Merging Courses 2025-26

12th June 202512th June 2025 WordPress User [kaw] Blackboard, Ultra Leave a comment

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 2^nd year and 3^rd year course but your students on the different courses have separate assignments. You can use groups – 1 for the 2^nd year students and one for 3^rd 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.

Generative AI guidance and advice: Update

9th June 20259th June 2025 WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, E-submission, Generative AI, Ultra, Ultra Leave a comment

Accessibility icons showing 3 images: a checklist, a computer workstation, an image

Library and Learning Services, Academic Registry, and UndebAber are collaborating on Generative AI guidance and advice.

Following approval at the recent Education and Student Experience Committee, we are pleased to share these resources with you ready for next academic year.

A Statement on the use of Generative AI

This statement outlines the principles and approach that AU intends to use for Generative AI across all its operations.

Guidance for students on using Generative AI

This document provides guidance and advice to students on how they might want to use Generative AI as a study tool. This document uses a traffic light system approach to alert students to the amount of caution they might want to apply in its use.

Generative AI e-submission template statement

A statement has been added to the Blackboard course template for 2025-26 Courses providing advice and guidance for students on acceptable use of Generative AI and where to get support and help.

Generative AI Assessment Learning Object Repository Statements

You can copy Generative AI assessment statements into your Blackboard course to communicate to students the acceptable use of Generative AI on the assessment. See our blogpost for further information on how to do this.

A Generative AI Tool Use Statement

Designed by the Department of Law and Criminology, and already being used by some departments, this amended Tool Use statement allows students to outline how they have used Generative AI in their assessments. Students fill out the form and insert the tool use statement into their word document before submission.

The tool use statement can be downloaded from our webpage and uploaded to Blackboard.

There is a dedicated webpage for Generative AI advice and guidance where we place our support materials and advice.

We have consulted widely with colleagues and students on this matter, and we’d like to thank those who have helped shape this guidance.

Please direct staff enquiries to elearning@aber.ac.uk or contact your subject librarian.

What’s new in Blackboard June 2025

6th June 20256th June 2025 WordPress User [ksg2] Blackboard, Blackboard Tests, Monthly Update, Ultra Leave a comment

In the June update, we are particularly excited about a new question type: jumbled sentence.

There are enhancements to Discussions, Knowledge Checks (Documents), and Student Activity Logs that we would like to draw your attention to.

New: Question type: Jumbled Sentence

This question type has been highly requested since our move to Blackboard Ultra, so we are pleased to see it available.

Jumbled Sentence is now an option in the Question Type dropdown. This question type is also available for the AI Design Assistant as well.

To create a jumbled sentence question:

Select Add Jumbled Sentence question in the question creation canvas:

Enter your question text putting the gap and correct answer in square brackets:

image showing Jumbled Sentence editor window

Enter distractors which also appear in the dropdown for students to complete the question:

Save your question and deploy your test as usual.

The above question will display to students like this:

image of the Jumbled Sentence question from a students’ perspective

With students clicking on the dropdown to select the correct work which includes all correct answers and any distractors you might have added:

image showing Jumbled Sentence options from dropdown menu

Enhance student engagement with unread discussion activity indicator

Blackboard improved the discussion experience by adding another indicator of activity. This addition encourages student engagement and makes it easier for instructors to track student activity.

Unread Discussion Posts: The Discussions page now shows the number of unread discussion posts from anywhere in a course.

Image 1. From the Course Content page, the link to the Discussions page now has a number beside it that indicates the number of new discussion posts.

Enhanced overall appearance and usability of Knowledge Checks in Documents

Last September’s release saw the introduction of Knowledge Checks to Documents.

These are a great way to assess students’ knowledge and understanding, whilst also acting as a way to maintain engagement with their Virtual Learning Environment.

The changes include:

Instructors and students

Answer Choices: The letters of answer choices now display at the top of each answer option, rather than in the middle.
Answer Labels: Correct and incorrect answer labels have been moved from the side of an answer option to the top.
Question Text Padding: Padding on the right side of question text that extended past the answer text has been removed.
Small Screen Adjustments: On very small screens, the “Correct answer” label is now shortened to “Correct.”

Instructors

Answer Metrics: Answer metrics now appear at the top of answer text alongside the correct and incorrect answer labels.
Visual Indicators: Instead of highlighting questions with red and green to indicate the correctness of the answer, a bar now appears at the top of a question.
Result Labels: Result labels are now displayed in lowercase instead of all capital letters.
Small Screen Padding: Padding to the left and right of the Knowledge Check results has been removed for smaller screens.
Participation Count: The number of students who participated is no longer shown as a fraction. Instead, students are described as part of a number. For example, “2 of 8 students participated.”

Image 1. The instructor view of Knowledge Check results in 3900.116.

Image 2. The instructor view of Knowledge Check results in 3900.118.

Students

We made several changes to enhance the mobile and small screen experience for students.

Submit Button: The Submit button now occupies the entire space at the bottom of a question, rather than just partial space on the right.
Feedback Layout: For correct answers, the checkmark indicator, correct answer feedback, and Reset button now stack vertically instead of being on a single row. This change also applies to incorrect answer feedback and the Try again button.
Answer Selection Indicator: On all screens, the answer a student selects now has a purple line to indicate it has been chosen.

Image 3. The student view of an incorrect answer in a Knowledge Check in 3900.116.

Image 4. The student view of an incorrect answer in a Knowledge Check in 3900.118.

Student Activity Log

Blackboard added two new features to the Student Activity Log to enhance tracking and reviewing student engagement. These updates streamline the evaluation process and provide more comprehensive data for instructors.

Content Access Filter: The Student Activity Log now includes a filter for content access, recording information not available elsewhere, such as Kaltura content. This allows instructors to easily review students’ access without needing to download and manually filter CSV files, saving time and simplifying the process.
Enhanced LTI Access Filter: The LTI access filter now includes all types of LTI items, including LTI placeholders. This provides instructors with more detailed insights into how students interact with LTI elements in their courses.

Image 1. The Content Access and LTI Access filters are in the Event menu.

If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Generative AI assessment statements available in Blackboard Learning Object Repository

3rd June 20253rd June 2025 WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Generative AI, Technical Updates Leave a comment

Image of Blackboard content area with a Generative AI tool use statement added

We’re pleased to announce that Generative AI Assessment Statements are now available in the Blackboard Learning Object Repository.

This is part of the work that Library and Learning Services are undertaking in collaboration with UndebAber and Academic Registry.

The aim of this work is to make it clear to students the expectations regarding their engagement and use of Generative AI in learning and teaching.

There are three statements available in the Learning Object Repository:

No Generative AI Tool use for this assessment
Some Generative AI Tool use for this assessment
Generative AI Tool use expected for this assessment

Each of the statements gives advice and signposts students to additional support.

Colleagues can copy these statements into the relevant area of the course. As acceptable levels of use of Generative AI vary between individual assessments, it’s recommended that the statements are copied into the relevant assessment folder.

For further information see: How do I add an item from Blackboard’s Learning Object Repository to my course?

In addition to the Generative AI Assessment Statements, a Generative AI Tool Use Statement is also available. This statement has been developed by colleagues in the Department of Law and Criminology and gives students the opportunity to outline how they have used Generative AI in their assignments.

If you have any questions about using the Learning Object Repository, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Course Creation 2025-26

3rd June 20253rd June 2025 WordPress User [kaw] Blackboard, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment

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)

3rd June 20253rd June 2025 WordPress User [kaw] Accessibility, Blackboard, E-submission, Panopto, Training and Support, Turnitin, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment

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 1^st 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

15th May 202512th May 2025 WordPress User [kaw] Accessibility, Blackboard, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment

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 (15^th 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

12th May 202512th May 2025 WordPress User [kaw] Accessibility, Blackboard, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment

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

What’s new in Blackboard May 2025

1st May 20251st May 2025 WordPress User [ksg2] Blackboard, Blackboard Tests, E-submission, Monthly Update, Ultra Leave a comment

In the May update, we are particularly excited about auto-generate AI Conversations with the AI Design Assistant, Qualitative Rubrics, and Enhancements to Gradebook and Tests.

New: Auto-generate AI Conversations with the AI Design Assistant

Back in November we launched AI Conversations.

The AI Design Assistant can now auto-generate AI Conversations. AI Conversations are conversations between students and an AI persona.

Socratic Questioning: Conversations that encourage students to think critically through continuous questioning.
Role-play: Conversations that allow students to play out scenarios with the AI persona, enhancing their learning experience.

Creating personas and topics for an AI Conversation can take a lot of time. To streamline this process, the AI Design Assistant can generate three suggestions at once. You can select what the AI Design Assistant generates. You can choose to generate:

AI Conversation title
AI persona
Reflection question

These suggestions provide inspiration for an AI Conversation. Instructors can refine the AI Design Assistant’s suggestions in several ways:

Provide additional context
Adjust the complexity of the question
Select context from the course
Manually revise the question

Image 1. The auto-generate feature is now available in AI Conversations.

Image 2. There are several ways to customise AI Conversations.

We recommend that you look closely at the AI persona to check for any biases that might be there and edit these.

We would love to hear about your use cases of AI Conversations – do let us know via elearning@aber.ac.uk.

New: Qualitative Rubrics

Lecturers can now create and use no-points rubrics for Blackboard Assignments. This rubric type allows instructors to assess student work based on criteria and feedback, rather than numerical values.

Instructors can select No Points as a rubric type when creating or generating a rubric. This option is available alongside existing percentage and points-based rubrics. Instructors can also edit rubrics to switch between different rubric types, including percentage, points range, and no points.

Image 1: No Points option is available in the Rubric Type dropdown.

This feature was requested in our recent Blackboard Assignment (Safe Assign) pilot.

Enhancements to Gradebook and Tests

Accessibility Enhancements to the Gradebook

The Markable Items tab in the Gradebook now features a redesigned interface to improve accessibility and navigation for keyboard-only and screen reader users. This enhancement supports an accessible experience for instructors grading student work, reducing the time and effort required to manage student grades.

With this update, the Gradable Items tab uses a table-based layout to enhance usability:

Screen reader users can now hear both header and row announcements, allowing for smoother navigation through student submissions.
Keyboard users can now move efficiently across rows or down columns using arrow keys.

Image 1: Gradebook with Markable items tab highlighted

Text-based columns in Gradebook

New: Text-based columns in the Gradebook

Instructors can now create custom text-based columns in the Gradebook, giving them the ability to record information for an assessment, such as performance code, group membership, and tutoring information.

These columns allow instructors to record up to 32 characters. The column is not restricted to text input.

Colleague might want to use this to record dissertation supervision teams or markers.

Instructors can:

Create text-based columns via the Add workflow in both the grid view and Gradable Items page;
Name the column, control student visibility, and add a description;
Add and edit text information for a specific student using an inline eidt workflow.

Text-based columns exclude the following:

Points values (automatically set to 0 points)
Due dates
Categories
Gradebook calculations and related calculation UIs

Content in text-based columns auto-posts and supports sorting functionality within the Gradebook grid view. Instructors can also download and upload text-based columns using the Gradebook’s upload/download function.

Image 1: Instructors can select Add Text Item to create a text-based column.

Image 2: Instructors can enter column name, set visibility for students, and enter a description for the text-based column.

Students can access text-based columns and associated information in their Gradebook when the column is set to Visible to students.

New test setting: View submission one time

There is a new test result setting option, View submission one time.

When a student completes the test, they can review their answers and detailed feedback, such as which questions were answered correctly.

Image 1: Allow students to view their submission one time highlighted:

Instructors

To access this setting option, select Available after submission in the Assessment results section of the Assessment Settings, then select View submission one time from the Customise when the submission content is visible to students dropdown. This dropdown is available only if Allow students to view their submission is selected.

Note that this setting does not alter the recommended settings for online exams.

Ideas Exchange:

This section aims to keep you updated on progress of enhancements requested on the Blackboard Ideas Exchange.

We are pleased to see the Qualitative Rubric included in this month’s release as this is a feature that was requested as part of the SafeAssign pilot.