Category: Technical Updates

Update to Blackboard Gradebook August 2026

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Monthly Update, Technical Updates Leave a comment

In just over a week’s time, the August Blackboard update will be released. This includes an overhaul of the Gradebook. Please see below for further information.

The monthly August Blackboard release has a new user interface for the Gradebook.

Given the nature of this update, we have a separate blogpost dedicated to it.

If you have any questions about the updated Gradebook or grading, please contact the Digital Education Team (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

Every course has the Gradebook, which is used to manage all aspects of the administration of marks. It can be accessed via the top menu of Blackboard courses.

As part of this update, the following processes are not changing:

  • Grades, calculations, and overall grade configuration
  • Grade schemas and grading settings
  • Course-level accommodations
  • The List View
  • All existing grades and submission history

The component marks transfer process also remains unchanged.

Change 1: Default view

The default view of the Gradebook is now the grid view

You can swap between the grid view and the list view by clicking between the views:

Blackboard Gradebook screen

Change 2: To do list

The Gradebook Overview is now called the To Do List which is available in grid and list views:

To do list highlighted

From here, you can see what work there is to mark and post:

screenshot of the to do menu item which is showing needs marking and needs posting options

A reminder that marks need to be posted in order to be included in the marks transfer.

Change 3: Entering Grades

The ways to enter grades into columns has changed.

Click on the pencil icon to change and enter the grade:

screenshot of the grading icon

You can then post the marks from this screen by clicking on the post icon:

screenshot of the marks posting icon

You can also leave feedback from this view by clicking on the mark

screenshot of adding feedback item highlighted

If you want to mark and leave feedback on all Blackboard marked items, click on this icon:

screenshot of all items highlighted

This will then open the assignment mark screen.

Change 4: Updating and editing columns

Editing columns now take place via the list view.

screenshot of how to edit a column being the list view

Change 5: Filtering by merged module

It is possible to filter the gradebook using Merged Modules so that you only see the information for students on the relevant modules.

Click the filter button highlighted below and choose from the dropdown for merged courses:

settings cog highlighted

Change 6: File upload and download gradebook

The functionality for downloading and uploading to the gradebook has moved.

Click on the settings cog:

Settings cog highlighted

Choose Download marks or Upload marks depending on what you want to do.

Change 7: Checking the visibility of a column

The visibility status of columns can no longer be seen in the grid view.

To check the visibility of the column, navigate to the list view:

list view showing line through a column

You can amend the visibility of the column by clicking on the ….

We are now working to update our guidance to reflect the changes in the Gradebook.

If you need any further information or have any questions, please contact us on elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Course Creation 2026-27

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Technical Updates, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment

All courses for 2026-27 have been created and are available to staff in Blackboard. 

All AU Blackboard course sites use an agreed template with areas for core information along with agreed content for university-level policies.

The course template is agreed by the Quality and Standards Committee annually. Module Coordinators have responsibility for the organisation of materials in their courses. Staff should not delete template content.  

Consult the Required Minimum Presence for what should be included in the course.  

If you need any assistance with Blackboard courses, see Staff Blackboard Guide.

Once courses have been created, we will run a weekly feed between the Module Management System and Blackboard to reflect any updates or changes.  

Students won’t come onto courses until registration has been completed in September.   

Course Creation 2026-27

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Technical Updates, Ultra Leave a comment
Blog Banner

As we start to move to the assignment period for semester 2, we start to look at creating courses ready for 2026-27.

We will create courses for 2026-27 on Monday 3 June 2026.

The courses will be available to staff as soon as we create them.

Students will not be enrolled on the courses until they complete registration in September.

As with previous years, there will be one standard template for all courses at Aberystwyth. The language of the template depends on the language of delivery in AStRA. If the course is delivered 100% through the medium of Welsh, then a Welsh template will be used. For 1-99% through the medium of Welsh, a bilingual template will be used. If the course is registered to be delivered 0% through the medium of Welsh, then an English template is used.

Our Blackboard Required Minimum Presence, E-submission, and Lecture Capture policies are in the stages of being finalised.

We will communicate these in due course.

If you have any questions about course creation, please don’t hesitate to contact us on elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year from the Digital Education Team

WordPress User [jbw] Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2025, Blackboard, Conference, E-submission, Events and Networks, Exemplary Course Award, Generative AI, Mini Conference 2025 Generative AI, Panopto, Technical Updates, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment
Nadolig Llawen / Merry Christmas

We’ve had some fantastic experiences and milestones this year.

Back in March, we announced our 2025 Exemplary Course Award and highly commended recipients.

In April, we hosted a Mini Conference on Employability and the Inclusive Curriculum in collaboration with colleagues in Careers and Employability.

In July, we had our 13th Annual Education and Student Experience Conference with over 200 attendees across 3 days.

At this event, a new Education and Student Experience Award Fund was announced, and we confirmed the recipients of these in November.

In November, we took part in Blackboard Ally Fix your Content Day, making the content of our Virtual Learning Environment even more accessible. We placed 3rd in the UK and 60th on the international leaderboard. 

From a technical perspective, we’re really pleased with the introduction of automatic captions on lecture recordings, Blackboard’s Learning Object Repository, badges and achievements, and the e-submission review.

And we’re rounding the year off with a Mini Conference on Generative AI on Thursday 18 December. We’ve got a fantastic programme and there is still time to book your place.

We’re excited about what 2026 will bring in the Digital Education arena.

Some initial things that we’ll be working on and want to draw your attention to.

Applications for the Exemplary Course Award 2026 will close on Friday 30 January.

On January 8 there will be a minor update to the Blackboard interface.

We’re planning our next Mini Conference in collaboration with colleagues in Student Journey for April 2026. Further information will be made available soon.

And our 14th Education and Student Experience Conference will take place between 8-10 September 2026. Keep an eye out for updates, call for proposals, and external speaker announcements.

We’ve got our training programme available on the booking system for Semester 2 for colleagues to book onto.

We’re looking forward to working further with you in 2026.

We hope you have a restful break.

Kate, Keziah, & Jim

Blackboard Interface Update, January 2026

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Technical Updates Leave a comment
Blog Banner

On Thursday 8 January, there will be a minor update to the Blackboard interface.

There is no downtime associated with this update, and Blackboard will continue to function normally during this period.

These changes include:

  • Change in order of menu items on the main navigation menu:
new Blackboard main navigation menu
  • A new home button in a course to take you back to the landing page:
home button highlighted from the Course view
  • A quick link to navigate to your recently accessed courses
Courses button highlighted showing dropdown to recently accessed courses

In addition to this, to maximise screen space, Blackboard will remove the nested folder view.

If you have any issues, please contact the Digital Education Team on elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Turnitin App Retirement

WordPress User [jbw] E-submission, Technical Updates, Turnitin Leave a comment

Turnitin has announced the retirement of their Turnitin app at the end of the year, December 2025.

The Feedback Studio iPad app will be retired and no longer available. Instructors can continue to access Feedback Studio as usual through Blackboard. This includes mobile devices and tablets.

Turnitin are working on developing a New Standard Assignment, so instructors can review and provide feedback on student work from tablets without needing a separate app. We will release comms regarding this new service in due course.

If you have any questions or concerns about this, please don’t hesitate to contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

Collaborative Documents in Blackboard

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Technical Updates, Ultra Leave a comment
Policies and Information

There is currently an intermittent issue with collaborative documents in Blackboard which is preventing the documents being linked to a class.

If you receive the error warning:

image of Course initialization failed message

Follow this workaround:

  • Create a document in your OneDrive
  • Click on the Share button in the top right hand corner:
Screenshot of a collaborative document with the Share button highlighted
  • Click on the settings cog and choose People in Aberystwyth University
  • Change More Settings to Can Edit
  • Click Apply
  • Choose Copy Link
  • Paste the link into Blackboard

We apologise for the inconvenience caused. We’re working with Blackboard and Microsoft to resolve this issue.

What’s new in Blackboard Ally

WordPress User [kaw] Accessibility, Blackboard, Technical Updates, Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Leave a comment
Inclusivity and Accessibility banner

Over the summer there have been some updates to Blackboard Ally which colleagues will find help them to fix issues with images and PDFs in Blackboard.

AI Auto-generate description

The AI auto-generate description tool has been improved to write better alternative text for charts, text in images, STEM content, and handwriting in images. Like all the AI tools in Blackboard staff can edit any aspect of the AI output and adapt it if needed. The AI tool also provides a good starting point for learning more about writing alternative text.  And if you use Blackboard in Welsh, the AI tool will create Welsh alternative text.

To use the AI tool:

  • Click on the Ally indicator for your image (or access it via Books and Tools > Ally Adroddiad Hygyrchedd / Accessibility Report > Content)
  • Under Edit image description, click Auto-generate description
  • You can then click Save to use the description or edit the description before clicking Save.
  • If you don’t want to use the description, click Remove from image, and type your own description. 

OCR layer on scanned documents

Around 15% of PDFs in 2024-25 courses were non-OCR documents. This causes a problem for anyone who needs to change the size of the text or use a screen reader because the text appears as an image rather than readable text. Ally now provides tools to add a readable OCR layer on top of a non-OCR document. The quality of this layer will depend on the nature of the content (typewritten documents work better than images or handwriting) as well as the quality of the scan.

We suggest that you try the OCR layer tool and see whether it may help you to provide more accessible PDFs. Remember that you can also use the Library Digitisation service which provides OCR readable scans of journal articles and book chapters.

To use the OCR layer:

  • Click on the Ally indicator for your image (or access it via Books and Tools [Llyfrau ac Offer] > Ally Adroddiad Hygyrchedd / Accessibility Report > Content)
  • Click on the Preview and Apply button to add the layer
  • A preview will appear – use your mouse to highlight the text on the preview. This will show you what text will be add to the file.
  • If you are happy to use it, click Apply. If not, choose Cancel
  • If you don’t use the OCR layer, the Learn how to fix PDFs button will give you options for adding a library reference.

PDF Language and Title

PDFs without language or title set can now be fixed directly in Ally:

  • Click on the Ally indicator for your PDF (or access it via Books and Tools > Ally Adroddiad Hygyrchedd / Accessibility Report > Content)
  • Under Add PDF Language, select the language of the document and click Apply fix
  • Type the title of your document in the Set PDF Title box and then click Apply fix.

Guidance for students

To help you encourage your students to use the Ally Alternative Formats, we have a Learning Object Repository (LOR) item on Ally that you can use in your course. See our FAQ on adding an item from the LOR to your course.

More changes are planned for Ally over the next three months, and we’ll keep colleagues updated via the blog. For more information on Ally, have a look at the Ally help pages

Generative AI assessment statements available in Blackboard Learning Object Repository

WordPress User [jbw] Blackboard, Generative AI, Technical Updates Leave a comment
Image of Blackboard content area with a Generative AI tool use statement added

We’re pleased to announce that Generative AI Assessment Statements are now available in the Blackboard Learning Object Repository.

This is part of the work that Library and Learning Services are undertaking in collaboration with UndebAber and Academic Registry.

The aim of this work is to make it clear to students the expectations regarding their engagement and use of Generative AI in learning and teaching.

There are three statements available in the Learning Object Repository:

  • No Generative AI Tool use for this assessment
  • Some Generative AI Tool use for this assessment
  • Generative AI Tool use expected for this assessment

Each of the statements gives advice and signposts students to additional support.

Colleagues can copy these statements into the relevant area of the course. As acceptable levels of use of Generative AI vary between individual assessments, it’s recommended that the statements are copied into the relevant assessment folder.

For further information see: How do I add an item from Blackboard’s Learning Object Repository to my course?

In addition to the Generative AI Assessment Statements, a Generative AI Tool Use Statement is also available. This statement has been developed by colleagues in the Department of Law and Criminology and gives students the opportunity to outline how they have used Generative AI in their assignments.

If you have any questions about using the Learning Object Repository, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.

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.