Staff and students can now use the Pronunciation section of the Blackboard Profile page to record their name. They can also select the pronouns they use. For further information, see our FAQ.
Name pronunciation and pronouns available in Blackboard
Author: WordPress User [kaw]
Panopto
Panopto has now been set-up ready for 2025-26.
Automatic Captions
Automatic captioning has now been set-up for all 2025-26 folders in Panopto. The language for captioning matches the language of your Blackboard course template.
For bilingual courses we recommend creating a sub-folder to hold the recordings for one of the languages of your course delivery (see FAQ).
When you make your recordings, you must select the correct language folder before pressing record. This is because Welsh captions cannot be added to recordings copied or moved from other folders.
You can find information about automatic captioning in the AU Lecture Capture Policy (section 12).
Linking to All Panopto Recordings
You can create a link to the Panopto folder in your Blackboard course. This means that students will be able to see the recordings for the course all in one place.
Finding your Panopto folder
Panopto folders for all this year’s modules are in the 2025-26 folder.
To find the Panopto folder you want to record into:
- Click the dropdown button on the right-hand side of the Folder box.
- Click the dropdown arrow to the left of the academic year folder to expand it.
- Select the Panopto folder you want to record into.
You can also search for the Panopto folder you want to record into:
- In the Folder box start typing the module code or name of the Panopto folder you want to Record into
- Select the folder you want to record into.
What to do if you can’t see your Panopto folder
In a small number of courses, the Panopto folder wasn’t created over the summer. If you can’t find your Panopto folder using the steps above, you can create a folder from Blackboard:
- Login to Blackboard and find your course
- Click on Books and Tools > View course and institution tools
- Click on Holl Fideo Panopto / All Panopto Videos
You should then be able to find the Panopto folder to make a recording.
Blackboard Ally
Blackboard Ally continues to be a popular part of Blackboard with more staff and students making use of it during academic year 2024-25.
The number of downloads into alternative format more than doubled last year –over 62,000 documents were downloaded into alternative formats. And over 4000 users used this option.
Staff also made more use of the tools to fix accessibility issues in their courses – over 800 files were fixed last year (compared to 295 in 2024-25).
For the first time this year, the Blackboard Required Minimum Presence states that all Blackboard courses should have an Ally score of 70%. If you want to check your Ally score have a look at our blog post. You can also a book a place on one of the E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Blackboard Ally training courses in September.
Learning Object Repository Policy
In April, Blackboard introduced the Learning Object Repository [LOR] – we wrote about this in our monthly update blog. We also recently added Generative AI Assessment statements into the Repository for staff to use.
We have now written an LOR Policy for colleagues who are interested in adding content to the Repository for others to use.
The LOR allows us to create items centrally for colleagues to copy into their courses and organisations. LOR items can be updated, applying changes to content items across all courses and organisations. For more information, see the Blackboard help site.
The LOR is ideal for standardised content that is required across many courses. For example:
- Standard items to be included in courses
- Policies
- Support information
- Generative AI statements
- Skills guidance and support
If you have any questions about the LOR or the new Policy, please contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
Merging Courses 2025-26
Now that the 2025-26 modules are available to teaching staff, we can link them together at the module co-ordinator’s request. This process is called merging courses (previously known as parent-childing) and works with courses in Blackboard Ultra. Linking courses together is an effective way of dealing with separate courses with the same content so you don’t have to upload materials to two or more different courses.
This process makes one course the Primary (previously parent), whilst the other course(s) becomes Secondary (previously child). There’s no limit on how many secondary courses you can make but there can only be one primary.
If you’d like to merge any courses, we invite module coordinators to contact elearning@aber.ac.uk
indicating the module codes for the primary and every secondary course in the following format:
Primary module code: secondary module code/s
Examples from Aberystwyth
Many members of staff are currently using the merge course facility 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, e.g. dissertation modules.
Essentially, any module/course that shares the same content is ideal for Merging courses.
What do students see?
Students will see the name of the course that they are enrolled on (even if it’s the secondary course) when they log into Blackboard but they will see all the content placed in the primary course. Instructors will not be able to place content in the secondary course.
Things to consider
Now, before the start of term and whilst course content is being built, is the perfect time for linking your courses. Whilst the linking of courses does save time in the loading of materials, here are some points to consider:
- All content can be viewed as soon as the courses are merged (as long as students are enrolled on the course). In addition to PowerPoints and lecture materials, this also includes Announcements and other interactive tools on your primary course.
- Historical student interactions on a secondary course (such as using blogs or posting in discussion boards) won’t be available once the courses have been merged.
- Any submission points created on a secondary module before the merge takes place will no longer be able to be viewed. We would advise creating these again in the primary course.
How do I control content so that it is only viewable to a module cohort?
Whilst all content is automatically visible once the courses 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 merged a 2nd year and 3rd year course but your students on the different courses 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. See our guidance on Creating Groups and Release Conditions (previously ‘adaptive relesease’ in Blackboard Original).
Merging Courses and the Grade Book
Once the merging takes place, all students will appear in the Grade Book of the primary course. You can, however, determine whether they are enrolled on the parent course as this information displays against the student in the Grade Book columns.
If you’d like further information on this process or have any questions, please contact us on elearning@aber.ac.uk.
Course Creation 2025-26
All courses for 2025-26 have been created and are available to staff in Blackboard.
This year’s course template will include some new items which we hope will help both staff and students:
- An item about Panopto recording and captions (see our caption blog post for more information)
- A link to the AberSkills web pages
- Information about AI and Unacceptable Academic Practice
Putting this information into the course template means that all students see the same information. It also means that staff don’t have to include the information when setting up their courses for the new academic year.
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.
Consult the Required Minimum Presence for what should be included in the course.
If you need any assistance with Blackboard courses, see Staff Blackboard Guide.
Once courses have been created, we will run a weekly feed between the Module Management System and Blackboard to reflect any updates or changes. We have made some changes to course roles this year, and more details are available on our blog post.
Students won’t come onto courses until registration has been completed in September.
E-learning Policies Review (2025-26)
We revisit and revise all the policies relating to e-learning tools annually. All the changes are approved by the Quality and Standards Committee. The new policies are now available, and here are the details of the main changes. If you have any questions about the new policies, please get in touch with us using elearning@aber.ac.uk
Blackboard Required Minimum Presence (RMP)
The RMP outlines to staff and students the minimum standards for a Blackboard Course.
Two of the changes in the RMP are designed to improve the accessibility of course materials:
- All courses should have an Ally score of 70% or above (see the Ally Score information)
- Requirement for materials to be uploaded 1 working day in advance of the session (see the Uploading Material in Advance information)
To help staff managing courses:
- The Blackboard template will include more centrally provided information (see our Course Creation information)
E-submission Policy
The E-submission Policy outlines that all text-based word-processed work is submitted, marked, and has feedback released electronically.
To improve student access to marks and feedback:
- All marks and feedback to be returned through Blackboard (see our FAQ on how to create a column to return marks and feedback)
To improve the consistency of e-submission across the university:
- Requirement for research postgraduate work being submitted electronically include Graduate School Research Training assignments.
For staff who want to use SafeAssign as part of their Blackboard Assignments:
- Addition of information about SafeAssign
Lecture Capture Policy
The Lecture Capture Policy outlines that all transmission style presentations are recorded electronically for students to access.
The most significant change in the Lecture Capture policy is designed to improve the accessibility of recordings:
- Automatic captioning will be turned on for all recordings made after 1st September 2025 (see our blog post)
- Recommendation that summaries are made for sessions that are not recorded
To help staff managing courses:
- The Blackboard template will include centrally provided information about Panopto, including a statement that recording will take place, information about what is and isn’t recording, and information about the quality of captions (see our Course Creation information).
Organisation Policy
All departments make use of their Organisations to provide access to key administrative information. To make sure that materials are accessible and up to date, we have developed an Organisation RMP, based on the Blackboard RMP. This does not apply to staff Practice Courses.
All other Organisations should include:
- Contact Information.
- Information about the purpose of the Organisation and how participants are expected to use it.
- Content is organised clearly, and all materials are named clearly and consistently.
- Content is up to date.
- Clear instructions for participants on what to do with materials
- All materials must be as accessible as possible.
Ally Score
For the first time, our Blackboard Required Minimum Presence includes an Ally score. This recognises and builds on the work that staff have already done to make sure that teaching materials are as accessible as possible.
The RMP sets an Ally score of 70% – the good news for both staff and students is that 87% of all 2024-25 courses have a score of 70%. And overall, the Ally score for 2024-25 is 72.5% which is 3% higher than last year.
Making Blackboard content as accessible as possible benefits all our students. Having materials in a format that students can use easily means that they can focus on their learning rather than struggling with inaccessible formats. The choices that staff make to design accessible materials, as well as the Ally Alternative Formative tools, help us to make sure that all students can engage with their studies.
It’s particularly important here at AU, as the latest HERA data show that over 28% of our students have a declared disability (compared to 16.7% nationally).
To check your course Ally score, have a look at the guidance on the Blackboard help pages. And you can find out more about designing accessible materials with our online training materials.
Ally will give you help and guidance to address common issues. One of the most common issues at AU is handwritten documents that have been scanned. We’ve written some guidance to help staff who do use this type of material. And if you wanted to use scanned articles in your course, contact the Digitisation Service.
Uploading Materials in Advance
Giving access to teaching materials in advance of a session makes them more accessible for students. It gives students a chance to prepare before attending so that they can concentrate on the content of the lecture when they attend. For sessions that include discussion or group work it can allow students to consider how they may engage with these activities. A research paper from Oxford Brookes provides information about the value of making materials available in advance,
Feedback from students over the last few years has asked for this change, and the issue was discussed at Academic Board in summer 2024. And it’s standard in a number of other universities, for example at Edinburgh University and Oxford Brookes.
AU has decided that teaching materials should be released at least one working day before the event takes place:
- For a session taking place on Thursday, materials should be available by Wednesday morning
- For a session taking place on Monday, materials should be available by the previous Friday morning
You can use the Blackboard release conditions to make sure that materials are available at the right time. If you already make all your materials available at the start of term, you are welcome to continue with this.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Providing accessible learning materials helps everyone to learn. Using some basic tools and making some small changes to your documents can make a big difference to students with disabilities.
Today (15th May) is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, so it’s a good day to see what you can do to improve the accessibility of materials in Blackboard.
You can access tools in both Blackboard and Microsoft Office to help you create accessible documents:
If you have 5 minutes today, look at the Ally Course Accessibility Report in one of your Blackboard courses. The section on content with the easiest issues to fix is a good place to start. This will guide you through some quick changes you can make straightaway.
Or you may find some things that you want to improve over the summer, as part of the annual course creation process. One of the biggest issues we see in Blackboard courses is non-OCR scanned documents. A good way to make sure that scanned documents are accessible is to speak to our Digitisation Team who can advise on scanning book chapters and journal articles.
Here at AU nearly 30% of our student population has a declared disability, so any improvements you make to the accessibility of your content will make a big impact on how students engage with them.
Find out more about Global Accessibility Awareness Day (this is an external site and not available in Welsh).
Handwriting guidance
We know that some staff use handwritten documents in lectures – these may be for working through calculations, or to demonstrate a process, or to draw a graph. When you upload these to Blackboard, they tend to have a low Ally score as they aren’t accessible for some users. Here are some ways that you can make these types of documents more accessible.
When you are writing in lectures make sure to use clear and consistent handwriting – try not to use cursive (joined up) text, and make sure you write at a good size. Using a felt tip pen such as a Sharpie will also help with contrast. If you can provide a typed version, add this to Blackboard along with the handwritten version. If this isn’t possible you may want to signpost students to another source for the equivalent material (for example a textbook, Panopto recording with captions, YouTube video etc).
When you do scan materials, you can use the university printers, as they all have an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) setting. This means that the text and images on your scan can be selected by a student. This helps with screen readers, as well as Blackboard Ally – Ally won’t create an MP3 file from a non-OCR document (although it will try and create an OCR version, but this doesn’t always work well). Make sure that you scan the correct orientation. Once you have done a scan, have a go at copying and pasting your text into Word so you can see what students might see or hear.
The PDF24 tool (available in the AU Company Portal) can also convert a non-OCR document into an OCR version. How successful this is will very much depend on the contents of your original document.
Students can make use of Google Lens to read documents in Blackboard and lens does seem to do a good job at reading out handwritten text. Have a look at guidance from Guide Dogs for more information. There are also more ideas for students on the Perkins website. If you do, make use of Google Lens:
- Don’t use it to look at things that contain personal information about individuals
- Have a look at the Google Privacy policy for more information about how your data is used
Resuming Panopto Recordings
Have you ever pressed stop on a Panopto recording rather than pause? Or realised there was something you forget to say in your recording?
Did you know you can resume any finished Panopto recording, and add more to it? You can do this from any computer that has the Panopto recorder on it – it doesn’t have to be the machine you used to create the original recording.
And it’s very easy to do:
- Go to Panopto and find your recording
- Click on the three dots (More Actions) on the recording preview
- Select Resume > Resume in Panopto for Windows
If you want to do this from your office, you will need to install the Panopto recorder on your work computer. Alternatively, you can resume a recording from any teaching machine.