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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
We will be creating the new blank Blackboard courses for 2025-26 on Monday 2nd June 2025.
Once courses have been created, we will run a weekly feed between the Module Management System and Blackboard to reflect any updates or changes. Students won’t come onto courses until registration has been completed in September.
If you want to know more about why we create blank courses at the start of each academic year, do take a look at our blog post on Course Creation from 2024.
In the April update, we are particularly excited about a new feature called the Learning Object Repository. There is now the ability to print Blackboard Documents, and updates to the grading and feedback workflow for staff and students.
New: Learning Object Repository
The new Learning Object Repository is an institutional repository designed to centralise resources across courses and organisations.
We can upload items to the Learning Object Repository for instructors to copy into their courses. Note that items copied into courses cannot be edited.
This feature is available for Blackboard Documents at this stage but there are plans to develop options to include files in the future. We have also requested a folder level structure be developed so that we can organise content items for instructors to find.
Over the next couple of months, we will be working on developing the process for colleagues to request for items to be added to the Learning Object Repository. We aim to have this in place ready for your 2025-26 courses.
Some initial ideas from us include links to generic skills resources, generative AI policies, and optional health and safety statements.
If you have any ideas about how we might use the Learning Object Repository, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.
Content Designer: Print Document
We have seen some significant changes to the Documents feature in Blackboard over the past 6 months. Now colleagues and students can print these Documents or save to PDF so that they can review content offline.
The print function retains the Document layout. Note that for instructors, knowledge check blocks print with all the question and answer options. All other blocks print as displayed outside of editing mode.
Image 1. The new Print button for Documents is now available for students.
Grading and Feedback
There are some minor enhancements to Grading and Feedback this month.
Indicator to see if a student has reviewed their feedback
In the Gradebook, instructors now have enhanced ability to monitor student engagement with assessment feedback. An indicator on the individual student’s Overview page now displays whether a student has reviewed the feedback for a given assessment.
When a grade is posted, the indicator includes a label of Not reviewed with the existing Completed label in the Status column. When the student reviews the feedback, the status updates to Reviewed with a review timestamp.
If the new grade indicator is reset for the assessment, such as when a grade is updated or if the assessment has multiple attempts, the timestamp updates when the student reviews the feedback again. If all attempts are deleted, the Not reviewed or Reviewed label is removed.
Image 1: Instructor Gradebook view has Reviewed and Not Reviewed labels in the Status column.
To see whether a student has viewed their feedback:
Navigate to the Course
Select View everyone on your course and search for the individual student
Under the Mark screen you will see whether the student has reviewed their feedback
Enhanced grading experience for group submissions
Blackboard Assignment can manage group submissions where a student in a group submits a file, and marks and feedback can be allocated for all students.
In this month’s update the grading interface for group submissions has been updated to match that of individual submissions.
Replace Feedback column with actionable Results column in student Gradebook
The students’ Gradebook has changed to include:
A new Results column replaces the Feedback column
A View button in the new Results column replaces the Feedback column’s purple feedback icon
When a grade is posted and the new grade indicator (purple circle) is turned on, the View button displays for the assessment.
When students select the View button, the new grade indicator turns off, and students are redirected to their submission. If no submission is made, the side panels with feedback opens. The View button remains unless the instructor deletes the graded submission and all attempts.
Image 1: Previous view of the student Gradebook included Feedback column with feedback icon and new grade indicator when feedback is available for review.
Image 2: New view of the student Gradebook includes an actionable Results column, with the new grade indicator turning off after the student views the feedback.
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 Feedback Indicator included in this month’s release. This is a feature that we requested and was important in our recent SafeAssign Pilot survey.
Greek has also been added as an output language for the AI Design Assistant. This was requested by a colleague in Lifelong Learning.
If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
Over the next few months, we are making the following changes to the course roles in Blackboard.
Additional Lecturer and Additional Tutor will no longer be available
(from June 2025).
Teaching staff should be added using the most appropriate role via Module Management (which will feed directly to Blackboard within an hour). Anyone with Additional Lecturer or Additional Tutor in previous years’ courses will keep their access but the roles won’t be available for new enrolments.
Departmental Administrators and External Examiners will be added to courses with the role of Facilitator
(from June 2025).
This will give the same access as before but will help us to make sure that students don’t see these colleagues as teaching members of staff. This should cut down on the possibility of students incorrectly contacting administrators and External Examiners. Note that both External Examiners and Department Administrators will be listed as Facilitators in the Course Register. You will be able to tell which is which because External Examiners don’t have an AU email address (@aber.ac.uk).
Some surplus roles have been removed
(from March 2025).
These were mainly roles created for system test purposes. However, if anyone was added with one of the deleted roles, they have been changed to Student. Any queries about enrolments should be sent to elearning@aber.ac.uk.
Staff with any role must be added to a course via Module Management
Any staff added manually will be removed from the course on the following Monday night. Student enrolments must be managed via the Student Record. New course enrolments are added within an hour of the change, and students are removed from old course enrolments on the following Monday night.
You shouldn’t notice too many differences, but it will improve some technical aspects of staff and student access to Blackboard courses.
These changes to course roles are designed to remove all course roles that have been created in-house at AU. This is because they don’t update as part of the Blackboard monthly updates. This means that course roles may not have the permission to use new tools or an up-to-date Welsh interface. Changing to using just the in-built Blackboard roles should improve access and bilingualism, as well as be more efficient. The only exception to this is the AU-created Course Viewer role which will remain. We have voted for the Blackboard Ideas Exchange entry for a built-in Course Viewer role, and we will make use of it if it is introduced.
Following our retention schedule, the removed roles will be finally deleted in 2030 when the last of the courses using them are removed from Blackboard.
We are delighted to announce the winner of this year’s annual Exemplary Course Award.
Congratulations to Mari Dunning from Lifelong Learning for the award-winning course: XM18210: Writing Women: Feminism in Poetry and Prose.
The panel noted exemplary practice in the courses’ clear introduction and design, strong support and guidance, active and engaging participatory activities, and creative tasks. This was all achieved through an accessible and enthusiastic online learning environment.
Many congratulations to our highly commended and commended recipients:
Law & Criminology’s Dr Kathy Hampson for the course LC37120: Critical and Radical Criminology
Lifelong Learning’s Henrietta Tremlett for the course XM15710: Autobiographical Writing
Computer Science’s Dr Yasir Saleem Shaikh for the course CSM0120: Programming for Scientists
These 3 courses demonstrated some excellent practices, including: clear and accessible structures, effective use of weekly quizzes, engaging and varied activities, clear marking and feedback processes, creative assessment design, and well-designed learning objectives communicated with clarity.
The award is assessed based on a rubric across four areas:
Course Design
Interaction and Collaboration
Assessment
Learner Support
The courses were of such a high standard, and we look forward to sharing their practices with you in due course.
Many congratulations to this year’s well-deserved recipients.
We have enabled a new feature on Blackboard called Achievements.
Achievements allow instructors to link student achievement to badges to help recognise their accomplishment or proficiency.
See Blackboard Help for an overview of achievements. The help site will give you advice on the types of activities they can be used for as well as how to set them up.
To create a badge, you need to associate it with a Gradebook column – such as a test, assignment, or Turnitin. You can specify a certain level that needs to be attained to generate the badge.
Students can then view their achievements on the course or organisation from the Achievements tab. We’d welcome working with colleagues to explore how achievements could be used at a scheme or department level.
In the March update, Blackboard has changed how release conditions work with due dates and included the ability to copy banners from one course to another. Other updates include enhancements to Tests, Assignments, & Gradebook, and Discussions.
Release conditions panel: due dates now included
When instructors customise release conditions for a content item, the due date for the item is now included with the date and time fields.
Image 1: The due date of a content item now displays after the date and time fields
.
This means that due dates must be between the release conditions of Date/Time that have been applied.
Copy banners between courses
Instructors now have the option to copy banners between courses. Banners can be copied from Ultra or Original courses.
Image 1: The Copy Items page now has the option to select the course banner under Settings
The following enhancements are grouped under tests, assignment, and gradebook activities.
New student submission review page for tests
A new and enhanced student-facing submission review page for tests has been developed.
The new layout means that all feedback is clearly laid out and easy for students to identify.
Image 1: The student view of the graded test submission includes a submission timestamp, submission receipt, and feedback for individual questions.
If the test is visible and feedback has been posted, students can access the review page from:
The gradebook feedback button for the test
The small panel that displays when students access a test from the Course Content page
If a student submits multiple attempts, they can review each attempt on the submission review page. The instructor defines which attempt to grade in the test’s final grade calculation setting.
Please note that this does not affect online exams as we advise that the test is hidden from students to prevent them seeing their results.
Show/hide calculated columns in the gradebook
Instructors can now configure visibility for calculated columns from Items Management in the Gradebook by click on the associated calculation:
Pop-out rubric with Blackboard Assignment
Grading rubrics on Blackboard Assignments can pop out into a separate window as part of the assignment workflow.
Image 1: Instructors can pop out the rubric by selecting the expand icon in the rubric panel.
When the pop-out rubric is open, the ability to add Overall Feedback and grade with the rubric in the main grading interface is inactive. This prevents an instructor from editing the same information in two separate places simultaneously.
We recommend using two screens with this enhancement.
Discussions
Usability improvements for Discussions
Several improvements have been made to Discussions:
Improved visibility: Posts now have a grey background to stand out better against the page.
Full post display: Long discussion posts are now fully visible without the need for scrolling, enhancing readability.
Image 1. A long discussion post displayed in its entirety with a grey background.
We made several changes to enhance the accessibility of key features on the discussion home page.
Participation metrics: The number of posts and replies is now listed directly on the discussion home page, replacing the total response counter. This change makes important information more immediately available.
Direct edit option: The Edit button is now directly accessible from the post, saving instructors time.
Image 2. The changes made to the discussion home page included the addition of an Edit button and a count of posts and replies.
Hidden Discussions tab from student course view
The Discussions page will only be available to students if any of the below conditions are met:
Students have permission to create new discussions
The instructor has created a discussion or discussion folder on the course
Anonymous discussions: New privilege to reveal author
System administrators can now reveal the identity of the author of an anonymous discussion post or reply. If you are running an anonymous Discussion and need to de-anonymise a comment, contact elearning@aber.ac.uk outlining the course, discussion, and post, as well as the rationale for requesting it be de-anonymised.
If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
Since September 2024, Information Services (IS) have been running a pilot of Blackboard Assignment and SafeAssign to evaluate the use of SafeAssign. This is part of our commitment to making sure that we are using the best tools available. The purpose of this blogpost is to summarise the outcomes of our pilot.
18 staff volunteered to use Blackboard Assignment for submission and marking, and SafeAssign for text-matching. These staff were based in seven different departments and taught a range of UG and PG modules. All staff were offered training and provided with written guidance on using both Blackboard Assignment and SafeAssign. The training sessions provided an opportunity for staff to discuss different assessment scenarios with E-learning staff and to ascertain the suitability for Blackboard Assignment and SafeAssign. We also sent out surveys to staff on their use of e-marking and feedback tools.
A big thanks to all the staff and students involved in the pilot and all those who completed the surveys.
Outcome
AU will continue to use our current suite of e-assessment tools:
Turnitin
Blackboard Assignment
Blackboard Tests
Assessed Blackboard Tools
The pilot allowed us to reflect on the requirements for an e-assessment solution. It was clear from this that we need a combination of different solutions for different assessment requirements.
We would recommend Blackboard Assignment be used for:
Multi-part assignments
A Welsh language interface for marking and submission
Panopto submissions
One of the main purposes of the pilot was to investigate the efficacy of SafeAssign and its functionality as a text matching solution. Over the next few months, with input from stakeholders, we will decide whether we leave SafeAssign switched on and we’ll communicate this decision after Easter.
Survey Results
As well as taking part in training, staff in the pilot were asked to complete a survey before and after using Blackboard Assignment and SafeAssign. The first survey was about their use of Turnitin, and the second one was about their experiences of using Assignment and SafeAssign.
We also sent out the first survey to all staff asking for their feedback on Turnitin, and use of Turnitin tools that have no equivalent in SafeAssign. This survey was designed to help us understand whether any of the features in Turnitin are essential to the AU marking and feedback process. Overall, 71 staff took part in these first surveys.
Some of the most frequently used and important features in Turnitin are not currently available in Blackboard and SafeAssign. Two of these were ranked as regularly used:
Timed and automatic release of marks and feedback (78% of respondents)
Seeing whether students have viewed marks (60% of respondents)
Three features ranked as essential from an e-assessment solution:
Timed release of marks (66% of respondents)
Submitting on behalf of students (51% of respondents)
Revealing individual names whilst marking anonymously (51% of respondents)
The key finding from the survey was that timed release of marks is considered both important and used frequently by staff, making it an essential requirement for any AU marking and feedback system.
The second survey was sent to just the pilot group and asked them about their use of the tools in Blackboard Assignment and SafeAssign, as well as their recommendations for changing submission and marking tools. 6 staff responded to this survey. They generally found it easy to use Blackboard and SafeAssign and didn’t report many problems for either them or their students. However, they highlighted limitations in functionality, which meant that some of the pilot group didn’t end up using Blackboard and SafeAssign at all:
Issues navigating the marking interface
File size upload limit (SafeAssign will only check files less than 10Mb)
Lack of automated marks release
Anthology Ideas Exchange
Anthology Ideas Exchange allows all Blackboard institutions to request and vote on functionality enhancements to the product. As a result of training sessions and staff feedback, we made 21 suggestions via the Anthology Ideas Exchange. These were a mix of Turnitin functionality that doesn’t have an equivalent in SafeAssign, as well as changes to existing SafeAssign functionality. Some examples include:
If you have suggestions or changes for any part of Blackboard on that you would like us to add to the Ideas Exchange, please email elearning@aber.ac.uk. You may also be interested in the new section in our monthly update blog which highlights any Ideas Exchange ideas that we have added or voted for which have been added to Blackboard.
