Category: Panopto

E-learning Training Series: Semester 1, 2025-26

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We are delighted to announce our training series for the forthcoming semester.

All training can be booked online using your Aberystwyth username and password. Our training booking system is now automated, so you will receive your calendar invitation within an hour into your calendar. Please join these sessions from your Outlook calendar.

If you have any questions, please contact us: elearning@aber.ac.uk.

As usual, our training sessions are grouped into 3 series:

  • E-learning Essentials: designed for colleagues new to the university, teaching, or who would like to get a refresher. The aim of these sessions is to ensure that colleagues can meet the university’s digital learning and teaching policies.
  • E-learning Enhanced: designed to build on the skills gained in our e-learning essentials series, colleagues will create an activity or assessment unique to their learning and teaching contexts.
  • E-learning Excellence: designed to offer colleagues the opportunity to create exemplary learning and teaching opportunities – often unique and sector leading.

In addition to the usual offerings, we also wanted to highlight the new sessions that we have introduced for 2025-26:

New sessions for 2025

E-learning Essentials

Using Microsoft Co-pilot for Learning and Teaching Activities

This session will introduce colleagues to Generative AI and offer the opportunity to think about ways in which you can incorporate Generative AI into your learning and teaching practice.

You can book your place on all the other sessions in this E-learning Essentials series via this link.

A reminder that all Essentials sessions are strongly recommended for any new members of staff in your department.

E-learning Enhanced

Become a Blackboard Document Pro

Blackboard Documents have had a complete overhaul in Ultra. This 30-minute pro session gives an overview of the new features and allows you to give it a go in your course.  

Blackboard Interactive Tools

We’ve combined our Discussions and Journals session into one. We’ll go through activity design for our interactive tools to help maximise student engagement.

Measuring and Increasing student engagement using Blackboard Tools

We will look at the analytical tools available in your Blackboard course to help monitor student engagement. We’ll use this to tailor messaging as well as creating other activities such as knowledge checks and learning module progression to help keep your students engaged with their learning.

Peer Assessment with Turnitin

One of the features of Turnitin is PeerMark which allows you to create peer assessment opportunities for your students. This is great to allow students to provide formative feedback on each other’s work.

Using the advanced features of Panopto

Want to spruce up your recordings? This session will showcase different ways in which you can use Panopto: from inserting quizzes mid recording, to give students the opportunity to get creative and use Panopto themselves. This session is great for those adopting a flipped classroom approach or who want to make use of Panopto beyond Lecture Capture.

Other sessions include the Blackboard AI Design Assistant and Advanced Vevox polling software design.

You can book your place on all the other sessions in this E-learning Enhanced series via this link.

E-learning Excellence

We’ve designed 4 new workshops for colleagues based on the 4 areas of the Exemplary Course Award. Looking at each aspect, colleagues will reflect on how their own courses can be developed.

The 4 sessions are:

Exemplary Course Design

Exemplary Assessment Design

Exemplary Interaction and Collaboration

Exemplary Learner Support

You can book your place on all the other sessions in this E-learning Excellence series via this link. Other sessions include Submitting an Exemplary Course Award.

If there are any other training topics that you’d like us to consider for Semester 2, please contact us.

E-learning Policies Review (2025-26)

WordPress User [kaw] Accessibility, Blackboard, E-submission, Panopto, Training and Support, Turnitin, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment

We revisit and revise all the policies relating to e-learning tools annually. All the changes are approved by the Quality and Standards Committee. The new policies are now available, and here are the details of the main changes. If you have any questions about the new policies, please get in touch with us using elearning@aber.ac.uk

Blackboard Required Minimum Presence (RMP)

The RMP outlines to staff and students the minimum standards for a Blackboard Course.

Two of the changes in the RMP are designed to improve the accessibility of course materials:

  • All courses should have an Ally score of 70% or above (see the Ally Score information)
  • Requirement for materials to be uploaded 1 working day in advance of the session (see the Uploading Material in Advance information)

To help staff managing courses:

E-submission Policy

The E-submission Policy outlines that all text-based word-processed work is submitted, marked, and has feedback released electronically.

To improve student access to marks and feedback:

To improve the consistency of e-submission across the university:

  • Requirement for research postgraduate work being submitted electronically include Graduate School Research Training assignments.

For staff who want to use SafeAssign as part of their Blackboard Assignments:

  • Addition of information about SafeAssign

Lecture Capture Policy

The Lecture Capture Policy outlines that all transmission style presentations are recorded electronically for students to access.

The most significant change in the Lecture Capture policy is designed to improve the accessibility of recordings:

  • Automatic captioning will be turned on for all recordings made after 1st September 2025 (see our blog post)
  • Recommendation that summaries are made for sessions that are not recorded

To help staff managing courses:

  • The Blackboard template will include centrally provided information about Panopto, including a statement that recording will take place, information about what is and isn’t recording, and information about the quality of captions (see our Course Creation information).

Organisation Policy

All departments make use of their Organisations to provide access to key administrative information. To make sure that materials are accessible and up to date, we have developed an Organisation RMP, based on the Blackboard RMP. This does not apply to staff Practice Courses.

All other Organisations should include:

  • Contact Information.
  • Information about the purpose of the Organisation and how participants are expected to use it.
  • Content is organised clearly, and all materials are named clearly and consistently.
  • Content is up to date.
  • Clear instructions for participants on what to do with materials 
  • All materials must be as accessible as possible.

Ally Score

For the first time, our Blackboard Required Minimum Presence includes an Ally score. This recognises and builds on the work that staff have already done to make sure that teaching materials are as accessible as possible.  

The RMP sets an Ally score of 70% – the good news for both staff and students is that 87% of all 2024-25 courses have a score of 70%. And overall, the Ally score for 2024-25 is 72.5% which is 3% higher than last year. 

Making Blackboard content as accessible as possible benefits all our students.  Having materials in a format that students can use easily means that they can focus on their learning rather than struggling with inaccessible formats. The choices that staff make to design accessible materials, as well as the Ally Alternative Formative tools, help us to make sure that all students can engage with their studies. 

It’s particularly important here at AU, as the latest HERA data show that over 28% of our students have a declared disability (compared to 16.7% nationally).  

To check your course Ally score, have a look at the guidance on the Blackboard help pages.  And you can find out more about designing accessible materials with our online training materials.  

Ally will give you help and guidance to address common issues. One of the most common issues at AU is handwritten documents that have been scanned. We’ve written some guidance to help staff who do use this type of material. And if you wanted to use scanned articles in your course, contact the Digitisation Service.

Uploading Materials in Advance

Giving access to teaching materials in advance of a session makes them more accessible for students. It gives students a chance to prepare before attending so that they can concentrate on the content of the lecture when they attend. For sessions that include discussion or group work it can allow students to consider how they may engage with these activities. A research paper from Oxford Brookes provides information about the value of making materials available in advance,

Feedback from students over the last few years has asked for this change, and the issue was discussed at Academic Board in summer 2024. And it’s standard in a number of other universities, for example at Edinburgh University and Oxford Brookes.

AU has decided that teaching materials should be released at least one working day before the event takes place:

  • For a session taking place on Thursday, materials should be available by Wednesday morning
  • For a session taking place on Monday, materials should be available by the previous Friday morning

You can use the Blackboard release conditions to make sure that materials are available at the right time. If you already make all your materials available at the start of term, you are welcome to continue with this.

Resuming Panopto Recordings

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Have you ever pressed stop on a Panopto recording rather than pause? Or realised there was something you forget to say in your recording?

Did you know you can resume any finished Panopto recording, and add more to it? You can do this from any computer that has the Panopto recorder on it – it doesn’t have to be the machine you used to create the original recording.

And it’s very easy to do:

  1. Go to Panopto and find your recording
  2. Click on the three dots (More Actions) on the recording preview
  3. Select Resume > Resume in Panopto for Windows
Image of a Panopto recording with the Resume option highlighted

If you want to do this from your office, you will need to install the Panopto recorder on your work computer. Alternatively, you can resume a recording from any teaching machine.

Minor change: Teaching Room Machines

WordPress User [jbw] Panopto, Teaching Rooms, Technical Updates Leave a comment

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.

Panopto: Automatic Speech Recognition Captioning

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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:

Screenshot showing a Panopto recording with captions

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.

Panopto

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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:

  1. Login to Blackboard and find your course
  2. Click on Books and Tools > View course and institution tools
  3. Click on Holl Fideo Panopto / All Panopto Videos

You should then be able to find the Panopto folder to make a recording.

Introducing the New Panopto Archiving Rules

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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. 

If you have any questions, please contact elearnining@aber.ac.uk 

Welcome to the Academic Year 2024-25: Updates to Blackboard for students

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, E-submission, Information for Students, Panopto, Technical Updates Leave a comment

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 Panopto for 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).

Panopto Captions in Welsh

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Panopto’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) captions can now be added to recordings made in Welsh.

To use of Welsh captioning:

  1. Set the language of your Panopto folder to Welsh.
  2. Import the automatic captions.

If your course contains both Welsh and English recordings, you should create a sub-folder to hold all the recordings for one of the languages:

  1. Login to panopto.aber.ac.uk and find your course folder.
  2. Click on the Add Folder button.
  3. Type in a name for your folder and press Enter.
  4. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. The Welsh ASR captions are only available for content created after you updated the language setting on your folder.
  3. The Welsh ASR captions cannot be added to recordings copied or moved from other folders.
  4. If you regularly make recordings in other languages, ASR captions are available in other languages (see the Panopto website for the full list)