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Have your say today: https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/aber/is24
The October Blackboard Update includes generating question banks from course materials and more customisation options for email notifications.
Related Blackboard Guidance Topic: Question Banks
Creating questions is time consuming. Instructors now have the option to generate questions in a question bank. Generating question banks from course materials provides inspiration and saves time.
To generate a question bank, select the Auto-generate option from the + on the Question Banks page.
Image 1. Auto-generate a question bank
From the menu, instructors can select content items. These content items provide context for the questions. Instructors can further refine the questions they ask by entering a description of the learning objectives or topic.
Image 2. The context picker for creating new questions
Instructors can select the type of question to generate, such as multiple choice or fill in the blank. The complexity of the questions can also be adjusted. Instructors choose which questions to include in the question bank.
Image 3. The Auto-Generate Question Bank page
Related Blackboard Guidance Topic: Discussions
To encourage participation in discussions, Blackboard have expanded notifications to include email. Emails are sent when users opt for Email me right away notifications.
Key Enhancements:
User Notification Settings: New notification options allow users to manage their emails for discussions they follow. To help with consistency, these settings align with the user’s settings for their activity stream.
How to access your Email notification settings:
Email notifications highlighted under Global Notification settings
Image 2. An example of an email for discussion activity
The Blackboard Learn Ultra August update included enhancements to the creating and editing functionality of Blackboard Learn Ultra Documents.
For those unfamiliar with Documents, they are an easy way to create content in Ultra, ensuring compatibility with mobile devices and Blackboard Ally. As this update to Documents is a significant change to content organisation, we are producing this separate blogpost. You can read about other enhancements in the August update blogpost.
The latest update gives instructors more power and control over how content appears. It functions as a webpage, with a variety of block types that can be used to create and organise content. These blocks can be moved around to give instructors more options over the layout of their content.
In summary:
An example of a Document created using the new content editor can be seen below:
For all instructors, the biggest change is that the content creator appears at the top of the page. You can still use the + icon to create content which will then give you the menu that you see below:
The convert a file option is new functionality that allows you to upload a file. This will convert it into an Ultra Document retaining the formatting of the original file.
Selecting Content will take you to the usual content editor.
This allows you to add content and resize.
You can easily move content around bringing images in line with text.
As you work with re-organising and re-arranging content, we recommend that you save your work as you go to ensure that changes remain.
For further information on creating and using documents, see Blackboard Help Guidance.
Are you interested in being nominated for a Fellowship of the Learned Society of Wales (LSW) or interested in proposing a colleague?
LSW Fellows have a connection with Wales, and are elected in recognition of their excellence and outstanding contribution to the world of learning. The Fellowship spans the sciences, humanities, arts and public services and nominations are welcomed from nominees of all cultures, background and ethnicity.
The nomination process is open to academics and professional individuals who meet the nomination criteria. The nomination is made by a proposer and supported by a seconder, both of whom must be Fellows of the LSW. Details of the nomination and the election process are on the LSW website.
The nomination window is now open for this year. The closing date for applications is the 31 October 2024. Please visit the various LSW web pages and prepare the nomination paperwork by the submission deadline.
If you feel that help is needed to link a nominee with LSW Fellows or require further information about the support the university can give you please contact Annette Edwards, aee@aber.ac.uk
As leader of our PGCTHE programme, I keep an eye out for resources to help staff teach effectively. These include webinars, podcasts, online toolkits, publications and more. Topics include active learning, online/blended teaching, accessibility/inclusion, and effective learning design based on cognitive science. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.
Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff. I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. You may also wish to follow my Twitter feed, Mary Jacob L&T.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference speaker.
Professor Lisa Taylor from the University of East Anglia will be joining us to present on employability in the curriculum. Lisa is Professor of Employability and Learning Innovation and Associate Dean for Employability for the Faculty of Medicine and Health.
Lisa is an Occupational Therapist by background with ten years of clinical experience within the NHS whilst also completing her MSc and PhD.
For the last twelve years Lisa has worked in higher education as a lecturer within the Occupational Therapy academic team at the University of East Anglia. Lisa has held employability leadership roles alongside her lecturing role for eleven of those years, initially as employability director for the School of Health Sciences and then as Associate Dean for Employability for the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Lisa is passionate about employability and learning innovations, maximising the impact for students/learners, academic colleagues, and external partners. A prestigious Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) was awarded to Lisa based on her sustained ability to facilitate and influence quality student learning.
Lisa has helped developed the wider employability agenda through supporting and engaging with colleagues locally, nationally, and internationally, impacting on student learning outcomes and experience, through teaching, strategic initiatives and learning innovations. The award of an NTF positions Lisa as a sector leader in employability and learning innovations. Lisa publishes and presents widely, helping to steer the national conversation about employability.
One of Lisa’s learning innovations is the Peer Enhanced e-Placement (PEEP). Lisa has won multiple awards for the pioneering PEEP and has published a book based on its design and delivery principles, Constructing Online Work-Based Learning Placements: Approaches to Pedagogy Design, Planning and Implementation. The PEEP will be presented as part of Lisa’s keynote lecture.
The Learning and Teaching Conference will be taking place between 10 and 12 September. Colleagues are welcome to submit proposals and bookings are now open.
The Learned Society of Wales (LSW) annually awards medals to researchers who excel in their field. The medal categories celebrate excellence in several areas of achievements, with further information on each medal at –
If you would like to nominate a colleague or an Early Career Researcher (ECR) please see the guidelines and nomination forms on the LSW web page.
To be eligible for any of the medals, nominees must be resident in Wales, born in Wales, or otherwise particularly connected with Wales.
The deadline for 2024 medal nominations is 5.00pm on 30 June 2024. Each medal has a dedicated committee to assess the nominations and decide who should receive the award.
Winners will be announced in October 2024 and will receive a specially struck medal and a cash prize of £500.
Please read the guidelines before you complete the medal nomination form. If you have any questions, please contact the LSW Fellowship Officer, Fiona Gaskell – fgaskell@lsw.wales.ac.uk. For further information about the LSW Medals, including past winners, visit www.learnedsociety.wales/medals or you can have an informal conversation with Annette Edwards, LTEU aee@aber.ac.uk
The April update to Blackboard Learn Ultra includes a much-requested feature; Anonymous posts for discussions. Additionally, there are improvements to feedback and Gradebook calculations.
Discussions play a pivotal role in nurturing peer-to-peer interaction and critical thinking. Students need to feel free to express their ideas and opinions without fear of judgement. To support this, Blackboard have added an option for instructors to allow anonymous posts in ungraded discussions. This feature provides flexibility for instructors. They can toggle anonymity on or off as the discussion progresses. Any existing anonymous posts keep their anonymity.
Image below: Setting to turn on anonymous posts
Note: When intending to post anonymously a student must tick Post anonymously.
Image below: A student making an anonymous post with Post anonymously ticked (highlighted)
Image below: An anonymous post in a discussion
Instructors can now provide contextual feedback by student on all question types. Question level feedback promotes deeper understanding and personal growth among students. Question level feedback complements the existing capabilities of overall submission feedback and automated feedback for auto-graded questions.
Note: Blackboard are targeting the May release for per-question feedback when grading tests by questions rather than by student.
Image below: Instructor view of adding per question feedback
Image below: Instructor view of question with saved feedback
Once students have submitted their tests and scores are posted, students can access the feedback. Students can access both overall feedback and question-specific feedback.
Image below: Student view of feedback added to an essay question
Instructors may want to control access to course content using release conditions. This is helpful for providing custom learning paths through course content. The release conditions include an option to show or hide content to/from students before they meet release conditions. Blackboard have modified how these settings impact the students’ view of feedback from instructors. Now instructors can set release conditions without any impact to feedback to students.
In the past, when an instructor selected the option to hide content, students could view associated grades but not the feedback. Blackboard have corrected this to ensure that students can always review feedback.
Image below: Instructor view of release conditions settings with date/time release condition set in combination with Hide state in “When will content appear?”
Image below: Student gradebook view with display of student’s feedback and grade regardless of the release condition setting in the above image.
To improve students’ navigation in a learning module, Blackboard have updated the navigation bar. Now the navigation bar is sticky and remains visible as students vertically scroll through content. Students no longer need to scroll back up to the top of content to access the navigation tools.
Image below: The navigation bar is always visible
Instructors need a gradebook that supports diverse grading scenarios. Blackboard are changing the software library used to perform calculations in calculated columns and the overall course grade.
Example: A course contains 3 assignments worth 22 points each. The student scores 13/22 on the first assignment, 14/22 on the second assignment, and 15/22 on the third assignment. An instructor creates a calculated column to calculate the average of these assignments.
Using the new software library, BigFraction, the average will calculate as 14/22.
With the former software library, BigDecimal, the average would incorrectly calculate to 13.99/22. The new software library ensures calculations compute as expected.
Aberystwyth University will be running a two-day Digwyddiad Rhannu Arfer Da – Rhagoriaeth Academaidd on the 2nd (face to face) and 3rd (on-line) July 2024. The event will be held through the medium of Welsh only. This event has been made possible due to the Small Grant Project money from the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol.
The aim of the two-day event is to present papers under the theme of Teaching Excellence – for example:
The academic papers will be an opportunity for staff across Wales to present their research, under the theme of academic practice – through papers, posters, panels etc. Presentations at the event are welcome from anyone teaching from staff to PhD students.
The Call for Proposals, at the following link Galwad am Bapurau – Digwyddiad Rhannu Arfer Da (jisc.ac.uk) asks for submissions of no more than 500 words, through the medium of Welsh. We welcome contributions to the event in the form of:
The deadline for these proposals is midday on Wednesday 27 March 2024.
I would be grateful if you could share this more widely with colleagues who maybe in interested in attending this event.
If you would like to discuss anything further, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Annette Edwards (aee@aber.ac.uk) 01970 622386