Latest posts from the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit blog

Free Trial with Talis Elevate for social annotation

We are excited to invite teaching staff to join a free trial of Talis Elevate for collaborative annotation. It is designed to encourage students to engage with course reading and learn actively by collaborative and individual annotation. It features detailed analytics to help you keep your students on track. Our free trial of this tool […]

Parent-child modules 2023-24

Now that the 2023-24 modules are available to staff, we can link them together at the module co-ordinator’s request. This process is known as parent-childing. Linking modules together is an effective way of dealing with separate modules with the same content so you don’t have to upload materials to two or more different modules. This […]

Weekly Resource Roundup – 7/6/2023

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 […]

Collaborative Documents available in Blackboard Ultra

One of the great new enhancements that we’ve got in Blackboard Ultra is the ability to embed collaborative documents. For those of us who did much of their teaching online during the Covid pandemic, you will recall us espousing the benefits of loading a collaborative document in the chat. We’ve now been working to enable this […]

Required Minimum Presence 2023-24: Updated for Ultra Courses

In preparation for our move to Ultra, the University’s Blackboard Required Minimum Presence has been updated and approved by Academic Enhancement Committee. We revisit all our policies annually, but the move to Blackboard Ultra has meant that we have spent longer preparing the RMP. The full RMP 2023-24 is now available on our webpages. Some […]

Weekly Resource Roundup – 1/6/2023

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the 11th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, which is just over a month away, 4-6 July. This year’s conference theme, Transformative Teaching: Creating Opportunities for Learning, aims to reflect the commitment that AU staff have to enhance the student learning experience. We’re pleased to confirm our full programme. We will have 2 days in person […]

Ultra Courses 2023-24

When you come back for next academic year, your new courses in Blackboard will look a little different. From September 2023, all new courses in Blackboard will be Ultra courses. We’ve been using Ultra Base Navigation (UBN) in Blackboard since January 2023, and we know that many of you have found it easier to use […]

Keynote announcement: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference

The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce our keynotes for this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference (4-6 July 2023). Booking for the conference is already open. Book your place today. We will be joined by colleagues from Blackboard and Bangor University to ensure that we are well prepared for our move […]

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: External Speaker Announcement

The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce our first external speaker as part of this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference. Taking place between 4 and 6 July, bookings for the conference are already open. Michael Webb from Jisc will discuss Artificial Intelligence in the session Navigating the Opportunities and Challenges of […]