For colleagues who might be new to the University, colleagues who are returning from research leave and other periods of absence, and those who want a refresher, we are running our E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Blackboard Learn Ultra in January.
You can book your place online.
Unable to make our training sessions?
We’ve got our Blackboard Learn Ultra guide for staff on our webpages as well as a playlist to talk you through setting up your Blackboard Learn Ultra Module.
On 31 December 2023, Blackboard is retiring Building Blocks as an integration solution for third party tools and they will no longer function in Blackboard. This will not affect Blackboard Learn Ultra Courses.
Whilst we made use of Building Blocks in Blackboard Learn Original (courses which ran before 2023-24), your Blackboard Learn Ultra Courses do not use them.
Building Blocks are installed software packages used to integrate tools such as Panopto and Turnitin (among many others) into Blackboard. Over the past two years we have upgraded these tools to LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) integrations. The retiring of Building Blocks was one of the drivers for moving to Blackboard Learn Ultra.
LTIs offer us access to regular updates, bugs fixes, and ongoing developments and enhancements designed for Blackboard Ultra. Building Blocks required manual upgrades and received infrequent updates as this form of integration approached retirement.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit has done extensive testing to ensure that this change will have as minimal an impact as possible on current Blackboard Learn Ultra courses.
We will undertake the work of disabling Building Blocks on Tuesday 12 December during the regular IS Tuesday Morning Maintenance window in preparation for their final retirement.
If you come across any issues, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.
We are pleased to announce that applications for this year’s Exemplary Course Award are now open. The ECA is judged across 4 categories:
Applicants are asked to introduce 3 standout practices for their Course to help frame their application before self-assessing their course – this can be a 1,000 word narrative or an 8-minute Panopto recording. Following the self-assessment, the courses are also marked by a panel of experts. Complementing the move to Ultra, we have updated our ECA form. Changes include fewer criteria and an increased wordcount for the narratives.
To help prepare for applications, two workshops are being run by the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit on:
Places can be booked via the online booking page.
Application forms can be downloaded from the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit’s webpages.
Completed applications need to be emailed to elearning@aber.ac.uk before 12 noon on Friday 2 February 2024.
If you have any questions about this process, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
In this blogpost we’re outlining a useful feature to help both staff and students navigate their Blackboard Courses.
If you can’t find the content that you’re after or you need to navigate to an area of a course quickly, try using the search function which is available in all courses.
The course search function appears at the top of every Course:
Click on the magnifying glass and start entering the name of the content that you are after.
As you enter the name of the content, the item will appear as a link. Clicking on the link will take you to that area of the module.
Take a look at the screencast below to see this in action:
If you’ve got any questions about Ultra or want to provide feedback on your experience, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.
AirServer, the software used to connect mobile devices to teaching room equipment, is being retired.
Over increasing years, AirServer has been unable to cater for different types of mobile devices.
A workaround using Microsoft Teams can be used to link your tablet devices to teaching room equipment.
Take a look at our FAQ: How do I connect a tablet / mobile device to a teaching room machine?
If you have any questions, please contact Information Services (is@aber.ac.uk).
Vevox is the University’s polling software which can be used to make teaching more interactive, engage large groups, check knowledge and understanding, and receive feedback.
In addition to their training sessions, Vevox run a series of online webinars showcasing innovative ways in which polling is used at other institutions.
The next online webinar is from the University of South Wales, where Dean Whitcombe is running a session The Use of Vevox in Simulation-based Education and research. This session is at 2pm on 4 October.
On 11 October, at 2pm, University of Chichester’s James Wilson will be leading a session, Once upon a Time: Using Vevox for Interactive Storytelling.
You can sign up to attend these sessions on this webpage.
Aberystwyth University has run a series of webinars in the past for Vevox which are available on YouTube:
If Vevox is new to you, then take a look at our polling software webpage. Vevox run 15 minute Zero to Hero training sessions on Tuesday afternoons. You can sign up to them on the Vevox webpage.
Please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk) if you have got any questions.
Some of the feedback that we’ve received regarding Blackboard Ultra Courses is that they are not as visually customisable as Blackboard Original Courses. Ultra is created with accessibility in mind which means that some of the features that we previously had, such as textured or coloured backgrounds and text that could result in low colour contrast are no longer available.
In this blogpost we’ll give you some tips that might help make your Blackboard Ultra Courses more visually appealing, including some brand-new features that arrived in the September release.
Learning Modules work similarly to folders and can be placed on the top level of the Content Page. You can use these to arrange your Learning Materials. One of the developments that arrived recently is the ability to upload images to Learning Modules.
To create a Learning Module, click on the + and Create > Learning Module:
From there, you can Add image to upload an image from the file explorer. Select the image from the File Explorer that opens and upload. Alternatively, you can drag and drop your image into the Learning Module editor. Once you’ve added an image to a Learning Module, it will display as below:
In our previous blogpost we outlined some of the changes to Panopto with our move to Blackboard Learn Ultra.
In this blogpost we’ll outline the changes to using Panopto for Assignments. Panopto Assignments are used for students to submit a recording or presentation.
As part of this change, we recommend that you:
The advantages to this new workflow are that:
To support staff with this process, we have a Panopto Assignment guide that takes you through setting up the assignment, student submission, and marking on our Lecture Capture webpages.
We’ve also got a FAQ for staff and students.
If you’ve got any questions, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
We’re the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit. Based in Information Services, we work with staff across the university to support and develop learning and teaching. We run a wide range of activities to do this.
All the information that you need is on the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit webpages. Our Supporting your Teaching webpages will help you with various teaching solutions.
We write a blog full of the latest updates, details on events and training sessions, and resources.
If you need to get in touch with us, you can do so using one of two email addresses:
lteu@aber.ac.uk (for pedagogical and design questions, or to arrange a consultation) or
elearning@aber.ac.uk (for technical queries regarding our e-learning tools listed below).
In this blogpost we’ll be taking a specific look at the Gradebook feature in Blackboard Learn Ultra. The Gradebook is the new name for Grade Centre.
It is used to hold all student marks on a Blackboard Course.
The Gradebook is located on every course from the top menu.
Students enrolled on the module automatically appear in the Gradebook.
When you get into the gradebook, you can toggle your view.
Default is a list of markable items on one tab and students on another:
You can toggle your view so that you can see the markable items and the students in one view.
![Grid view of Gradebook]](https://wordpress.aber.ac.uk/e-learning/files/2023/09/image-19.png)