The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit has been working to confirm the templates that will be used in new Ultra courses.

Unlike previous years, there will no longer be departmental templates. Following the decision by Academic Enhancement Committee and consultation with Associate Deans of Welsh-Medium Academic Provision, 3 templates have been created for Ultra:

• Welsh template
• English template
• Bilingual template

The template that your course will have is determined on the language of delivery for the module recorded in AStRA.

Courses with language delivery of 100 Welsh will be created with a Welsh template. Courses with NULL or 0 will have an English template. If the score is between 1 and 99, a bilingual template will be used. Unlike Blackboard Original Menus, the course templates can be edited by instructors.

The course content template is comprised of 3 folders:

• Gwybodaeth am y Modiwl / Module Information
• Asesu ac Adborth / Assessment and Feedback
• Arholwyr Allanol / External Examiners (hidden)

An image of the bilingual template is below:

The next stage in our Ultra Project is to create practice organisations for all staff. These organisations will be a space where you can look at Ultra functionality and copy course content from existing modules. We will also be making use of these practice organisations in our staff training programme that will be communicated with you over the coming months.

If you have any questions about the Ultra project, then please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

It’s been a little while since we updated you on what we’ve been up to with Blackboard Ultra since we launched Ultra Base Navigation at the beginning of January.

We’ve been working with our colleagues at Blackboard to help finalise our course template. Unlike previous years, we’ll be having one course template for all modules and all modules in 2023 will be created blank to assist with the move to Ultra.

We’ve updated our Required Minimum Presence for Blackboard which is going to the Academic Enhancement Committee for approval and feedback. We’ve also been exploring how Welsh and English templates will work together in Ultra. Once we’ve got the template and RMP agreed, we’ll start the process of creating your Ultra Practice Courses so that you can see what Ultra will look like and begin to start thinking about your teaching ready for September 2023.

Our outreach work will continue at the start of next month as we will host focus groups with Departmental Directors of Learning and Teaching and Associate Deans for Learning and Teaching to start discussing what types of training you will require and how best to help you with the Ultra course rollout.

From a technical perspective, we’ve been looking into ways in which Panopto folders will provision with Ultra courses as well as Talis Aspire reading lists.

As part of our work with Blackboard, they have provided us a with a course readiness report which helps us to identify how prepared we currently are for Ultra courses. We’ve started exploring Wiki and Blog equivalences for those of you who currently use these tools in teaching, as well as Blackboard Test question equivalences for those questions that aren’t available in Ultra.

We will be updating our webpages with additional support and guidance materials as we go. If you have got any questions about our move to Ultra Courses then you are welcome to contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

It’s been about a week since we moved to Blackboard UBN. Here are some answers to some of the questions that staff and students have asked us. You may find your question answered here (or in our How do I get started with Ultra Base Navigation FAQ). If not, you can email us.

1. Where is my departmental information site / training module? If you are looking for a Blackboard site that isn’t linked to a taught AU module, have a look on the Organisations page. You’ll probably find the course you are looking for here.
2. How are the courses organized on the Course page? They are listed by academic year, and then alphabetically by module title. You may find it easier to find your courses by using one of the following:
a. Search box – you can search by module name or module code.
b. Favourite – use the favourite (star) icon to pin the courses you use regularly at the top of your list.
c. Filter. This is particularly useful for staff who are Instructors on some modules and have other roles in other modules. Choosing Course I teach will show you all your Instructor courses.
d. Change the academic year. You can limit your view to just the current academic year by changing Courses to Cyrsiau 2022-23 Courses.
3. My course menu was a different colour / design – can I change it back? No, this is no longer available. Once we move to Ultra courses there will be no course menu.
4. How do I change the picture displayed? Have a look at the Blackboard guidance (follow from bullet point 3).
5. Why am I getting an error message when I go to Blackboard? Make sure that you go directly to https://blackboard.aber.ac.uk. Don’t use a link or bookmark.
6. The Activity Stream says I have overdue assignments? In some courses there may be submission points for extensions, groups etc that aren’t relevant to you. These will show in the Activity Search. If you aren’t sure if a submission is for you, go back into the course and check you have no assignment submissions outstanding.
7. My course or Organisation says Private on it; what does this mean? It means that the course isn’t available to students. If you no longer need this course, please let us know and we can remove the course.

Ultra Base Navigation is now enabled on Blackboard. 

Next time you log onto Blackboard, you will be greeted with a new interface. 

Please consult our FAQ on how to use Ultra Base Navigation. 

Whilst the look and feel of Blackboard has changed, course functionality and content remain the same. 

If you have bookmarked or created links to pages within Blackboard these might need updating. Any links directly to the address https://blackboard.aber.ac.uk/ will still work.    

The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit will now start work preparing for Ultra Courses, ready for Semester 1, 2023. 

Our Ultra webpages and FAQs will be updated as the project progresses.   If you have any questions, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).  

On 3 November, our client support team at Blackboard met with the Ultra Project Board. The board is made up of Information Services members responsible for the move to Blackboard Ultra and academic colleagues.

The meeting’s purpose was to outline the project’s scope, mission, vision, and goals.

Part of the activity involved a Mural board.

On this Mural board we were asked to give an overview of the institutional, departmental, and individual goals we wanted to achieve.

Institutional Goals

We’re looking to maintain our excellent student experience, and making sure that the move is sustainable for all staff. From a pedagogical perspective, we want active learning and student as partners to be an ethos for the project, whilst also focusing on ways that blended distance learning and online assessment can be developed. We want the VLE to be as self-service for our users as much as possible, whilst complying with the accessibility legislation. We want data to flow seamlessly between other systems, and give greater transparency to mark processing. Blackboard Ultra needs to have a clear identity and brand easily identifiable with Aberystwyth. The environment needs to be fully bilingual, easy to navigate, and reviews save users time where possible. Consistency across modules in terms of navigation remains a large driver, with a standardised baseline of best practice and an institutional template. There needs to be opportunities for staff to innovate, with examples of excellent learning and teaching activities. We need to make the most out of our investment and ensure the VLE is GDPR compliant.

Read More

Over the next year you’ll see some changes in Blackboard. This is because we are starting the move to Blackboard Ultra.

The first phase of this move will be to Ultra Base Navigation (UBN) – this will change the Blackboard homepage.

UBN has no impact on individual Blackboard course sites. These will remain unchanged until the next phase of moving to Blackboard Ultra Courses (planned for Summer 2023).

Moving to UBN gives us a head start on training and familiarisation with Blackboard Ultra. The date for moving to UBN will be announced very soon.

You can find out more about Blackboard Ultra via the LTEU blog.

We will use the Weekly Email to Staff and Students, as well as emails to departmental contacts to keep you updated on Ultra news.