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.
Please find below some of the latest enhancements from the January update of Blackboard Learn Ultra that the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit would like to highlight to Instructors.
Batch Edit: Change to specific date and/or time.
Instructors often want to change the date and time for several selected items in their course at the same time. The problem with making that change is that it would be very tedious if you had to do one item at a time.
Using Batch Edit, instructors can now override the existing date and/or time for selected items. The same feature also works on show on and hide after dates and times.
Note: Batch edit of dates/time only works with items that have pre-existing date and time values. Items without a date or time value will not have one applied.
Image below: Accessing Batch Edit from Course Content.
Image below: Change to a specific date and/or time option for Batch Edit.
Total and Weighted Column Calculations
Instructors need a gradebook that supports diverse grading scenarios. The gradebook supports the creation of calculated columns and an overall course grade. We are expanding gradebook functionality to also support total and weighted calculated columns. These types of calculations are helpful for specific events or periods, such as midterms or finals.
Total calculated columns can be point-based or weighted calculations. Like setting up the Overall Grade, instructors may link/unlink items in a category in the calculation. They may also choose to exclude categories from the calculation. For an included category, instructors may edit the calculation rule. The calculation rule allows instructors to drop scores or to include only the lowest or highest score in the category.
Instructors may wish to define a total calculated column for their own use. In this case, they can choose to hide from students. If desired, instructors can include a total calculated column in the overall grade calculation.
Image below: Add a Total Calculation column from the Grid view.
Image below. Add a Total Calculation column from Gradable Items view.
Image below: Editing a Weighted Total Calculation Column.
Image below: Define rules for the Weighted Total Calculation column.
Attempt logs for enhanced assessment integrity for Blackboard Tests and Assignments.
The Attempt Logs prove to be an indispensable tool for validating issues students may encounter during an assessment. The logs also help instructors identify signs of academic dishonesty.
Note: Attempt logs can be used with Blackboard Tests and Assignments, not with Turnitin.
For Tests, the logs provide the following:
Detailed information, including the date and time of the start and answers to each question.
Question-specific details, such as question number, a preview of the question, and estimated time spent on each question.
Submission receipt number, final grade, and attempt grade.
Easy toggling between all in-progress and submitted attempts for comprehensive assessment tracking.
Image below: Test attempt log with multiple attempts made by the student.
For Assignments, the logs offer:
Start and submission date and time.
Submission receipt number.
Seamless toggling between different attempts for a holistic view.
Image below: Assignment attempt log.
Instructors can access the Attempt Logs from two primary areas:
Context Menu on Submission Page – exclusive to individual assessments.
Grades Tab under Student Overview Page – available for both group and individual assessments.
Image below: Access from the Submission tab.
Image below: Access from the Grades tab from the student overview.
For anonymous assessments, the report becomes active after grades are posted, and the anonymity is lifted. This ensures that the Attempt Logs report is a robust tool even in scenarios where student identities are initially concealed.
Grade visible to students in Gradebook when item is hidden by release conditions.
Release conditions provide options for custom learning paths through course content. When instructors set release conditions, content is unavailable until students meet those conditions. An option to ‘Hide’ selected content from students is available. This setting also hides the grade from the student view of the gradebook.
Now, instructors can set release conditions without concern of hiding grades. Regardless of the setting in “When will content appear?”, students can see the grade. All other functionality of release conditions is unchanged.
Image below: 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 grade regardless of the release condition setting in the image above.
Note: It is still possible for Instructors to hide grades and Gradebook columns should this be necessary for exam boards or moderation purposes. Once the associated Test or Assessment is complete; Click on the column in the Gradebook, select Edit, then adjust the Release Conditions to Hidden from Students.
Image below: Changing Release Conditions to Hidden from Students.
Unused files management tool.
To help instructors understand the usage of files in their course and reduce their digital footprint Blackboard have created the Unused Files tool. This tool helps instructors find and delete course files that are not in use. Instructors can locate the Unused Files tool in the three-dot menu on the Course Content page.
Image below: Unused Files tool.
There are two views available; unused files (default view0 or all files. The file name, upload date, and file size display along with an option to download a copy of the local file. Instructors can easily delete unused files.
Have you ever wondered what the dials next to your content mean in Blackboard?
Have you seen the Ally Accessibility Report in your Blackboard course but weren’t sure what to do with it?
Do you want to make your Blackboard content more accessible, but aren’t sure where to start?
If the answer to any of these questions is Yes, then our new Introduction to Ally course is one for you.
And if you are wondering what Ally even is, then this course is definitely one for you.
The E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Blackboard Ally course (26 February) will take you through the basics of using Ally to check and fix accessibility issues in documents you have uploaded to Blackboard. Ally was introduced back in September (view the blog post introducing Ally) and is available in all 2023-24 Blackboard courses.
If you are interested in creating accessible documents using tools in Microsoft Office packages like Word and PowerPoint, we also have a Creating Accessible Learning Materials session running on 7th March.
For colleagues who might be new to the University, colleagues who are returning from research leave and other periods of absence, and those who want a refresher, we are running our E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Blackboard Learn Ultra in January.
We’ve got our Blackboard Learn Ultra guide for staff on our webpages as well as a playlist to talk you through setting up your Blackboard Learn Ultra Module.
This month there are three improvements in Blackboard Learn Ultra that the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit would like to highlight for Instructors.
Additional image insertion options
Images enhance comprehension of and engagement with course content. Instructors and students want to use high-quality images in content and submissions. To help with this, a new image button has been added in the content editor in the following places:
Announcements
Assessment Questions
Student answers on questions (local file upload only)
Submission feedback (standard view)
Journal entries and comments
Image below: Instructor view – image button on content editor for Announcements.
Flexible grading – sorting control on students tab
Grading large numbers of submissions without a way to organize them can be tedious. Now, instructors can apply various sorting options in flexible grading:
Submission date (oldest – newest) of latest attempt
Submission date (newest – oldest) of latest attempt
Last Name (A – Z)
Last Name (Z – A)
First Name (A – Z)
First Name (Z-A)
Student ID (ascending)
Student ID (descending)
The grading interface stores the most recently used sorting option. If an instructor stops grading an assessment and resumes grading later, the last sorting option is applied.
Also, if sorting the submissions by last name or grading status, the chosen sorting option carries over into the grading interface.
Image below: Sorting options as shown from Students tab in flexible grading.
Group assessment due date exceptions
Instructors may want to set different due dates for each group working on a group assessment.
In the past, there was no way to assign varying due dates for each group working on a group assessment. Now, instructors can assign a unique due date to each group using the exceptions workflow.
On the group assessment Submissions page, the instructor may add or edit exceptions for a group.
Image below: Instructor view – add or edit exceptions option on the group assessment Submissions page.
The Exceptions panel displays relevant information such as the assignment name and selected group name. This helps ensure the accuracy of an exception. Instructors can select a due date for the group using the date and time picker.
Image below: Instructor view – exceptions panel.
Image below: Instructor view – group assessment Submissions page displays the exceptions indicator for Project Group 1.
![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)
