep an eye out for news on this.
We’re looking forward to welcoming colleagues from Anthology / Blackboard and Bangor University to the annual learning and teaching conference. We’ve got a whole day of Ultra-related events on 4th July. If you haven’t booked your place at the conference, you can do it on our conference webpages.
If you’ve got any questions about Ultra, contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
![Grid view of Gradebook]](https://wordpress.aber.ac.uk/e-learning/files/2023/09/image-19.png)
