Latest posts from the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit blog

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Providing accessible learning materials helps everyone to learn. Using some basic tools and making some small changes to your documents can make a big difference to students with disabilities. Today (15th May) is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, so it’s a good day to see what you can do to improve the accessibility of materials in […]

Weekly Resource Roundup – 13/5/2025

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 […]

Handwriting guidance

We know that some staff use handwritten documents in lectures – these may be for working through calculations, or to demonstrate a process, or to draw a graph. When you upload these to Blackboard, they tend to have a low Ally score as they aren’t accessible for some users. Here are some ways that you […]

Weekly Resource Roundup – 8/5/2025

13th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Programme Announcement

We are delighted to announce the programme for the University’s 13th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference. The Conference is taking place between Tuesday 8 and Thursday 10 July. Tuesday 8 July will be online, with sessions in person on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 July. You can see the full programme on our webpages and […]

External Speaker Announcement: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Professor John Traxler

We’re delighted to confirm our next external speaker for this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference. We’ve previously announced our keynote, Neil Currant, and Professor Lee Elliot Major and Beth Brooks from the University of Exeter, and Higher Education Partners. Now, we’ve also got Professor John Traxler joining us for a special panel discussion on […]

Weekly Resource Roundup – 1/5/2025

External Speaker Announcement: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Higher Education Partners

We’re delighted to be joined by colleagues from Higher Education Partners (HEP) on the final day of our conference (10 July). Kate Lindsay from HEP will be presenting and leading a roundtable as part of the conference. Kate is currently SVP of Academic Services at HigherEd Partners, working with UK Universities to grow their capacity […]

What’s new in Blackboard May 2025

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 Back in November we launched AI Conversations. The AI Design Assistant can now auto-generate AI Conversations. AI Conversations are conversations between […]

Resuming Panopto Recordings

Have you ever pressed stop on a Panopto recording rather than pause? Or realised there was something you forget to say in your recording? Did you know you can resume any finished Panopto recording, and add more to it? You can do this from any computer that has the Panopto recorder on it – it […]