Turnitin will be unavailable between 16:30 and 20:30 on Saturday 27 January 2024 for scheduled maintenance.
During this time, you will be unable to submit or grade any assessments.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
![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)
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.
All staff are welcome to attend – book your place on the training course booking page.
Panopto’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) captions can now be added to recordings made in Welsh.
To use of Welsh captioning:
If your course contains both Welsh and English recordings, you should create a sub-folder to hold all the recordings for one of the languages:
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:
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:
Use the Language option on your Profile Page
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.
See our Ultra webpage for further support materials or contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
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).
All your previous years’ courses are still available – so if you need to look back at old course materials, you can do that too.
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.
Please note that access to Turnitin submissions from before summer 2022 has changed – read our guidance on downloading Turnitin submissions made before summer 2022.
We have had reports of staff and students not seeing feedback comments on marked Turnitin assignments.
If you are unable to see your feedback, click on the window containing the assignment to display in-text comments, QuickMarks, and highlighted text.
We have raised this with Turnitin and will provide an update once the matter is resolve
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.
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.
A dropdown list will open that includes several options that begin with Recognised by Advance HE as a….
Select the appropriate fellowship category.
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.
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.