Staff and students can now use the Pronunciation section of the Blackboard Profile page to record their name. They can also select the pronouns they use. For further information, see our FAQ.
Name pronunciation and pronouns available in Blackboard
Panopto
Panopto has now been set-up ready for 2025-26.
Automatic Captions
Automatic captioning has now been set-up for all 2025-26 folders in Panopto. The language for captioning matches the language of your Blackboard course template.
For bilingual courses we recommend creating a sub-folder to hold the recordings for one of the languages of your course delivery (see FAQ).
When you make your recordings, you must select the correct language folder before pressing record. This is because Welsh captions cannot be added to recordings copied or moved from other folders.
You can find information about automatic captioning in the AU Lecture Capture Policy (section 12).
Linking to All Panopto Recordings
You can create a link to the Panopto folder in your Blackboard course. This means that students will be able to see the recordings for the course all in one place.
Finding your Panopto folder
Panopto folders for all this year’s modules are in the 2025-26 folder.
To find the Panopto folder you want to record into:
- Click the dropdown button on the right-hand side of the Folder box.
- Click the dropdown arrow to the left of the academic year folder to expand it.
- Select the Panopto folder you want to record into.
You can also search for the Panopto folder you want to record into:
- In the Folder box start typing the module code or name of the Panopto folder you want to Record into
- Select the folder you want to record into.
What to do if you can’t see your Panopto folder
In a small number of courses, the Panopto folder wasn’t created over the summer. If you can’t find your Panopto folder using the steps above, you can create a folder from Blackboard:
- Login to Blackboard and find your course
- Click on Books and Tools > View course and institution tools
- Click on Holl Fideo Panopto / All Panopto Videos
You should then be able to find the Panopto folder to make a recording.
Welcome new staff joining Aberystwyth University, 2025-26
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
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
- 8/2025 Equity Unbound, MYFest 2025
September
- 9/2025 Jisc Artificial Intelligence, AI Training Sessions
- 1/9/2025 Jisc Artificial Intelligence, Artificial intelligence and ethics (self-paced)
- 1/9/2025 Jisc Artificial Intelligence, An Introduction to Generative AI in Education (self-paced)
- 11/9/2025 Compassionate Assessment, Compassionate Assessment Practice Sharing Symposium
- 18/9/2025 QAA, Maximise Your QAA Membership
- 25/9/2025 SCONUL CIG Academic Libraries and Learning Technologies, Digital skills for students, academics and library /learning technologist staff
October
- 10/2025 Jisc Artificial Intelligence, AI Training Sessions
- 1/10/2025 Jisc Artificial Intelligence, Artificial intelligence and ethics (self-paced)
- 1/10/2025 Jisc Artificial Intelligence, An Introduction to Generative AI in Education (self-paced)
Resources and publications
- Ahmad, M., Grose, J. & McMillan Cottom, T. (12/8/2025), What A.I. Really Means for Learning: A.I. is fueling a “poverty of imagination.” Here’s how we can fix it, The New York Times
- Atenas, J., Lessner Lištiaková, I., Copping, M., & Ortiz Granero, C. M. (2025), Mentoring Card Game: Supporting Mentors with Personality Traits Cards and the PSF 2023, University of Suffolk
- Bewick, B. & Hubbard, S. (19/08/25), HE transformation will only succeed when its people feel safe, supported and connected, WonkHE
- Borda-Niño-Wildman, C. & Gillies-Walker, L. (8/8/2025), A review of the University’s approach to neuro-inclusive course structures, Teaching Matters, University of Edinburgh
- Ettinghausen, J. (27/7/2025), 18 months. 12,000 questions. A whole lot of anxiety. What I learned from reading students’ ChatGPT logs, The Guardian
- Garcia Vallejo, M. C. (30/8/2024), An Evaluation Framework for LLMs That Considers Social Justice, Verum, sine mendacio, certum et verissimum
- Hill, K. & Freedman, D. (8/8/2025), Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens., The New York Times
- Honeychurch, S. (3/7/2025), Take5 #132 The Sage on the Side, Take5 blog, Association for Learning Development in Higher Education
- Jisc Artificial Intelligence (2025), AI Training Sessions offered from September 2025 onwards
- Krou, M. R., Fong, C. J. & Hoff, M. A. (1/8/2020), Achievement Motivation and Academic Dishonesty: A Meta-Analytic Investigation, Educational Psychology Review 33, 427–458
- LCC Changemakers (n.d.), Changemaking led by students, Changemakers, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London “We are a team of 9 students as partners committed to decolonising the academia.”
- Merry, K. (7/8/2025), Journeys from Student Services to Academia with Carys Kennedy (37-minute audio recording), Talking Teaching and Learning podcast
- Merry, K. (18/8/2025), Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the Third Space with Erik Brogt (51-minute audio recording), Talking Teaching and Learning podcast
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
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
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
Turnitin Scheduled Maintenance 09.08.2025
Turnitin will be unavailable between 16:00 and 22:00 on Saturday 9 August 2025 for scheduled maintenance.
During this time, you will be unable to submit or grade any assessments.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Generative AI in Learning and Teaching: Case Study Series
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?
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
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
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:
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.
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.