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.
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.
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).
A warm welcome to new staff joining Aberystwyth University.
In this blogpost we aim to provide you with information related to technology in learning and teaching, our training provision, support channels, and events that we run.
All the information that you need is on our webpages.
We write a blog full of the latest updates, details on events and training sessions, and resources.
Each module has its own dedicated course in Blackboard. Students can expect to find information about the module, learning materials, and e-submission guidance, as well as links to reading lists and lecture capture.
Please see our staff guide for further information.
Lecture Capture: Panopto
When teaching in person, be aware that all lectures (that is, teaching where the focus is on information being transmitted from staff to students) should be recorded using Panopto, our Lecture Capture software.
At Aberystwyth University, students must submit all text-based and word-processed work electronically as outlined in the University’s E-submission policy.
For this, we use our e-submission tools: Turnitin andBlackboard Assignment. Turnitin provides an automatic text matching functionality. We use Blackboard Tests to run online exams.
Polling can be used in learning and teaching activities as well as meetings to make the session interactive and collaborative with many different possibilities for use.
Resources and further help
We have a number of Guides and FAQs to help you use our software.
Training Provision
To support all staff with their teaching, we run a series of training sessions across the following strands:
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.
You can find details of our annual CPD programme and book your place to attend via Book a Course page.
All of these are great opportunities to meet people from across the university and discuss Learning and Teaching issues and developments.
We look forward to seeing you at a forthcoming event. In the meantime, feel free to get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk if you have any questions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Library and Learning Services, Academic Registry, and UndebAber are collaborating on Generative AI guidance and advice.
Following approval at the recent Education and Student Experience Committee, we are pleased to share these resources with you ready for next academic year.
This document provides guidance and advice to students on how they might want to use Generative AI as a study tool. This document uses a traffic light system approach to alert students to the amount of caution they might want to apply in its use.
A statement has been added to the Blackboard course template for 2025-26 Courses providing advice and guidance for students on acceptable use of Generative AI and where to get support and help.
You can copy Generative AI assessment statements into your Blackboard course to communicate to students the acceptable use of Generative AI on the assessment. See our blogpost for further information on how to do this.
Designed by the Department of Law and Criminology, and already being used by some departments, this amended Tool Use statement allows students to outline how they have used Generative AI in their assessments. Students fill out the form and insert the tool use statement into their word document before submission.
The tool use statement can be downloaded from our webpage and uploaded to Blackboard.
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:
The Blackboard template will include more centrally provided information (see our Course Creation information)
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 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.
In the May update, we are particularly excited about auto-generate AI Conversations with the AI Design Assistant, Qualitative Rubrics, and Enhancements to Gradebook and Tests.
New: Auto-generate AI Conversations with the AI Design Assistant
The AI Design Assistant can now auto-generate AI Conversations. AI Conversations are conversations between students and an AI persona.
Socratic Questioning: Conversations that encourage students to think critically through continuous questioning.
Role-play: Conversations that allow students to play out scenarios with the AI persona, enhancing their learning experience.
Creating personas and topics for an AI Conversation can take a lot of time. To streamline this process, the AI Design Assistant can generate three suggestions at once. You can select what the AI Design Assistant generates. You can choose to generate:
AI Conversation title
AI persona
Reflection question
These suggestions provide inspiration for an AI Conversation. Instructors can refine the AI Design Assistant’s suggestions in several ways:
Provide additional context
Adjust the complexity of the question
Select context from the course
Manually revise the question
Image 1. The auto-generate feature is now available in AI Conversations.
Image 2. There are several ways to customise AI Conversations.
We recommend that you look closely at the AI persona to check for any biases that might be there and edit these.
We would love to hear about your use cases of AI Conversations – do let us know via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
New: Qualitative Rubrics
Lecturers can now create and use no-points rubrics for Blackboard Assignments. This rubric type allows instructors to assess student work based on criteria and feedback, rather than numerical values.
Instructors can select No Points as a rubric type when creating or generating a rubric. This option is available alongside existing percentage and points-based rubrics. Instructors can also edit rubrics to switch between different rubric types, including percentage, points range, and no points.
Image 1: No Points option is available in the Rubric Type dropdown.
The Markable Items tab in the Gradebook now features a redesigned interface to improve accessibility and navigation for keyboard-only and screen reader users. This enhancement supports an accessible experience for instructors grading student work, reducing the time and effort required to manage student grades.
With this update, the Gradable Items tab uses a table-based layout to enhance usability:
Screen reader users can now hear both header and row announcements, allowing for smoother navigation through student submissions.
Keyboard users can now move efficiently across rows or down columns using arrow keys.
Image 1: Gradebook with Markable items tab highlighted
Instructors can now create custom text-based columns in the Gradebook, giving them the ability to record information for an assessment, such as performance code, group membership, and tutoring information.
These columns allow instructors to record up to 32 characters. The column is not restricted to text input.
Colleague might want to use this to record dissertation supervision teams or markers.
Instructors can:
Create text-based columns via the Add workflow in both the grid view and Gradable Items page;
Name the column, control student visibility, and add a description;
Add and edit text information for a specific student using an inline eidt workflow.
Text-based columns exclude the following:
Points values (automatically set to 0 points)
Due dates
Categories
Gradebook calculations and related calculation UIs
Content in text-based columns auto-posts and supports sorting functionality within the Gradebook grid view. Instructors can also download and upload text-based columns using the Gradebook’s upload/download function.
Image 1: Instructors can select Add Text Item to create a text-based column.
Image 2: Instructors can enter column name, set visibility for students, and enter a description for the text-based column.
Students can access text-based columns and associated information in their Gradebook when the column is set to Visible to students.
New test setting: View submission one time
There is a new test result setting option, View submission one time.
When a student completes the test, they can review their answers and detailed feedback, such as which questions were answered correctly.
Image 1: Allow students to view their submission one time highlighted:
Instructors
To access this setting option, select Available after submission in the Assessment results section of the Assessment Settings, then select View submission one time from the Customise when the submission content is visible to students dropdown. This dropdown is available only if Allow students to view their submission is selected.
Note that this setting does not alter the recommended settings for online exams.
Ideas Exchange:
This section aims to keep you updated on progress of enhancements requested on the Blackboard Ideas Exchange.
We are pleased to see the Qualitative Rubric included in this month’s release as this is a feature that was requested as part of the SafeAssign pilot.
If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
