Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, our Royal Literary Fund fellow returns to Aberystwyth from 7th October.
Samanatha offers a free, confidential service to help improve students’ writing skills.
You can help advertise the service to your students – link to the RLF Learning Object Repository item in Blackboard course sites
English item: Improve your academic writing
Bilingual item: Cyfle i wella’ch ysgrifennu academaidd / Improve your academic writing
Welsh item: Cyfle i wella’ch ysgrifennu academaidd
And don’t forget that staff are also welcome to book an appointment with Samanatha.
The information in the Learning Object is:
Improve your academic writing this year with RLF Fellow Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch. To make an appointment please email for a booking link: samantha.wynne-rhydderch@rlfeducation.org.uk
Students at Aberystwyth University at any level of study (from 1st year to postgraduate) – and staff – are welcome to book a session.
The Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellows are professional, published authors whose role is to help you strengthen your writing. In one-to-one sessions, Samantha can help you with:
Structuring your argument
Writing clearer and more compelling prose
Rewriting and editing
Planning and time management
Tackling the word count
Critical thinking
Paraphrasing
Samantha works Wednesdays and Thursdays during term time. Sessions last 50 minutes and take place in the Hugh Owen Library on Wednesdays and in the Llandinam Building on Thursdays.
Please note that RLF Writing Fellows do not undertake proofreading, or EAP or TEFL tuition.
Note: Samantha’s sessions are in English. To speak with a Welsh medium academic writing skills tutor who offers 1:1 academic support to students, please contact Dr Tamsin Davies, ted@aber.ac.uk
Do you teach a course in Welsh that’s been merged with its English equivalent? Or maybe you’re the coordinator of an English module that has been merged with its Welsh partner?
This year’s Blackboard Required Minimum Presence encourages staff to use the bilingual Welsh template for merged Welsh / English courses.
You could also include bilingual elements using the Learning Object Repository – here’s a list of the items that are available in the Learning Object Repository.
Staff should be aware that Panopto keeps recording even when you click Pause. Students cannot access what is recorded during a paused section, but other instructors on the course and system administrators can.
Mute your microphone if you do not want anything you say during a pause to be recorded. Please remember to un-mute it before continuing your lecture.
Also, when you edit and delete part of a Panopto recording, that part is hidden from students rather than permanently deleted.,
If you need to permanently remove part of a recording, use the Save As option (see Panopto’s How to use Save As guide – only available in English).
Continuing to record during pauses can be helpful if you forget to restart the recording, as you can make that content available to students later by editing the recording.
We revisit and revise all the policies relating to digital education 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
This year’s update has clarified what is expected for AberOnline courses in Canvas. All points apply to Blackboard and Canvas unless otherwise mentioned. Any queries about AberOnline should be sent to aberonline@aber.ac.uk
Blackboard Required Minimum Presence (RMP)
The RMP outlines to staff and students the minimum standards for a Blackboard Course.
Welsh Language:
Guidelines for providing Welsh language materials in merged Welsh and English modules.
To help students plan and manage their studies:
Assignment briefs, along with a Generative AI statement for each assessment should be uploaded at the start of the semester that the course is taught in
Clarification of timescales for uploading materials for students with a Record of Support Provision
Guidance on availability of materials in a Blackboard course
To help staff managing courses:
Copy of any Turnitin rubrics to be uploaded into the External Examiners folder
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:
Clarification of guidance on returning marks and feedback for work not submitted electronically
Responding to system outages:
Clarification of how outages on AU and non-AU systems will be managed.
Lecture Capture Policy
The Lecture Capture Policy outlines that all transmission style presentations are recorded electronically for students to access.
To help students with accessibility requirements
Inclusion of guidance on downloading transcripts
Inclusion of guidance on recording whiteboard notes
To help staff managing courses:
Clarification of when and how lecture summaries should be used
Use of recordings:
Guidance on when and how recordings may be used in the AU complaints process
To support students who are resitting in August we are asking all module coordinators to add the new Resit ready item into the Assessment and Feedback area in Blackboard courses.
Resit ready contains resources to support students who are resitting coursework or exams in the supplementary exam period. Once it has been added to courses, colleagues can add then any module or department specific information into the Assessment and Feedback area.
If you use Blackboard Assignment for your assessment, you may be interested in our latest update. Staff can now use the functionality of Blackboard Assignment whiles also getting a Similarity Report from Turnitin.
This is particularly useful for multi-part assignments and assignment files that are too big to use Turnitin. Like other elements of Blackboard, Assignment is available in Welsh for both staff and students. It also means that you get the benefits of Blackboard Assignment (such as an electronic receipt for students) as well as being able to use the same Similarity Report as other colleagues.
If you already make use of Blackboard Assignment, then we encourage you to try out the new Turnitin feature. Our Guide contains all the information to help you get started. Submission and marking stay the same, but you get the additional Similarity Report alongside your marking.
We’d also be interested in your feedback – during the year, we’ll contact you for feedback on using this new Turnitin integration.
Today (21st May) is Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Within Student Journey, we have a specialised Accessibility and Wellbeing Team who work with students throughout the year. The Team includes over 50 non-medical helper staff who provide 1:1 mentoring or study skills support for students with a disability or learning difference.
Last year they supported over 800 of our students – the number of students they support has increased by 34% in the last five years.
Here’s what our students have been saying about the team this year:
…incredibly invaluable, allowing me to… remain in university through the several challenges that have occurred during my course.
…really appreciate …[having]…continued support throughout our entire degree from the same people (as opposed to them changing each year). I am autistic and that makes a real difference for me.
[The support worker] has single handily been the most important person in my university experience… without the services I would have less routine and interest from others which have been the two most vital components in my success in university.
We think that this student sums up the service perfectly: “Amazing…Absolutely brilliant…Fantastic…Phenomenal…Invaluable…Top tier”
But it’s not only these staff who are making sure that what we do is as accessible as possible. Here are some of the things that our other teams do.
Blackboard Content
Blackboard Ally is available for all students and staff at the university. This year 59,541 documents have been downloaded in an alternative format by 3,894 users. The most common format is Tagged PDF.
Staff have made 3,417 fixes to content – that’s 3,417 changes that make teaching materials more accessible to use.
The average Ally course score for 2025-26 courses in Blackboard is 72%.
In November 2025, AU entered the Blackboard Fix Your Content Day and were placed 3rd in the UK for the number of fixes to Blackboard content made.
Pie chart style image showing Ally Overall Accessibility score as 72% – an increase of 2% from the previous year
Books and journal articles
All the book chapter and journal article scans that our digitisation service for reading lists are in an accessible format. They use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanning, which means that uploaded scans of book chapters and journal articles in reading lists are fully machine-readable, searchable, and accessible content. As well as complying with legislation, these scans are accessible for all learners. OCR scanned documents are compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers, as well as having text navigation facilities.
As well as scanning items for reading lists, the team can also create accessible copies for books for students who have declared a disability to the university. We have a licence which allows us to make or find accessible copies of books if a suitable version is not available for us to purchase. If a text is not covered by the licence but we own an original copy, we may still produce an accessible copy for personal study or research.
This service is free of charge to eligible students and can be accessed by emailing digitisation@aber.ac.uk
Sensory items for wellbeing sessions
Staff in our Wellbeing Service introduced boxes of sensory items that can be offered to students in Wellbeing sessions to help them manage need for self-stimulation (stimming). Here’s an example of the items available:
Using AI
Our new AI prompt library which is available to everyone include information about using AI for users with accessibility requirements. You can see some examples of this in some samples from the prompt library
Plain Language Rewriting
“Rewrite the following text in plain, easy to understand language while keeping the original meaning. Break complex sentences into shorter steps and remove unnecessary jargon. Highlight any terms that may still require explanation.”
Neurodiversity Friendly Step by Step Guide
“Turn this task into a step-by-step guide suitable for neurodivergent learners. Include short, clear steps, optional visuals or metaphors, and a summary of key points. Avoid overwhelming detail. Do not add content unrelated to the task.”
Finding your way around
AccessAble is a brilliant resource that helps to make planning for and navigation of our Campus here at Aberystwyth that bit easier. It provides people with information about things like accessible parking space, ramp access, where hearing loops are and where they can find accessible toilets. This can be really reassuring for people as they plan to attend somewhere that is new and/or unfamiliar.
When adding items to Blackboard, the Additional Tools item is currently labelled Content Market. Staff should use this to add Turnitin submission points or Panopto links.
Settings in Welsh (Offer Ychwangeol) are working correctly.
This is a temporary change due to issues with the Blackboard language settings.
Note that students submitting Panopto assignments should also use the Content Market link.
We’ve had a look at all the queries that came into the elearning@aber.ac.uk inbox over September to see what the most common query was. And the answer is … Merged Courses.
So, here’s some useful information about merging courses which can help to answer some of your queries:
A merge links two or more courses together in Blackboard. It is an effective way of dealing with separate courses that have the same content, so you don’t have to upload materials to more than one course. More information is available on the blog. Some cases where this might be useful are
Modules are taught the same content but there’s a module available for 2nd and 3rd years.
Modules that bring together different degree schemes and have different module IDs, e.g. dissertation modules.
Courses aren’t merged automatically so you will either need to merge them via our new Module Partners tool or by emailing elearning@aber.ac.uk . If your courses were merged last year, you need to merge them again for 2025-26. If you want to check whether your courses have already been merged, you can use Module Partners (or email elearning@aber.ac.uk)
Students will see the module code and title of whichever course they are registered on. If you find that students can’t see content in courses that you think are merged, please check in Module Partners or email elearning@aber.ac.uk to check.
We’ve also had questions about enrolments – information about how enrolments work is available in our Access to Blackboard Courses FAQ.
Note: we produced the summary of our most common support queries using Microsoft Copilot.
Some staff will have made offline Panopto recordings because of the impact of an Amazon Web Services service disruption on Panopto on Monday 20th October.
All offline recordings will need to be uploaded to the Panopto servers before they can be made available to students. Instructions are available in our FAQ How do I manually upload Panopto recordings via the Panopto Recorder program? You can check teaching room availability from myadmin.aber.ac.uk > AAA/ATO (Aberystwyth Timetable Online)
We recommend that you upload any offline recordings with the next 7 days. If you have any questions, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk
