We have experienced an issue with the Panopto Recorder that has affected some people from having folders to record into.
We believe that we now have a solution to this issue, which we have tested in a number of rooms.
We are now rolling out this fix to all teaching room machines.
User profiles will now be refreshed every 5 days (rather than 10 days). The refresh will mean any local copies of materials copied to the desktop will be removed after 5 days.
Apologies for the inconvenience to those who have experienced this issue.
We are pleased to announce that Panopto Automatic Speech Recognition Captioning was approved at the recent Quality and Standards Committee.
This means that for the academic year 2025-26 and beyond, automatic captions will be applied to your Panopto recordings.
Viewers see the captions appearing at the bottom of the screen or can download a transcript:
Whilst captions will appear automatically next academic year, colleagues can already apply automatic captions to all the recordings in a Panopto folder. Consult Panopto’s guidance on how to do this.
We have been working to enable automatic captions for several years, so we welcome this development. As part of this work, we have taken mitigating steps to address some of the challenges and concerns, including:
Inaccuracies of automatic captions
Clear expectations for staff and students
Managing multi-language courses
Automatic Captions are applied to all recordings on the site once we enable this feature. The default language that will be applied to module folders is English. Modules delivered 100% through the medium of Welsh will have their folder settings manually updated to generate Automatic Captions in Welsh.
We have also undertaken an Equality Impact Assessment to address some of the challenges posed by Automatic Captioning which is available by request (elearning@aber.ac.uk).
To facilitate the enabling of automatic captioning, the Lecture Capture policy has been updated. We review all of our policies (Lecture Capture, Blackboard Required Minimum Presence, and E-submission) annually. We will release further communications regarding these updates in due course.
We will now start work on updating Panopto to enable Automatic Speech Recognition captioning for 2025-26.
As teaching starts, you may find this information about Panopto useful. These are the answers to our most frequently asked questions about Panopto over the last few weeks.
Linking to All Panopto Recordings
You can create a link to the Panopto folder in your Blackboard course. This means that students will be able to see the recordings for the course all in one place.
Finding your Panopto folder
Panopto folders for all this year’s modules are in the 2024-25 folder.
To find the Panopto folder you want to record into:
Click the dropdown button on the right-hand side of the Folder box.
Click the dropdown arrow to the left of the academic year folder to expand it.
Select the Panopto folder you want to record into.
You can also search for the Panopto folder you want to record into:
In the Folder box start typing the module code or name of the Panopto folder you want to Record into
Select the folder you want to record into.
What to do if you can’t see your Panopto folder
In a small number of courses, the Panopto folder wasn’t created over the summer. If you can’t find your Panopto folder using the steps above, you can create a folder from Blackboard:
Login to Blackboard and find your course
Click on Books and Tools > View course and institution tools
Click on Holl Fideo Panopto / All Panopto Videos
You should then be able to find the Panopto folder to make a recording.
In accordance with the Lecture Capture Policy all Panopto recordings are retained for 5 years before they are deleted. This will not change. However, to cut down considerably on storage costs, the University needs to make use of the Archive function of Panopto.
From 1st November 2024, all Panopto recordings that have not been viewed in 13 months will be moved to the Panopto Archive, from where they can be restored should they be needed.
Restoring an archived recording:
As a member of staff or as a student, you can restore an archived recording if you need to access it for any reason, as long as you had permission to access the recording before it was archived. Please be aware that it can take up to 48 hours for a recording to be restored. When the recording has been restored, the original creator of the recording will be notified that it is available as will the person requesting the restoration (if different).
How Retention Rules will change in our Panopto storage environment:
Currently:
Every month; Recordings that have not been viewed in 5 years are deleted.
What will change:
At the start of every month; Recordings that have not been viewed for over 13 months will be moved to the Archive.
Also at the start of every month; Recordings that have not been viewed in 5 years will be deleted.
A warm welcome to new students joining us and those who are returning to study at Aberystwyth University.
In this blogpost, we will outline the changes that have been made to your digital learning environment, Blackboard, ready for the start of the academic year 2024-25.
If you need help using Blackboard, see our Student Guide which contains all kinds of useful information.
We’ve also got FAQs available for the other tools that we support, including Turnitin for e-submission and Panoptofor lecture capture.
Updated Template
All courses have been created this year using a slightly different template.
Module Information and Assessment and Feedback have been replaced with Learning Modules. Learning Modules are a more visual way to organise and arrange content.
In Module Information you can expect to find items relating to the administration of the course.
In Assessment and Feedback you can expect to find your submission points, assignment briefs, and marking criteria.
You might find that your lecturers have also used Learning Modules for your Learning Materials.
Progress Tracker
Another change is that Progress Tracker has been turned on by default on all content on your course. This allows you to track your progress through the course by marking tasks as complete. Blackboard’s guidance provides further information.
Blackboard Ally
A reminder that we have Blackboard Ally enabled on all your courses. Blackboard Ally allows you to download content into different formats. This includes .mp3 files, immersive readers, and electronic Braille. For help, look at Ally guidance.
Blackboard Assignment
We will be running a series of pilots with some courses across the University using Blackboard Assignment. For those of you used to submitting via Turnitin, Blackboard Assignment offers similar functionality. We have a dedicated student FAQ on how to submit using Blackboard Assignment.If you have any difficulties submitting please contact Information Services (is@aber.ac.uk) and your academic department.
Departmental Organisation
Lastly, the final stage of our Ultra project was to move Departmental Organisations onto Ultra. Organisations are similar to Courses but they are not modules that you can take. Organisations are used to provide you with useful information about your Department. They are also used for training and test purposes, such as the Referencing and Plagiarism quiz. You can access your Organisations from the left-hand menu in Blackboard.
If you have any questions about using Blackboard, please contact Information Services (is@aber.ac.uk).
Click on the new folder and set the language for these recordings.
When you make your recordings, you must select the correct language folder before pressing record. This is because Welsh ASR captions cannot be added to recordings copied or moved from other folders.
Note:
There can be delay between changing the language on your folder and the option for automatic captions to appear. If this happens check back after an hour or so and you should see the option available.
The Welsh ASR captions are only available for content created after you updated the language setting on your folder.
The Welsh ASR captions cannot be added to recordings copied or moved from other folders.
If you regularly make recordings in other languages, ASR captions are available in other languages (see the Panopto website for the full list)
In our previous blogpost we outlined some of the changes to Panopto with our move to Blackboard Learn Ultra.
In this blogpost we’ll outline the changes to using Panopto for Assignments. Panopto Assignments are used for students to submit a recording or presentation.
As part of this change, we recommend that you:
Create a Blackboard Assignment
Students submit via Blackboard Assignment and upload via the Panopto submission tool
The advantages to this new workflow are that:
The workflow for submission and marking is easier
Marks and feedback automatically go into the Gradebook
Students receive an email receipt for their submission
We’re the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit. Based in Information Services, we work with staff across the university to support and develop learning and teaching. We run a wide range of activities to do this.
As part of the wider Blackboard Ultra project, our Panopto integration has been upgraded to work with Blackboard Ultra. This has provided us with an opportunity to make some changes and improvements.
Panopto folders are now organised by academic year.
Staff have frequently requested that the Panopto folders for their Blackboard Courses are organised by academic year rather than as a long list. The Panopto upgrade work gave us an opportunity to restructure our folders as requested.
Top level year folders will appear greyed out, but you still have access to your Panopto folders within.
When you open the Panopto Recorder in a teaching room:
You can either find the Panopto folder you want to record into via the folders or search for the Panopto folder you want to record into.
To find the Panopto folder you want to record into via the folders:
Click the dropdown button in the Folder field.
Double-click an academic year folder to expand it. or
Click the dropdown arrow to the left of the academic year folder to expand it.
Select the Panopto folder you want to record into.
To search for the Panopto folder you want to record into:
In the Folder field start typing the module code or name of the Panopto folder you want to Record into
Select the folder you want to record into.
Sharing Panopto recordings from Previous years.
To share Panopto recordings from previous years Panopto folders, copy the recordings into the current years’ folder of the course. This can be done via Panopto.aber.ac.uk. This grants all students enrolled on the current years’ course in Blackboard access to view the recordings. See this FAQ.
My Folder
Everyone now has a folder in Panopto called My Folder that they can record into. In the Panopto Recorder it can be found under Quick Access.
My Folder is useful for recordings that staff or students do not want to share with others immediately or when they cannot find a suitable folder to record into.
Recordings can be moved from My Folder into another Panopto Folder later. To copy or move a Panopto recording to another folder See this FAQ.