E-learning Policies Review (2025-26)

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.

Blackboard Activity Log

In this blogpost, we’re going to introduce the Blackboard Activity log which is available on all Blackboard Ultra Courses.

From this activity log, you can take a look at specific students and see which items they’ve engaged with on the course. The log shows all activity on the course – from learning materials, through to Turnitin submission points, and Talis Aspire Reading Lists.

This also includes the date and time that students accessed those materials.

To view the students’ activity on a course:

  • Go to the module in Blackboard
  • Click on the class register:
  • Search for the student that you need to find the information for:
screenshot of the search function for students in the activity log
  • Click on the students’ name:
screenshot of a student with their name highlighted
  • Choose the Activity Log:
screenshot of the Activity Log highlighted
  • You’ll then see time and the item that the student has engagement with:
screenshot of the activity log showing date and time, event, and item
  • You can change the date parameters at the top and choose to specify specific events. Additional tools such as Turnitin submission points, Talis Aspire Reading Lists, and Panopto recordings are referred to as LTI Items.

If you have any questions about the Activity Log or need any help with interpreting it, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.

NEW: AI Conversations in Blackboard

The latest AI Design Assistant feature has been enabled in Blackboard.

AI Conversations provides a chat bot for students to interact with as part of a learning activity.

There are two AI Conversation options:

  • Socratic questioning
    • This encourages students to think critically through continuous questioning prompts
  • Role play
    • This allows students to play out a scenario with the AI persona designed and created by the instructor

Once set up, students can engage in these activities to further their knowledge and understanding of the topic.

Students type a response to the questions posed by the AI chat bot. At the end of the activity, students respond to a reflective question to outline how the conversation helped with their understanding of the topic.

We will be showcasing AI Conversations at our online Mini Conference on Wednesday 18 December. Further information is available on our blogpost.

Our E-learning Enhanced: Introduction to the AI Design Assistant training has also been updated to include AI Conversations. You can book your place on the course on the Events and Training booking system.

For further information, see Blackboard’s AI Conversation guidance.

Read More

Vevox: Polling Tool

Aberystwyth University uses Vevox, a Polling Tool, that allows you to get real time information from people in your teaching sessions or those in your meeting.

We’ve been using Vevox for over 3 years now and were pleased to see it being used in Welcome Talks offering students the opportunity to ask anonymous questions.

We are running some training sessions on using E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Vevox for Learning and Teaching:

  • 4 October, 10:10-11:30
  • 8 October, 14:10-15:30

These sessions will be taking place online via Teams.

In addition to our in house training sessions, Vevox are also running webinars sharing best practice and case studies from their other clients.

If you’re unable to join our sessions, Vevox host their own and you can register for those here: Getting started with Vevox I Your guide to Unmissable Classes

For further help using Vevox, take a look at our Support Materials.

SafeAssign

We are looking for volunteers to evaluate an alternative to Turnitin for text-matching and marking. This alternative is called SafeAssign. SafeAssign is part of Blackboard.

Training will be provided, and support will be available during the semester from e-learning support staff. We will ask everyone taking part in the evaluation to complete a short online survey before and after the trial. We will also invite you to a meeting at the end of the semester to share your experiences. 

Please read the information below about this evaluation which will help you decide whether you would like to take part. If you want more information or would like to volunteer, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk

What is SafeAssign?

SafeAssign is a text-matching tool provided by Blackboard. It is included in our main Blackboard licence. SafeAssign is an alternative to Turnitin.

Why are we evaluating it?

AU used SafeAssign before we started using Turnitin. As part of our commitment to making sure that we are using the best tools available, we would like to evaluate whether SafeAssign would be appropriate for text-matching. This evaluation has been approved by the Academic Enhancement Committee (May 2024).

What will be different if I use SafeAssign instead of Turnitin?

Some aspects of marking and submission will be changed:

  • New submission, marking and text-matching tools
  • A different database of assignments and sources for text-matching. This database won’t include previous years’ submissions from AU.

You’ll see some new features:

  • Text highlighting
  • Welsh language interface for submission and marking
  • View and retrieve previous student submissions

And some features will not be available:

  • You will need to post marks manually rather setting a release date and time. However, this will give you a little more control over when marks are made available to students.
  • Submit on behalf of students
  • Switch off anonymous marking for individual students
  • Rubrics and quick marks can’t be exported from Turnitin, although similar tools are available in Blackboard.

Full details of the features of both Turnitin and SafeAssign are available.

Welsh language

All elements of this evaluation will be available in both Welsh and English. This includes help guides, training, support, and evaluation. SafeAssign itself is translated as part of Anthology’s commitment to Welsh. Welsh language text is including in the text-matching service.

What will I have to do if I volunteer?

We strongly recommend that modules included in the evaluation use SafeAssign use the tool for all e-submissions during the duration of the module. This helps both staff and students become familiar with SafeAssign rather than swapping between multiple submission and marking tools.

All staff involved in the submission, marking and moderation for the module will have to use SafeAssign (note that this includes external examiners). If you volunteer a module that has multiple staff marking on it, please make sure that they are all aware, and have all received appropriate training (see below). We will provide all external examiners with information about the evaluation.

We strongly recommend that you provide a practice submission for your students before their first assignment. This will make sure that they know how to use SafeAssign correctly. We will provide guides and FAQs for students which you can link to from the Assessment and Feedback area of your Blackboard course.

What training and support will be available?

We will publish guides and FAQs for staff and students on the LTEU website. We will also run training sessions on how to create submission points and how to mark. Full support will be available to staff and students throughout the term.

How will it impact my students?

Submission will be different for students; one advantage of using SafeAssign is that students will get an email receipt. Students will also see their feedback in a slightly different way. We will provide full support for students.

Can I talk to someone about this?

Contact elearning@aber.ac.uk for information and to discuss whether SafeAssign is appropriate for your module.

Blackboard Learn Ultra Support Materials and Training

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.

You can book your place online.

Unable to make our training sessions?

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.

Free Trial with Talis Elevate for social annotation

We are excited to invite teaching staff to join a free trial of Talis Elevate for collaborative annotation. It is designed to encourage students to engage with course reading and learn actively by collaborative and individual annotation. It features detailed analytics to help you keep your students on track.

Our free trial of this tool is currently underway and will run through November 2023. Depending on staff response and budgetary considerations, the university may be able to acquire Elevate for longer-term use.

Please contact us at thestaff@aber.ac.uk to join the pilot.

Here is a screenshot from the main Elevate page to show you what it looks like:

Many thanks,

Mary Jacob & Julie Hart

Blackboard Ultra Training

Blackboard Ultra icon

In this blogpost we’ll be outlining the training that we’ve been designing ready for the move to Blackboard Ultra.

We will be offering every department an E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Blackboard Ultra training session. We will be liaising with your departmental director of learning and teaching to arrange this, offering either an online or an in-person session.

In this session, we will outline what colleagues need to do to get their modules ready for September. The main outcome of this session is that colleagues will be able to achieve the Required Minimum Presence. The session includes some design tips, an overview of the analytics available in Blackboard Ultra, as well as how to create Turnitin submission points, links to your reading list, and Panopto links. We’ll introduce you to the updated interactive tools: Discussions and Journals. In addition to this, we’ll look at the new workflow for creating Blackboard Assignments and Blackboard Tests, and the Grade Book.

If you cannot make your departmental session, then we are also offering them centrally.   

 To complement this session, we are running some centrally organised E-learning Enhanced Sessions:

  • E-learning Enhanced: Introduction to Discussions
  • E-learning Enhanced: Introduction to Journals
  • E-learning Enhanced: Introduction to Tests
  • E-learning Enhanced: Designing Wiki Equivalences
  • E-learning Enhanced: Designing Blog Equivalences

These sessions will be advertised on our course booking site.

If the session is taking place online then a Teams link will be emailed to you.

If you have any questions about our move to Blackboard Ultra, then do contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.  

Sustainability in the Curriculum: Materials Available

On 9 March, LTEU welcomed Dr Sarah Gretton and Alice Jackson from the University of Leicester to run a session entitled How to use UN 2030 Agenda Sustainability Development Goals to frame the Curriculum.

Slides and recordings from the session are now available.

In the session, Sarah and Alice gave an overview of how they embed SDGs across all curricula at Leicester, with 100% of their programmes having a module related to an SDG.

Participants at the session were given the opportunity to reflect on modules that they teach on and whether any of the UN SDGs map to them. Participants were also asked if students were aware of this mapping and whether it was captured in the learning outcomes of modules and programmes.

If you’re interested in Sustainability in the Curriculum then the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal targets are a good starting place.

In addition to SDGs, the presenters also linked to the following resources:

This external speaker event builds on our Mini Conference on Sustainability held in December.

Our next external speaker event is on 19 April, 14:00-15:30, where James Wood from Bangor University will be running a session on Improving Feedback Literacy. You can book this session via the Course Booking page.