Now that the 2024-25 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.
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 2nd year and 3rd year course but your students on the different courses have separate assignments. You can use groups – 1 for the 2nd year students and one for 3rd 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.
Instructors can now print assessments. Printing provides a convenient solution for a variety of use cases:
Accommodating students with specific needs or limited technology access
Providing a printed assessment for testing in designated locations
Backup and record keeping
Conducting offline assessment
Documentation and compliance
Maintaining security and integrity
The print option is available in Forms, Tests, and Assignments with questions. Printing also provides the option to save as PDF.
To print an assessment, from Content and Settings, select Print.
Note: Blackboard plan to support printing answer keys and question pools in upcoming releases.
Image below: Print option from a test
Image below: Select desired print options
Filter out graded responses when grading by question
The Needs Grading filter now filters out graded student responses by default. Filtering this way helps instructors to focus on any remaining ungraded responses for a given question. It also provides instructors with an improved view of their outstanding grading workload. If instructors want to include graded responses, they can select Show graded responses. This selection preference is now stored per course and it persists across assessments in each course.
Image below: Grading by question option with the grading status of Needs Grading filter selected
Image below: Grading by question view with the grading status filter of Needs Grading and Show graded responses options selected
Post immediately when creating announcements
Instructors can now post announcements as part of the drafting and editing processes. This makes the process of creating and posting announcements simpler.
Instructors can still post from the announcements page.
Image below: When creating or editing an announcement, there is now an option to post
Blackboard Learn Ultra Course Creation for 2024-25 will take place on Monday 3 June this year. After this date instructors will be able to add content and customise their new courses.
Courses will contain the default template which includes leaning modules for Module Information, Assessment and Feedback and External Examiners. Content from previous years will not be copied over automatically.
We have made some improvements to the default course template based upon staff and student feedback and also enabled the AI Design Assistant.
Instructors can access their 2024-25 courses by using the Terms filter dropdown menu on the Courses page and selecting Cyrsiau 2024-25 Courses. Courses under 2024-25 will move to the default Courses page on 1 September.
Learning Modules
The Module Information, Assessment and Feedback and External Examiners areas remain, but are now learning modules rather than folders. Learning modules have all the functionality of folders in terms of how content is added and accessed but are more visually appealing and are easier to navigate, especially from a student’s perspective.
Learning modules each have a default image, but we encourage instructors to choose a more relevant and meaningful image for their learning modules. Adding an image to a learning module provides a visual identity to a course and helps students locate the learning module. Instructions on how to customise learning modules appearance can be found in this section of the Blackboard help page for Learning Modules.
Content can be added to learning modules in the same way as folders; by expanding them and clicking the plus symbol. Create, Copy Content and Upload options remain unchanged.
All the usual hidden/visible and release conditions settings are also available.
Instructors can continue to use folders if they wish, or they may wish to create additional learning modules and copy existing content into them from folders. The options to add additional learning modules and folders can be found by clicking the plus symbol and Create.
Please note that Learning Modules can only be added to the landing page of Content and not within folders.
The class register is now hidden from students. They can still see staff on the course under Course Staff, but they can no longer see the other students of the course. You are welcome to make the Class Register visible again if you like.
Progress Tracking
Progress tracking is now enabled by default for students. Progress tracking gives students an easy wat to keep track of what they have done in the course.
Additionally, on the Student Overview page Instructors can access the Progress tab for each Student which tracks progress in a course. You can see completed and uncompleted tasks for each Student. For more information see the Blackboard help page on Progress Tracking.
AI Design Assistant
Context and Guidance Principles
Anthology, the vendor of Blackboard Learn, have added AI tools to Blackboard as part of their ‘AI Design Assistant’. Anthology’s approach is to empower staff to use AI to “promote authentic assessment, engaging learning experiences and academic integrity, while also providing efficiency for educators and improved outcomes for students as a result.”
Reliability: Taking measures to ensure the output of AI systems is valid and reliable.
Humans in Control: Ensuring humans ultimately make decisions that have legal or otherwise significant impact.
Transparency and Explainability: Explaining to users when AI systems are used, how the AI systems work, and help users interpret and appropriately use the output of the AI systems.
Privacy, Security and Safety: AI systems should be secure, safe, and privacy friendly.
Value alignment: AI systems should be aligned to human values, in particular those of our clients and users.
Accountability: Ensuring there is clear accountability regarding the trustworthy use of AI systems within Anthology as well as between Anthology, its clients, and its providers of AI systems.
If Instructors opt to make use of the AI Design Assistant, we recommend:
1. Generating and checking content
AI-generated content is never automatically added to a course. It will not be released to students without instructors making that decision. Instructors will always need to approve content before it is made available to students.
Instructors can always review and change AI-generated content. For example, if an instructor generates Test questions, it is likely some will not be useful. The instructor should choose what they would like to use and edit them as needed. It is important for instructors to ensure everything generated by AI is checked before it is added to a course and made available to students.
2. Consider adding a Use of Artificial Intelligence statement to a course
In line with University artificial intelligence guidance, if content is substantially generated using an AI tool, this should be declared clearly to the students. A statement on the use of artificial intelligence in a Blackboard Learn course can be added in the Module Information learning module area using the Document feature.
AI Design Assistant Tools
The following tools are available to Instructors on courses.
Generate Learning Modules
This feature allows a course structure to be created using learning modules based on the name of the course and any additional information that has been provided. Learning modules are akin to folders.
This feature generates test questions and question banks based on the content that is included in the course. Instructors can specify the level and the types of questions that are asked. The complexity and question type can be adjusted. For further information see the section on test question generation on the AI Design Assistant help page.
Generate Keywords for Unsplash
Unsplash is a copyright free image library accessible from within Blackboard. The AI tool will generate relevant keywords based upon the course name and content with which to search Unsplash.
The assignment generator will create prompts for assignments, using Bloom’s taxonomy to include different levels of complexity. This complexity can be adjusted. This only applies to the inbuilt Blackboard assignment tool and not Turnitin. For further information see the section on assignment prompt generation on the AI Design Assistant Help Page.
Note: The Blackboard AI Design Assistant does have a Rubric generator and an AI image Generator which we have not enabled.
Please find below some of the latest enhancements from the May update of Blackboard Learn Ultra that the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit would like to highlight to Instructors.
Supporting multiple performance criteria in release conditions
Release conditions determine when students can view course content. Release conditions are on the content’s visibility setting on the course content page. Currently, you can set:
Which course members or groups have access;
When the course content is accessible, visible, and hidden;
When student performance is necessary for completing an assignment or scoring.
Instructors can now set more than one performance criteria per content item.
Image below: Release condition panel with additional performance criteria selected.
Add question feedback when grading a test by question
When grading by student or by question, Instructors can now provide contextual feedback and can add this feedback to all question types. Question level feedback promotes deeper understanding and personal growth among students while also enhancing both overall submission feedback and automated feedback for auto-graded questions.
Image below: Instructor view of adding per-question feedback when grading by question.
Image below: Instructor view of question with saved feedback.
After scores are posted, students can access their feedback in the Gradebook. Students can access both overall feedback and question-specific feedback.
Image below: Student view of feedback added to an essay question.
Improved Gradebook navigation
To create a more intuitive navigation, Blackboard have replaced the grid and list view buttons with text links. The options are now:
Gradable Items
Grades (grid view)
Students
The Gradebook will remember the last view you used in each course.
Image below: Instructor view of the new gradebook navigation menu
Proportionally and Equally weighted column calculations
Instructors have diverse grade calculation needs. Some instructors use weighted calculations to help with aggregating calculations like midterm or final grades.
Now instructors can assign equal weights to items in the same categories. The chosen calculation method, whether proportional or equal, applies to all categories. In the past, weighted items in the same category had proportional weights. These weighted items were based on the possible points of each item.
To better understand student performance, some instructors use drop rules to remove outliers. Because it’s important to know the weighting method when managing these settings, Blackboard now displays the instructor’s chosen weighting option in the calculation rules panel.
Image below: Instructor view of the new Proportionally weighted calculation options.
Image below: Instructor view of the new proportional weighted calculation option. Instructors can see what percentage each item in the category contributes to the overall category weighting.
Image below: Instructor view of the equally weighted calculation option; Instructors are informed of the equal percentage that items count towards the overall category weighting.
Image below. Instructor view of the updated Edit calculation rule panel confirming the selected category weighting option.
The April update to Blackboard Learn Ultra includes a much-requested feature; Anonymous posts for discussions. Additionally, there are improvements to feedback and Gradebook calculations.
Anonymous posts for Discussions
Discussions play a pivotal role in nurturing peer-to-peer interaction and critical thinking. Students need to feel free to express their ideas and opinions without fear of judgement. To support this, Blackboard have added an option for instructors to allow anonymous posts in ungraded discussions. This feature provides flexibility for instructors. They can toggle anonymity on or off as the discussion progresses. Any existing anonymous posts keep their anonymity.
Image below: Setting to turn on anonymous posts
Note: When intending to post anonymously a student must tick Post anonymously.
Image below: A student making an anonymous post with Post anonymously ticked (highlighted)
Image below: An anonymous post in a discussion
Add question feedback when grading by student
Instructors can now provide contextual feedback by student on all question types. Question level feedback promotes deeper understanding and personal growth among students. Question level feedback complements the existing capabilities of overall submission feedback and automated feedback for auto-graded questions.
Note: Blackboard are targeting the May release for per-question feedback when grading tests by questions rather than by student.
Image below: Instructor view of adding per question feedback
Image below: Instructor view of question with saved feedback
Once students have submitted their tests and scores are posted, students can access the feedback. Students can access both overall feedback and question-specific feedback.
Image below: Student view of feedback added to an essay question
Student feedback remains visible to students regardless of release condition settings
Instructors may want to control access to course content using release conditions. This is helpful for providing custom learning paths through course content. The release conditions include an option to show or hide content to/from students before they meet release conditions. Blackboard have modified how these settings impact the students’ view of feedback from instructors. Now instructors can set release conditions without any impact to feedback to students.
In the past, when an instructor selected the option to hide content, students could view associated grades but not the feedback. Blackboard have corrected this to ensure that students can always review feedback.
Image below: Instructor view of release conditions settings with date/time release condition set in combination with Hide state in “When will content appear?”
Image below: Student gradebook view with display of student’s feedback and grade regardless of the release condition setting in the above image.
Persistent navigation for Learning Modules
To improve students’ navigation in a learning module, Blackboard have updated the navigation bar. Now the navigation bar is sticky and remains visible as students vertically scroll through content. Students no longer need to scroll back up to the top of content to access the navigation tools.
Image below: The navigation bar is always visible
Calculations changed from using BigDecimal to BigFraction
Instructors need a gradebook that supports diverse grading scenarios. Blackboard are changing the software library used to perform calculations in calculated columns and the overall course grade.
Example: A course contains 3 assignments worth 22 points each. The student scores 13/22 on the first assignment, 14/22 on the second assignment, and 15/22 on the third assignment. An instructor creates a calculated column to calculate the average of these assignments.
Using the new software library, BigFraction, the average will calculate as 14/22.
With the former software library, BigDecimal, the average would incorrectly calculate to 13.99/22. The new software library ensures calculations compute as expected.
Lauren Harvey and Caroline Whitby, from the Department of Law and Criminology, have been awarded the Exemplary Course Award for the module LC31520: Dispute Resolution in Contract and Tort
In addition to the winner, the following module achieved Highly Commended:
Panna Karlinger from the School of Education for the module ED20820: Making Sense of the Curriculum
The aim of the Exemplary Course Award, now in its ninth year, is to recognise the very best learning and teaching practices. It gives staff members the opportunity to share their work with colleagues, enhance their current modules in Blackboard, and receive feedback on to improve.
Modules are assessed across 4 areas: course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment, and learner support. The self-assessed nature of the award gives staff the opportunity to reflect on their course and enhance aspects of their module before a panel assesses each application against the rubric.
The panel and the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit would like to thank all of the applicants for the time and effort that they have put into their applications and modules this year.
We’re looking forward to receiving more applications next year and many congratulations to the recipients of this year’s award.
This month Blackboard brings us the ability to see Gradebook item statistics, being able to set assessments with no due date and some tweaks to message notifications.
Gradebook item statistics
Item statistics give insight to course members’ overall performance on a graded content. Now, instructors can select a column in the gradebook to access summary statistics for any graded item. The statistics page displays key metrics such as:
Minimum and maximum value
Range
Average
Median
Standard deviation
Variance
The number of submissions requiring grading and the distribution of grades also displays.
Image below: Access to item statistics from the Grid view.
Image below: Access to item statistics from the Gradeable Items view.
Image below: Item Statistics page.
No Due Date assessment option
Due dates are an important aspect of the teaching and learning process. In some scenarios, such as self-paced learning, an instructor may not want to apply a due date. To make the option for not having a due date more evident, we’ve added a “No due date” option for Tests and Assignments.
Image below: Test Settings panel showing the new “No due date” option.
We also updated the default due date and time to tomorrow’s date at 11:59 pm.
Image below: Test Settings panel displaying the new default due date and time.
There may be cases when the “No due date” selection conflicts with the Assessment Results settings. When this occurs, the instructor is prompted to review the settings.
Image below: A warning banner appears when the “No due date” selection conflicts with Assessment Results settings.
Instructors can navigate to the Assessment Results section in the Settings via the link in the banner.
Image below: Assessment results timing options when there is no due date.
Please note that for summative and high stakes assessment, we still advise having a due date and time. To discuss your requirements for test settings, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
Announcement indicators and mark announcements as read/unread
Announcements are an important communications channel within a course. It is important to help create awareness of new announcements and read/unread controls.
Now, there is a number indicator next to the announcement tab in the course. The indicator signals the number of unread announcements available.
Additionally, students can now mark announcements as read or unread. On the New Course Announcement pop-up, users have the option to mark the read state. Students can also mark announcements as read or unread from the Announcement page.
Image below: Number of unread Announcements next to the Announcement tab
Image below: Announcements pop-up with the option to mark as read/unread
Image below: Announcements page with the option to mark as read/unread.
Image below: Matching announcement and messages indicators for consistency
Reminder: Access the Course Activity Report and message students from within it.
The Course Activity report helps you understand how well your students are performing and how much they are interacting with your course. The Course Activity Report enables Instructors to:
Message students who are falling behind and encourage them to increase their course activity
Identify struggling students based on their overall grade, missed due dates, the number of hours they spend in your course, and the number of days since their last access
Congratulate students performing well in your course and ask them to be mentors
Customize your course alerts to identify struggling students when their overall grade drops below a specific value, they’ve missed due dates, or they haven’t accessed the course for a certain number of days
Download the table view to a CSV (comma-separated values) file to analyse the data with other tools
Download the scatter plot as a PDF or image to share information with other instructors or mentors of the course
To access the Course Activity Report select Course Activity in your course’s Analytics tab.
Image below: Accessing the Course Activity Report from the Analytics tab
Sending Messages
Instructors can select students and send them messages from Course Activity by selecting the Send message button. When you send a message to multiple students, each student will receive an individual message and will not know which other students were included.
Image below: A student selected to be contacted and the Send message button highlighted
It is possible to grade tests either by student or by question —making it easy to compare answers across the course and ensure fairness and consistency in grading. Marking by student is currently limited to non-anonymous submissions. Marking anonymous submissions will be included in a future update
The recent Academic Enhancement Committee approved some changes to the annual course creation process:
Courses will be created blank with the University approved template
Course creation will always take place on the first Monday in June (this will be Monday 3rd June this year).
Some staff have asked for more information about why courses will be created blank. This blog post is designed to help explain the reasons for this decision.
Previous years’ course copy process was done using Building Blocks. Building Blocks are no longer supported by Blackboard and can’t be used (you may remember that this was one of the reasons for moving to Ultra). The Blackboard course copy tool hasn’t been updated, so we don’t have a technical way of copying courses.
The course copy workflow is easier in Ultra than it was in Original. And as we will be copying from Ultra to Ultra courses, you’ll be able to copy larger blocks of content.
Blank courses means that template updates and additional settings can be applied to courses. Blackboard has changed a lot since last summer, and there are new settings that will be useful for next year’s courses. To use these staff would need to add them to each courses manually.
Previous course copies included gradebook columns. After several years this started to get confusing for staff and made the gradebook difficult to navigate. Copying over the links for Turnitin, Panopto and Talis also has the potential for confusion – it isn’t easy to tell whether these links have been updated or not, and staff would need to check each one manually.
Some courses won’t have been created in Ultra (for example courses that only run every two years). These need to be created blank as Ultra courses anyway.
Blank course creation will also help to avoid out-of-date content being copied over as standard.
Information about how to copy content can be found on the Blackboard help site. Guidance and support will be available over the summer, but if you have any questions, please contact us on elearning@aber.ac.uk.
As part of the Blackboard Learn Ultra project, we are now turning our attention to Organisations ready for September 2024.
Organisations are Blackboard sites for non-academic purposes. They have the same functionality as a Blackboard Course and can be used to provide information, online training, and access to materials. Unlike Courses, Organisations are created with no template. Organisations have the same features and functionality as Courses.
There are 3 types of Organisations:
Departmental Organisations
Every department has got 3 departmental Organisations: 1 for Undergraduate students, 1 for Postgraduate students, and 1 for Departmental staff. These are automatically created.
Bespoke and Training Organisations
These are Organisations that have been requested by individuals. They can be created with automatic feeds, such as types of students, students on specific study schemes, or staff members in a particular department. Some of these Organisations hold training packages that we are asked to undertake.
Practice Organisations
These are individual for each staff member and have no students enrolled on them. As part of the move to Ultra, we created all staff their own Ultra practice Organisation.
As we move to Blackboard Learn Ultra for Organisations, we have worked on a new Organisation policy outlining the types of activities they can be used for as well as their retention period. This new policy was approved by Academic Enhancement Committee on 7 February and can be viewed on our webpages.
Departmental Organisations
New Ultra Departmental Organisations will be created shortly but will not be made available to students until September 2024.
All departments will have a separate Organisation for UG, PG, and Staff in their department.
These are in the form:
DEPT-[departmental letter]-UG (e.g. DEPT-N-UG)
New students and staff members will automatically feed onto the Organisation once they have activated their account. Once these Organisations are available, we will contact Departmental Directors of Learning and Teaching, Faculty Registrars, and Heads of Department to help facilitate the move to Ultra Organisations.
Bespoke and Training Organisations
These are Organisations that have been requested individually for a specific purpose. We have never removed or deleted Organisations before (unless this has been requested).
As part of this work, we will:
Remove access to all bespoke Organisations that have not been accessed in 3 years with a view to retire the Organisation.
Contact those who still have responsibility for an existing Organisation to see if they are required and facilitate the move to Ultra for these Organisations.
Practice Organisations
Staff members currently have access to two practice Organisations – one in Original and one in Ultra.
We will be retiring the Original Organisations in September 2024. Colleagues need to copy any materials they want to retain onto the Ultra version of the Organisation.
If you have any questions about Organisations, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is excited to share with you details of the new Forms and the new Linkert question type which were introduced in the February update.
Forms
Instructors frequently need to survey their class to gauge student interests or opinions on a range of topics from field excursions to course feedback. Now, instructors can create a Form for these use cases.
The following items are supported in a Form:
Essay question
Likert question
Multiple choice question
True/false question
Text
Local file
File from cloud storage
Page break
By default, a Form is not graded. Questions in a form don’t have correct or incorrect answers. Forms are currently not anonymous, this functionality will be included in a future update.
Image below: An example ungraded Form used for a clinical teaching placement
Some instructors may choose to grade a Form to encourage participation. When this is the case, instructors must manually enter a grade for each submission.
Instructors may view Form submissions by student or by question in the new grading view.
Image below: Ungraded Form submissions by question
Image below: Graded Form submission by student
Instructors may download the Form results from the Gradebook and Submissions page as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file.
Image below: Download Form results from Gradable Items view
Image below: Download Form results for Submissions page
In the Gradebook grid view, student submissions for an ungraded Form appear as “Submitted.” Graded Forms display the manually entered grade or appropriate grading status.
Likert question type
Likert questions help provide a quantitative measure of opinions and attitudes. The responses often range from strongly disagree tostrongly agree. This question type is now available in the Form assessment type.
Image below: Set up a Likert question
The scale range defaults to three options, with suggested labelling for options one and three as strongly disagreeandstrongly agree. Instructors may select a range of three, five, or seven options and label the poles as desired. Instructors may also choose to include a “not applicable” option.
Image below. Example Likert question in an end of unit survey
Note: A Likert question in a survey created in the Learn Original course view converts/copies to a Form in the Learn Ultra course view. The scale range default is three.
