Now that semester 1 teaching has finished and we are moving towards the assessment period, we wanted to write a blogpost to highlight the analytical reports that are available in Blackboard.
These reports can be used to monitor Blackboard usage and engagement and help you to re-enforce messages to students.
Progress Summary
By default, the student progress summary is enabled on all content items in Blackboard courses.
This allows Blackboard to record when content has been opened, and students are able to mark tasks as complete.
To access the report, click on the … to the right of the content item and select Student Progress:
There you’ll see the progress report:
From this page, you can also filter students by those who have unopened the content, those who have started it, and those who have marked it as complete.
If you apply a filter, you can message the highlighted students using the message button.
Test question analysis
Using Blackboard tests? You can run a report to analyse the questions with:
Average score
Possible questions
Completed attempts
Average time spent on the course
In addition to this, it also allows you to re-examine questions with the Discrimination report. This indicates how well questions differentiate between students across all levels.
The difficulty report indicates which questions are easy, medium and hard.
To view the report (once the test has ended), navigate to the test and select Question Analysis:
The report will run and you will receive an email once it has completed:
Discussion analysis
Making use of Discussions in your Blackboard course? Then you can run a report for the overview which will give you the total number of active students, the average number of posts per students, as well as the average wordcount for blogposts.
You can click on Student Activity for the overview:
You can use the message feature to contact students who haven’t engaged, as well as see the top participants, and the responses with the most replies.
Course Analytics
The Course Analytics page allows you to flag alert settings for students based on the amount of time spent in the course and the dates since their last access.
Choose Analytics from the top menu:
You have two views:
Student hours in the course against their overall mark
Student list view showing overall mark against missed due dates, hours in course, and days since last access
Thank you very much to our presenters from the Departments of Computer Science, Geography and Earth Sciences, and the School of Literature and Languages.
And a special thank you to our external speakers: James Fern and Richard Mason from Bath University who gave us a brilliant overview of the two-lane approach to assessment design that Bath is currently working through.
We look forward to welcoming you to one of our upcoming events.
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.
In the December update, we want to draw your attention to the following Blackboard enhancements:
Specify participation requirements for Discussions
Support Inline and Display Formulas in MathJax
Learning Module Table of Contents
Set release conditions for open or started and for non-assessment content items
Improved handling of group membership changes for group assignments
Improved Automations experience
Specify participation requirements for Discussions
Instructors now have greater flexibility when managing student participation in graded Discussions.
With this update, instructors can specify required student responses for a Discussion topic.
Instructors
Instructors can now make clear participation requirements to students. The initial release adds participation requirements to the existing due date(s) for discussions. Instructors can set requirements on the number of required posts and/or replies for a student to fulfil the requirement.
The status of participation requirements is updated through to completion, giving a student a clear understanding of progress made. Participation requirements are linked to progress tracking, so that will be accurately displayed for the student to monitor.
This update does not affect grading workflows or Gradebook structure.
Image 1: Instructors being able to set participation requirements in discussion settings.
Students
The new participation requirements in Discussions give students a clearer understanding of instructor expectations in an assigned Discussions topic. Students can monitor their progress both in the assigned Discussions topic as well as in Progress Tracking.
Image 2: Showing the complete state when all the requirements have been met.
Support Inline and Display Formulas in MathJax
MathJax support in the Content Editor now includes additional LaTeX delimiters for rendering mathematical formulas. This update improves compatibility with standard STEM workflows and simplifies uploading exam content without changing source files.
Instructors and students can now use:
\(…\) for inline equations
\[…\] for display equations
These options are in addition to the existing $ delimiters. Expanded support improves the experience of working with mathematical notation in Ultra courses and enhances visual clarity for complex expressions such as integrals, sums, and products.
Learning Module Table of Contents
Instructors now have access to a collapsible Table of Contents panel in Learning Modules. This update mirrors the student experience and supports consistent navigation across roles.
The Table of Contents panel includes all items in a learning module. Select Contents to open or collapse the panel. Instructors can navigate the full module structure and align course design with the student experience.
Image 1: Instructor view of a Learning Module with the Table of Contents panel open.
For smaller screen sizes, when an instructor sets up an assignment within a learning module, the settings panel moves from the right-hand side into the header bar. This is signified by a settings cog.
The change has been made to allow more space on the screen with the left-handed table of contents available. Users accessing that board on smaller screens, you will notice that the settings cog has moved to the header bar for that particular piece of assessment.
Set release conditions for open or started and for non-assessment content items
We expanded release conditions to include activity on items including non-assessment content. This enhancement allows conditions to be based on whether a student has opened or started content items such as documents, media, or course links. Instructors can now control access based on whether a student has opened or started a prerequisite content item.
Key options for release conditions:
Unopened: The student has not accessed the item.
Opened or Started: The student has accessed the item.
For example, an instructor can require students to open a reading or watch a video before an assessment becomes available.
Improved handling of group membership changes for group assessments
We’ve enhanced Flexible Grading and the Submissions page for group assessments to better handle changes in group memberships. These improvements ensure grading accuracy and reduce confusion when groups are modified after submissions:
On the Submissions page, if all members are removed from a group:
The group avatar displays a ? icon.
A No members label appears.
The group name becomes non-selectable.
For active groups, the Flexible Grading interface always shows the current group members for each attempt.
Image 1: On the Submissions page, a No Members label appears in groups with no members.
Image 2: The Flexible Grading interface shows the current group members for each attempt.
Improved Automations experience
Back in October we launched automations – an automated messaging tool to contact students based on marks in the gradebook.
Several enhancements have been made to automations in this month’s updated:
Instructors
Better visibility of Automations actions
Users can now check the status of each automation directly from the list.
Each automation now displays who executed it, increasing transparency in multi-instructor courses.
Cleaner interface and more intuitive interactions, including:
Pagination on the automation list for smoother navigation.
Improved error messaging and validation when configuring numeric inputs.
Minor layout and usability improvements for the automation rules panel.
String and localisation improvements.
Image 1: There is an indicator of the status of each automation in the list (active or inactive). The last person to execute the action is stated under each automation, and an error message is displayed for an automation that is incorrectly configured.
If you have any enhancements to request from Blackboard, please get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
We are delighted to confirm our programme for our final event of the year on Thursday 18 December.
Our Mini Conference on Generative AI is taking place between 09:30 and 15:30. We are running this as a hybrid event. For those wanting to join in person, it will take place in the Visualisation Centre building, VC, 0.06.
We are delighted to confirm our external speakers:
James Fern and Richard Mason will be joining us to share the 2-lane approach to Generative AI Assessment Design that has been adopted at Bath University.
In addition to James and Richard, we have an exciting line up:
Hannah Dee, Amanda Clare and Clive King from the Department of Computer Science will be presenting.
Emma Butler-Way, Tom Holt, Rhys Dafydd Jones, Jayesh Mukherjee, and Stephen Tooth will be joining us from the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences.
Jennifer Wood and Alex Mangold from Modern Languages will also be presenting.
Joy Cadwallader and colleagues from Academic Engagement will also be joining.
A huge thank you to all the staff who we’re involved in Fix Your Content Day on 18th and 19th November. This was the first time that AU signed up to the Day, and we’re pleased to announce that we placed 60th in the official leader board.
120 institutions took part from across the world. There were 13 institutions from the UK and Aberystwyth placed 3rd in the UK.
AU staff made 125 changes to content through Blackboard Ally in the 24 hours of the competition. During our drop-in afternoon, we were able to provide guidance on headings and styles, font colours and contrast, as well as handwritten documents and PDFs. Each of those 125 changes make it easier for students to engage with their learning materials.
We’re also pleased to announce that the overall Ally score for 2025-26 courses on 19th November was 74.9% – an increase of 5.3% from the previous year.
The good news is that you don’t have to wait until the next Fix Your Content Day to use Ally. You can use Ally any time you like – it’s quick and easy to use for both existing and new content.
A big thanks to all staff who have taken the time to check on the accessibility of their course materials and made changes to them.
On November 18, Aberystwyth University will join institutions worldwide for Fix Your Content Day 2025, hosted by Anthology. If you are wondering about what this means, or whether to take part, then here are a few reasons to get involved.
Every change – big or small – makes a difference to our students. 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 Format 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).
Drop-in session open to all. Although our e-learning staff are always willing to help you with accessibility, we’ll have dedicated support available in B23 Llandinam during the afternoon of 18th. Come along and we can show you how to use Ally or discuss any particular issues you have with your course materials. And tea and biscuits will be available!
And finally, taking part in Fix Your Content Day is part of our ongoing commitment to ensuring that all students can engage with learning materials.
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.
Webinar series European Network for Academic Integrity, ENAI monthly webinarsfree 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.
When adding items to Blackboard, the Additional Tools item is currently labelled Content Market. Staff should use this to add Turnitin submission points or Panopto links.
Settings in Welsh (Offer Ychwangeol) are working correctly.
This is a temporary change due to issues with the Blackboard language settings.
Note that students submitting Panopto assignments should also use the Content Market link.
