Have you ever wondered what the dials next to your content mean in Blackboard?
Have you seen the Ally Accessibility Report in your Blackboard course but weren’t sure what to do with it?
Do you want to make your Blackboard content more accessible, but aren’t sure where to start?
If the answer to any of these questions is Yes, then our new Introduction to Ally course is one for you.
And if you are wondering what Ally even is, then this course is definitely one for you.
The E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Blackboard Ally course (26 February) will take you through the basics of using Ally to check and fix accessibility issues in documents you have uploaded to Blackboard. Ally was introduced back in September (view the blog post introducing Ally) and is available in all 2023-24 Blackboard courses.
If you are interested in creating accessible documents using tools in Microsoft Office packages like Word and PowerPoint, we also have a Creating Accessible Learning Materials session running on 7th March.
Click on the new folder and set the language for these recordings.
When you make your recordings, you must select the correct language folder before pressing record. This is because Welsh ASR captions cannot be added to recordings copied or moved from other folders.
Note:
There can be delay between changing the language on your folder and the option for automatic captions to appear. If this happens check back after an hour or so and you should see the option available.
The Welsh ASR captions are only available for content created after you updated the language setting on your folder.
The Welsh ASR captions cannot be added to recordings copied or moved from other folders.
If you regularly make recordings in other languages, ASR captions are available in other languages (see the Panopto website for the full list)
When you next log in to Blackboard you may notice that the language of the interface has changed. The initial language you see in Blackboard is decided by the Preferred Language you have set in either ABW as staff or Student Record as a student.
If you have already set your Preferred Language to Welsh, you’ll see the Welsh language interface of Blackboard, and if you have set your Preferred Language as English, you’ll see the English language interface of Blackboard.
If you don’t see the Blackboard Interface in the language you prefer you can easily change it:
The new Blackboard Ally tool also gives you access to Welsh language audio versions of Welsh content in Blackboard courses. Any Welsh language documents, PowerPoints, PDFs etc can be read aloud using the Audio MP3 version. For more information on using Blackboard Ally, take a look at our staff or student FAQ.
Now is a good time to check whether the content in this year’s Blackboard courses is visible to students. With our move to Blackboard Learn Ultra, any materials copied from previous years’ courses are hidden from students by default.
You can change the visibility of individual items (see Blackboard help site for making items available). You can make them visible immediately or use the Release Conditions (date/time, specific students / groups, student performance – see Blackboard help site for Release Content guidance for further information).
If you have a lot of hidden material, don’t forget that you can use the Batch Edit tool to make multiple items of content visible all at once (see Blackboard help site for using Batch Edit). Be careful not to make the External Examiners folder available.
When you use Batch Edit to make a folder visible it will also make all the content items in the folder visible.
Remember that you can use the Student Preview tool (see Blackboard help site for using Student Preview) to see how your course and content looks to students.
When you come back for next academic year, your new courses in Blackboard will look a little different. From September 2023, all new courses in Blackboard will be Ultra courses.
We’ve been using Ultra Base Navigation (UBN) in Blackboard since January 2023, and we know that many of you have found it easier to use – especially on mobile devices.
Ultra courses have the same accessible and mobile-friendly design as UBN – here’s what an Ultra course looks like:
Because of the way it’s designed, an Ultra course never has more than two levels of folders – this makes it much quicker and easier to find your course materials and assignment submission links. And there’s also a search tool inside every course.
We’ve also redesigned our course template to make sure it uses the language that the course is taught in. If your module is taught in Welsh, your course template will now be in Welsh. And bilingual modules have a bilingual course template.
There’s lots of information about Ultra on the Blackboard website, including an introduction to navigating your way round an Ultra course (note – the video on this page is on an external site and only available in English).
Previous year courses will remain available (in line with the university’s retention policy). You will be able to access old courses, and course materials using the Courses dropdown menu.
Do you hold any category of HEA Fellowship (awarded by Advance HE)?
This may be Associate Fellow (AFHEA), Fellow (FHEA), Senior Fellow (SFHEA) or Principal Fellow (PFHEA).
If so, many congratulations! Your fellowship “demonstrates a personal and institutional commitment to professionalism in learning and teaching in higher education.” (Advance HE, Fellowship)
As part of our annual data returns, we need to make sure that we have records of all categories of fellowship holders. You can do this yourself by updating your ABW record. If you gained fellowship in another institution, you should also update your records with Advance HE to reflect your current post at Aberystwyth University.
Update your ABW record
Make sure that your ABW correctly records the category you currently hold. Remember to update your record if you are awarded a new category of fellowship.
Make sure you are on the Your employment tab from the menu on the left.
Go to Personnel Information in the Your Employment column.
Go to the HESA tab.
Once there, scroll down until you reach a series of fields labelled as Teaching Qualification.
Click on the downward arrow on one of the Teaching Qualification fields.
A dropdown list will open that includes several options that begin with Recognised by Advance HE as a….
Select the appropriate fellowship category.
Do not forget to click the Save button at the bottom of the screen.
My Advance HE
If you gained fellowship at another institution and have moved to AU, update your My Advance HE record to show your new Employer Relationship with Aberystwyth University.
Login to My Advance HE with your Advance HE username and password. If you don’t know your password, you use the link on the login page to reset it
Click on My Profile
Click on Update Profile
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Create new employer relationship
Add the details of your new job at Aberystwyth University
You can also edit the details of any previous posts (eg to add an end date) by clicking on the downwards arrow next to that post and selecting Edit.
Click on Submit
And of course, if you are interested in applying for another fellowship category, you can apply for AFHEA, FHEA and SFHEA through the ARCHE scheme.
Researchers at Swansea University want to know what students across Wales think about digital learning. And we’re encouraging students at Aberystwyth to take part in the research.
All AU students are invited to join other students from across Wales in a Zoom focus group discussion. The focus group will be a chance to talk about your digital learning experience over the past year. What has worked well for you and what you need now, to keep learning effectively?
To take part (and receive a £20 Amazon voucher) email menna.brown@swansea.ac.uk. Full details of the research will be provided to everyone taking part.
One of the most common queries we get is from people who aren’t enrolled on modules in Blackboard. Our standard answer is that staff and students should be enrolled on the module in the module record in AstRA. Once this is done, it takes about an hour for that enrolment to make its way to Blackboard.
But we know that there are still times when students and staff are added manually to modules. We’d like to reduce this as much as possible, so we need to understand when and why it happens. Our short survey will help us do this. The results of this survey will help us to see if we need to make changes to our processes to make it easier for everyone who needs to be on a module can get access quickly and easily.
It can be tempting to just manually add someone to a module, especially if you are in a rush or can’t find someone to make the change for you. However, there are reasons why we take all our enrolments from one source:
Who has access to a module is transparent. This is particularly important for staff enrolments as staff have access to marks and student details. If all our records are taken from AStRA we know that someone should have access to the module; their enrolment has been approved. Also, there are checks within AStRA to make sure that only staff IDs can be given teaching permissions to a module. This avoids mix-ups with logins or typing mistakes which could see students accidentally being given access to grades (for example).
Students only get access to modules they are registered to. Although we encourage students to check their student record, they will often go by the modules they are registered on in Blackboard. So, if a student is manually added to a module in Blackboard, but not properly registered in the Student Record, this can cause all sorts of issues. Especially when we reach exam board season.
Enrolments can be re-built if needed. If a problem with Blackboard we can easily rebuild permissions to modules quickly and easily as there is a central source for them. Any manual enrolments will not be included in this process and could lead to delays with access.
If you manually add staff or students to modules (or ask someone else to do it for you) please take a few minutes to complete our survey.
![Screenshot of the Blackboard Ally tool showing 4 dials: Needs help! A little better. Almost there. Perfect!]](https://wordpress.aber.ac.uk/e-learning/files/2024/01/ally-indicators-en.png)
