Welcome new staff joining Aberystwyth University, 2025-26

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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.

If you need to get in touch with us, you can do so using elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Introduction to E-learning Tools

Virtual Learning Environment: Blackboard

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.

The University has a Blackboard Required Minimum Presence policy for all modules.

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.

See details of our Lecture Capture Policy.

E-submission: Turnitin and Blackboard Assignment

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 and Blackboard Assignment. Turnitin provides an automatic text matching functionality. We use Blackboard Tests to run online exams.

Polling tool: Vevox

Vevox is Aberystwyth University’s polling tool.

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.

Events

We run a range of events, including the Annual Learning and Teaching Conference and Mini-Conferences

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.

Weekly Resource Roundup – 20/8/2025

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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. 

Online events and webinars

August

September

October

Resources and publications

Other

  • Call for proposals (open dates)Unfiltered by EmpowerED: A Podcast Series where educators share unedited stories of inspiration and challenge
  • Call for proposals (open dates)Future Teacher Webinars
  • Monthly series European Network for Academic Integrity, ENAI monthly webinars free open webinars on various topics related to academic integrity.

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. Social media: BSky, X.com.

Blackboard Ally

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Inclusivity and Accessibility banner

Blackboard Ally continues to be a popular part of Blackboard with more staff and students making use of it during academic year 2024-25.

The number of downloads into alternative format more than doubled last year –over 62,000 documents were downloaded into alternative formats.  And over 4000 users used this option.

Staff also made more use of the tools to fix accessibility issues in their courses – over 800 files were fixed last year (compared to 295 in 2024-25).

For the first time this year, the Blackboard Required Minimum Presence states that all Blackboard courses should have an Ally score of 70%. If you want to check your Ally score have a look at our blog post. You can also a book a place on one of the E-learning Essentials: Introduction to Blackboard Ally training courses in September.

What’s new in Blackboard August 2025

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Blog Banner

In the August update, we want to draw your attention to the table of contents feature being added to Learning Modules.  

In addition to this, there are enhancements to documents with block styling options, and increased accessibility across student gradebook and student overview pages.

New: Adding Table of Contents to Learning Modules for students

We’ve redesigned the Learning Module experience for students by adding a collapsible Table of Contents. This update improves navigation, orientation, and progress tracking. 

As part of this improvement, assessments now open in a full panel instead of a smaller panel.

Students now have a simplified way to navigate and track progress in Learning Modules. Updates include:

  • A table of contents for the items in a Learning Module. Select Contents to open and collapse the table of contents

Image 1: Learning Modules now contain a Table of Contents panel to orient students within Learning Modules for their courses. The panel can be collapsed with the arrow button at the top of the Table of Contents.

Screenshot of Table of Contents within Learning Modules
  • Easy navigation between items  
  • Manual or automatic item completion tracking from within the Learning Module
  • Next and Previous buttons moved closer together at the top of the page for an improved experience.

Image 2: The navigation buttons Previous and Next now appear closer to each other in the user interface within Learning Modules to give an improved user experience.

Screenshot of the User interface

Assessments within Learning Modules. Assessments now open in a full panel, providing a consistent and distraction-free experience.

Image 3: The Assessments pages within Learning Modules now appear as a full-sized panel.

Screenshot of the Assessments page

Forced sequence in Learning Modules. When sequencing is enforced, students must use the Next and Previous buttons to move through content in order. Students can’t jump ahead using the table of contents unless they have already completed the item they are navigating to. Skipping ahead without completing a Learning Module item is disabled in this mode. 

Enhance Documents with block styling options 

We added block styling to Documents, giving instructors new ways to enhance visual appeal and guide student attention. The styling options feature both color and icons. The style options include:

  • Question
  • Tip
  • Key points
  • Next steps
  • Highlight

Image 1. Instructors can select styling options from a dropdown menu that appears in Edit mode on all block types.

Screenshot of styling menu.

Our forthcoming training session E-learning Enhanced: Become a Document Pro will explore this and other document functionality to help colleagues create dynamic content. You can book your place online.

Increased accessibility in the student gradebook

To improve accessibility, we updated the student Gradebook to use a semantic HTML table structure. This change replaces the previous layout, which relied on stacked <div> elements. The new structure improves screen reader support and keyboard navigation.

Increased accessibility in the student overview page

To improve accessibility, we updated the student Overview page to use a semantic HTML table structure. This change replaces the previous layout, which relied on stacked <div> elements. The new structure improves screen reader support and keyboard navigation.

If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Generative AI in Learning and Teaching: Case Study Series

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We are working on a series of case studies to share practices of using Generative AI in Learning and Teaching Activities.

In this series of blogposts, colleagues who are using Generative AI in their teaching, will share how they went about designing these activities.

We’re delighted to welcome Dr Gareth Hoskins (tgh@aber.ac.uk) from DGES in this blogpost.

Case Study # 3: Classroom evaluation of Generative AI in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences

What is the activity?

This was a classroom evaluation of an AI-generated summary of the scientific concept ‘flashbulb memory’ as part of a lecture on ‘individual memory’ in the 3rd year human geography/sociology module GS37920 Memory Cultures: heritage, identity and power. 

I prompted ChatGPT with the instruction: “Create a 200-word summary of the concept of flashbulb memory”, created a screengrab of the resulting text and embedded this within my lecture slides giving the class 3 minutes to read it and discuss it on their tables asking specifically for responses to the questions:

  • What biases does the content create?
  • Whose interests are served?
  • Where are the sources coming from?
Chat GPT summary of the prompt: Create 200 word summary of the concept flashbulb memory

What were the outcomes of the activity?

Discussion didn’t touch too much on the questions I posed but focused more on the ChatGPT content where students were much more critical of the content than I had anticipated. They noted the dull tone, the repetition, uncertainty surrounding facts presented the vague approach and general lack of specificity. Those students showed a surprising degree of GenAI literacy which was conveyed to the class as a whole. During the discussion, the students became more aware of the utility of GenAI tools, more comfortable speaking about how they use it and might go on to use it, and how its limitations and weaknesses might affect the content it generates.  

I developed the exercise using UCL guidance webpage ‘Designing Assessments for an AI-enabled world’ https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/generative-ai-hub/designing-assessments-ai-enabled-world and re-designed my exam questions on the module to remove generic appraisals of famous academics’ contributions to various disciplinary debates and substitute with hypothetical scenario-based questions that were much more applied.  

How was the activity introduced to the students?

My intension was to acknowledge that we exist in an AI-enabled world which creates opportunities but also problems for learning. I also used the exercise to introduce the risks relating to assessment and outline my own strategy for assessing on this module using real-life problem-based seen-exam questions requiring use of higher-level skills of evaluation and critical thinking applied to “module-only” content and recent academic publications which GenAI essay-writing tools struggle to access. 

How did it help with their learning?

The activity helped students become more familiar with the use GenAI as a “research assistant” (for creating outlines and locating sources) and created an environment for open discussion about the limitations of AI-generated content in terms of vagueness, hallucination, lack of understanding, and lack of access to in-house module content on Blackboard or up-to-date research (articles published in the last two years).

How will you develop this activity in the future?

I would flag other systems including DeepSeek, Gemini, Microsoft Co-Pilot and Claude AI as well as discuss their origins, pros and cons, and crucially caution about environmental and intellectual property consequences.

Keep a lookout for our next blogpost on Generative AI in Learning and Teaching case studies.

13th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference Materials Available

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Between the 8-10 July, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit hosted the 13th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.

The materials from the conference are now available on our webpages.

We would like to thank all of our contributors and attendees. The sessions were of such high quality.

We’re already heading into planning our 14th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference which is scheduled to take place in September 2026 (date TBC).

We hope to see you at a forthcoming event.

What’s new in Blackboard July 2025

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In the July update, we are particularly excited about an improvement to mathematical notation with MathJax and a way to measure student engagement with Blackboard Announcements.

There are enhancements to navigation in Group Assignments, adding captions to images in documents, and enhancing instructor efficiency in the activity page.

Update: Render mathematical formulas with MathJax

We are delighted to see this enhancement, which is something that we have been asking for since our move to Blackboard Ultra.

Blackboard have enhanced the formula rendering experience in the Content Editor by implementing MathJax, a tool for displaying mathematical notation:

This update improves the visual accuracy and consistency of LaTeX-based formulas, aligning them more closely with scientific and academic standards.

MathJax offers a more precise rendering style preferred by many STEM instructors. When activated, MathJax will automatically render LaTeX code entered directly in the Content Editor across supported areas of Blackboard. Wiris is still available as the default to render formulas for the Content Editor. If MathJax is not activated, Wiris will render formulas.

Further information is available on the updated help page: Math Editor.

Enhancement to monitoring announcements

Instructors can now verify which students have marked an announcement as viewed. By selecting the viewer count on the main Announcements page, instructors can open a list showing who has and hasn’t acknowledged the message. From this list, instructors can send a message to follow up with students who haven’t viewed the announcement or confirm that key information was received. This helps instructors understand how effectively their announcements are reaching students. 

Image 1. Each announcement comes with a Viewers column on the Announcements page.

Image 2. The list of viewers for an announcement shows that two students have read the announcement and one hasn’t.

Navigate with previous and next functionality in Group Submissions

Blackboard Assignment offers a Group Submission function. This allows for one member of the group to submit on behalf of the students in their group. For markers, this means marking one submission, with marks and feedback allocated to all members of the group.

In this month’s update, Blackboard have made reviewing and grading group submissions more efficient with the addition of Previous and Next navigation controls. Instructors can efficiently move between group submissions using header bar controls, creating a smoother grading experience with fewer clicks.

Instructors can now navigate between group submissions without needing to return to the submission list. The Previous and Next buttons appear in the header bar: Picture

Add captions to images uploaded to Documents

Instructors can now add captions above or below image blocks in Documents.

Image 1. Instructors can go to Edit File Options to add image captions and set positions.Edit File Options page offers fields for Display Name, Image caption, and choices for Caption position

Image 2. The image caption appears above the image and provides more context.

Note that to use this feature, you need to upload the content as an image in the document editor.

Change to Activity Stream for Instructors

The Activity Stream for instructors has changed to include courses, announcements, and activity updates in one place.

New features on the Activity page:

  • Course Section: The updated Activity page now includes a course section that outlines new activity in current, open courses since an instructor last logged into Blackboard.

Shortcuts: New shortcuts have been added to enhance instructor efficiency.

  • Go to items that need grading
  • Find courses with new messages
  • Access the Course Activity report directly to review students with alerts

Announcements: Read important institutional announcements.

Image 1. The new Activity page has sections for announcements, courses, and the activity stream.

If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.

E-learning Training Series: Semester 1, 2025-26

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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.

If you have any questions, please contact us: elearning@aber.ac.uk.

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.

You can book your place on all the other sessions in this E-learning Essentials series via this link.

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.

You can book your place on all the other sessions in this E-learning Enhanced series via this link.

E-learning Excellence

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.

The 4 sessions are:

Exemplary Course Design

Exemplary Assessment Design

Exemplary Interaction and Collaboration

Exemplary Learner Support

You can book your place on all the other sessions in this E-learning Excellence series via this link. Other sessions include Submitting an Exemplary Course Award.

If there are any other training topics that you’d like us to consider for Semester 2, please contact us.

Learning Object Repository Policy

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Policies and Information

In April, Blackboard introduced the Learning Object Repository [LOR] – we wrote about this in our monthly update blog. We also recently added Generative AI Assessment statements into the Repository for staff to use.

We have now written an LOR Policy for colleagues who are interested in adding content to the Repository for others to use.

The LOR allows us to create items centrally for colleagues to copy into their courses and organisations. LOR items can be updated, applying changes to content items across all courses and organisations. For more information, see the Blackboard help site.

The LOR is ideal for standardised content that is required across many courses. For example:

  • Standard items to be included in courses
  • Policies
  • Support information
  • Generative AI statements
  • Skills guidance and support

If you have any questions about the LOR or the new Policy, please contact us (elearning@aber.ac.uk).