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.
25/1/2024 Future Teacher Webinars, Wonderful world of Webinars (including Supporting deaf participants, human elements that make webinars inclusive and engaging, and creating and managing a large community of practice)
Monthly series European Network for Academic Integrity, ENAI monthly webinarsfree open webinars on various topics related to academic integrity.
Subscribe to SEDA’s mailing list for email discussions about educational development and emerging teaching practices. This is one of the sources I use when identifying useful material for the Roundup.
Follow University of Birmingham’s Higher Education Futures institute HEFi on Twitter for daily posts with links to pedagogical literature and more. This is one of the sources I use when identifying useful material for the Roundup.
Join the #LTHEchat on Twitter Wednesday nights for one hour of lively discussion about learning and teaching in HE. I often find out about good resources for the Roundup from the chat.
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.
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.
25/1/2024 Future Teacher Webinars, Wonderful world of Webinars (including Supporting deaf participants, human elements that make webinars inclusive and engaging, and creating and managing a large community of practice)
Advance HE (2023), DVC Dialogues “bring together Deputy Vice-Chancellors and other senior university leaders from across the globe to discuss the issues impacting their institutions, staff and students”, Advance HE (series of short video recordings). See Episode 1: AI Current Challenges and Episode 2: AI Future Impact
Brunton J., Bennett L., Drumm L., Flavin M., Honeychurch S., Thomson S., & Varga-Atkins T. (2023). Research in Learning Technology: making friends and influencing people, Research in Learning Technology, 31 (survey of key articles in Research in Learning Technology over 30 years)
Center for Teaching Innovation, Cornell University, A Teaching and Learning Blog (recent posts include useful articles on active learning)
QAA (30/11/2023), Exploring multimodality in higher education with Sam Elkington, Andrew Middleton, Maggie Gibson, Jimmy Lo, QAA Membership Podcast (47-minute audio recording)
QAA (24/10/2023), Towards neuro-inclusivity with Liss Chard-Hall and Graeme Pedlingham, QAA Membership Podcast (57-minute audio recording)]
Qu, S. (30/11/2023), Inclusive Teaching and Learning, (resource collection including presentation at Cambridge Teaching Forum 2023)
Other
Monthly series European Network for Academic Integrity, ENAI monthly webinarsfree open webinars on various topics related to academic integrity.
Subscribe to SEDA’s mailing list for email discussions about educational development and emerging teaching practices. This is one of the sources I use when identifying useful material for the Roundup.
Follow University of Birmingham’s Higher Education Futures institute HEFi on Twitter for daily posts with links to pedagogical literature and more. This is one of the sources I use when identifying useful material for the Roundup.
Join the #LTHEchat on Twitter Wednesday nights for one hour of lively discussion about learning and teaching in HE. I often find out about good resources for the Roundup from the chat.
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.
Season’s greetings from all of us at the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit.
A big congratulations to those of you who completed the Teaching for Postgraduate at AU qualification. Congratulations to PGCTHE participants who attended Graduation back in July as well as those who submitted their final coursework this month. Also, congratulations to those who achieved the Associate, Fellow or Senior Fellowship status through the ARCHE scheme, as well as our Exemplary Course Award Winners.
This year, we’ve really enjoyed working with you on topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Supervisory Framework, active learning and other aspects of learning design, and of course, Blackboard Learn Ultra.
Thank you to our external speakers who have joined us over the year, and all of the speakers at this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference in July, which was our biggest one yet. Thanks as well to colleagues from other departments who have run sessions for us and to all of you who have attended.
We hope you have a restful break, and we look forward to seeing you in 2024 – a Happy New Year to you all!
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.
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.
This month there are three improvements in Blackboard Learn Ultra that the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit would like to highlight for Instructors.
Additional image insertion options
Images enhance comprehension of and engagement with course content. Instructors and students want to use high-quality images in content and submissions. To help with this, a new image button has been added in the content editor in the following places:
Announcements
Assessment Questions
Student answers on questions (local file upload only)
Submission feedback (standard view)
Journal entries and comments
Image below: Instructor view – image button on content editor for Announcements.
Flexible grading – sorting control on students tab
Grading large numbers of submissions without a way to organize them can be tedious. Now, instructors can apply various sorting options in flexible grading:
Submission date (oldest – newest) of latest attempt
Submission date (newest – oldest) of latest attempt
Last Name (A – Z)
Last Name (Z – A)
First Name (A – Z)
First Name (Z-A)
Student ID (ascending)
Student ID (descending)
The grading interface stores the most recently used sorting option. If an instructor stops grading an assessment and resumes grading later, the last sorting option is applied.
Also, if sorting the submissions by last name or grading status, the chosen sorting option carries over into the grading interface.
Image below: Sorting options as shown from Students tab in flexible grading.
Group assessment due date exceptions
Instructors may want to set different due dates for each group working on a group assessment.
In the past, there was no way to assign varying due dates for each group working on a group assessment. Now, instructors can assign a unique due date to each group using the exceptions workflow.
On the group assessment Submissions page, the instructor may add or edit exceptions for a group.
Image below: Instructor view – add or edit exceptions option on the group assessment Submissions page.
The Exceptions panel displays relevant information such as the assignment name and selected group name. This helps ensure the accuracy of an exception. Instructors can select a due date for the group using the date and time picker.
Image below: Instructor view – exceptions panel.
Image below: Instructor view – group assessment Submissions page displays the exceptions indicator for Project Group 1.
On 31 December 2023, Blackboard is retiring Building Blocks as an integration solution for third party tools and they will no longer function in Blackboard. This will not affect Blackboard Learn Ultra Courses.
Whilst we made use of Building Blocks in Blackboard Learn Original (courses which ran before 2023-24), your Blackboard Learn Ultra Courses do not use them.
Building Blocks are installed software packages used to integrate tools such as Panopto and Turnitin (among many others) into Blackboard. Over the past two years we have upgraded these tools to LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) integrations. The retiring of Building Blocks was one of the drivers for moving to Blackboard Learn Ultra.
LTIs offer us access to regular updates, bugs fixes, and ongoing developments and enhancements designed for Blackboard Ultra. Building Blocks required manual upgrades and received infrequent updates as this form of integration approached retirement.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit has done extensive testing to ensure that this change will have as minimal an impact as possible on current Blackboard Learn Ultra courses.
We will undertake the work of disabling Building Blocks on Tuesday 12 December during the regular IS Tuesday Morning Maintenance window in preparation for their final retirement.
We are pleased to announce that applications for this year’s Exemplary Course Award are now open. The ECA is judged across 4 categories:
Course Design
Interaction and Collaboration
Assessment
Learner Support
Applicants are asked to introduce 3 standout practices for their Course to help frame their application before self-assessing their course – this can be a 1,000 word narrative or an 8-minute Panopto recording. Following the self-assessment, the courses are also marked by a panel of experts. Complementing the move to Ultra, we have updated our ECA form. Changes include fewer criteria and an increased wordcount for the narratives.
To help prepare for applications, two workshops are being run by the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit on:
Sara Childs will be delivering two workshops over the coming weeks based on the findings of ongoing research on trauma-informed communication. Aberystwyth University is committed to becoming one of Wales’s only two trauma-informed universities along with Wrexham university. We are currently in the self-assessment phase of a two-year project, of which the next phase will identify individual projects for enhancing our trauma-informed approach. In parallel, sessions are being offered to the community which raise awareness of trauma-informed approaches.
The upcoming workshops will provide an opportunity for those engaged in teaching, or roles that involve direct contact with students, to develop their practice to incorporate this ground-breaking research.
Test settings have changed in Blackboard Ultra and the arrangements for conducting an exam have also been updatedthis year.
These are the main changes:
Only one random access code may be generated prior to the test. This code is automatically generated in the form of a 6-digit numerical code when you check the ‘Access code required’ option, which will be the case for ALL online in-person Exams using BB tests.
Module coordinators will attend the face-to-face examination for their module (for the first 30 minutes). If it is not possible to attend, arrange a substitute. Being physically present for the examination enables the Module coordinators to generate a second access code 30 minutes after the exams starts and to circulate this code with the exam team.
Module coordinators can liaise with the exams office via eosstaff@aber.ac.uk prior to exam day to discover which invigilating staff will be in attendance during their exam and collate their names and usernames.
We have prepared new guidance which explains these changes fully: Blackboard Tests for In-person Exams Guide. It’s an idea to set aside enough time to prepare the test and read the new guidance.
Due to these changes, the E-learning team will be offering additional training sessions on ‘Preparing for Online Exams’ on 5 and 11 December. Register for the training on: CPD Staff Training.
There is also an updated FAQ on Blackboard with more information on creating Blackboard tests for online exams. If you require further assistance with your test, the E-learning team are available on Teams Sessions. Contact to elearning@aber.ac.uk to arrange a session.
The E-learning team will be available to check yout test settings before the exam period between 4-20 December 2023. Remember,we are unable to check your test settings without a confirmed date or time.
Contact us if you have any queries regarding Blackboard tests on elearning@aber.ac.uk.
