Blackboard

Macbook, notepad and pen on a desk

How to Turn it In again.

Blackboard, PebblePad, Turnitin /

With students across the University making submissions this time of year, you will find they have a variety of questions about their assignments.

The following student resources can be a useful way of answering some of these common queries: https://uwtel.co.uk/support-resources/#studentresources

Resubmissions, Resits and Mitigating Circumstances.

As assessment deadlines approach, further preparations should be made for any of your students who need to submit assessments outside of the normal timeframe, due to resubmissions, resits or mitigating circumstances.

For these types of resubmissions, Blackboard or Turnitin Assignments must have a new separate submission point created, so that students have the opportunity to resubmit after a deadline has passed. The new submission points need to be clearly marked, to clarify the meaning of each submission point.

The following instruction pages can be found in our TEL support resources:

Blackboard: https://lttu.uk/support/Blackboard/Manual/assignments.html

Turnitin: https://lttu.uk/support/Turnitin/Guide/LateSubmissions.html

PebblePad assessments can be configured in a number of ways, to permit resubmissions. Therefore, you may prefer to contact us, to seek direct support from a TEL Learning Technologist: tel@worc.ac.uk. If you are confident with altering PebblePad assessment settings, please ensure that you communicate any changes with your students, so that they are fully aware of how they can resubmit their assessment at a later date.

Managing Turnitin Submissions

Blackboard, Turnitin /

Turnitin is our most frequently used system for assessment and is where students can submit their text-based assignments, such as, essays, reports, and presentations.

With various assessment deadlines occurring in the coming days and weeks, you may wish to refamiliarise yourself with our guide to Turnitin, and submission points within Blackboard:

https://lttu.uk/support/Turnitin/Guide/index.html

Useful points to remember:

  • Students can resubmit work to the submission point as many times as they like, until the due date.
  • After the 3rd upload, there will be a delay of 24 hours until the similarity report is received.
  • Once the due date has passed, students will be unable to resubmit again. However, if they have not made a submission until after the due date, this will appear as a late submission, highlighted in red. (We recommend using ‘allow late submissions’ as a setting.)
  • Resubmissions, resits and mitigating circumstances, will require a new Turnitin submission point to be created.
  • Before you begin grading, you will need to hide the Blackboard ‘Grade Center’ column from students – otherwise they will be able to access their grades as soon as they have been entered. (Instructions can be found in ‘Part 1’ of the Turnitin guide, linked above.)
  • Grades and feedback are automatically released to students on the ‘Feedback Release Date’ and ‘Time’, through Turnitin.
  • You may wish to share relevant student support sources, in the run up to submissions: https://uwtel.co.uk/support-resources/#studentresources

If you have any queries, feel free to contact the TEL team at: tel@worc.ac.uk

New Virtual Learning Environment

Blackboard, VLE Review /

After a thorough and robust procurement exercise, we are pleased to announce that our new Virtual Learning Environment will be Anthology’s Blackboard Learn Ultra.

This is a new version of Blackboard and provides a modern, intuitive course environment for both staff and students. The course areas are very different from our current version of Blackboard and we will be working closely with course teams over the course of the coming year to provide training and promote best practice in the use of Ultra.

The project team will be working hard over the coming months to get the new environment set up and running with all the associated integrations ready for training to start in the new year.

It is anticipated that all courses and modules will be delivered on the new system from the 24/25 academic year. In the meantime, we are looking for volunteers as early adopters for Ultra from Semester 2 23/24.

If your course is starting in semester 2 or you have a stand alone course or module running anytime from January 2024 please get in touch and we can discuss the possibility of being an early adopter. If you course has already started, we recommend staying on the current system until the new academic year to avoid any confusion for students.

We will be issuing regular updates to keep staff informed of progress and there will be a dedicated page on our website with more information and frequently asked questions. In the meantime, if you require any further information or have any questions about the project please contact Libby Symonds, Head of the Technology Enhanced Learning Unit e.symonds@worc.ac.uk.

Tea with TEL

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Girl holding a piece of cake in the bowl and a teaspoon.

Calling all Staff!

Now that term has started and the pace of life is picking up, it is a good time to get quick answers to any questions you have around teaching, using the University learning technologies.

Good news – between 09:00 and 12:00 on 28th September, The Technology Enhanced Learning Unit will be in reception at St Johns Campus to help you with those niggling queries. Even better news – there will be tea, coffee and cake!

We can help you with: 

  • Editing and adding content in Blackboard
  • Setting up Turnitin submission points 
  • Setting up quizzes
  • Online sessions with Collaborate
  • Making your teaching sessions more interactive with Vevox
  • Any other questions relating to TEL

Pop into reception to sit down, have a chat about using technology to enhance your teaching, and enjoy some tea and cake! 

Getting to grips with the Grade Centre

Blackboard /
decorative certificate showing an A+ grade

With many assessments currently underway and marking season in full swing, it is a good chance for a reminder about the recommended process to ensure a positive student experience.

Once the assignment deadline has passed, and prior to beginning to mark the work, you need to ensure that the relevant column is hidden in the Blackboard grade centre. This will prevent students from seeing their grade as soon as it is entered.

How to do this

    Access the Full Grade Centre

    grade centre menu showing highlight on full grade centre option

    Find the column for the assignment and click on the Options button (the round icon with a chevron)

    column menu showing chevron for additional options

    Select the Hide from students on/off toggle

    column menu showing highlight on hide from students toggle

    You can tell when the column is hidden as the grade column will now show an icon with a grey circle with a red line through it

    example of hidden icon

    It is important to leave the original assessment point visible to students throughout the process to ensure that they always have access to their submission. The reasons for this are:

    1. Students are familiar with the submission point in advance, which aids confidence in the submission process.

    2. Enables students to refer to their feedback to inform future assessments.

    3. Avoids panic and confusion on the students’ behalf.

    4. Mitigates any unnecessary support calls and emails to tutors, TEL and the Helpdesk.

    If you are unsure whether your submission point is available to students, you can use the Student Preview option to check.

    Speech bubble representing discussion.

    Subscribing to discussion forums in Blackboard

    Blackboard /

    In Blackboard, if you turn on the setting to allow subscription to discussion forums, students and staff will have the option of receiving emails when new posts are made. In the forum options, select “Allow members to subscribe to forum” and “Include body of post in the email” (see screenshot below). Once this is enabled students and tutors have the ability to opt in or out of the email subscription service.

    Blackboard discussion forum settings

    This video shows how easy it is for students and staff to subscribe to a discussion forum.

    microphone

    Auto-Captioning in Collaborate

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    Collaborate Virtual Classroom now offers options for providing captions on recordings, offering far greater accessibility for hearing-impaired students.

    How to Create auto-captions

    Collaborate is leveraging AI powered speech to text recognition to generate a transcription of what is said during the session. While automated captioning can’t match captions created by humans, it is an easy solution to start with.

    The speech to text service and the resulting captions are hosted in the same data center as your Collaborate session.

    Use the Auto-generate captions to have captions created for you, as the session owner:

    1. From Collaborate scheduler, select Recordings and find the recording you want.
    2. Select the Recording options menu and select Recording settings.
    3. Select Enable captions, if not already on.
    4. Select Create auto-caption and Save.

    It may take time for the auto-captions to generate. You can leave the screen and come back later to view and share them.

    Collaborate virtual classroom settings menu

    After the captions are created, you’ll see that captions are available from the recording list. The captions will also immediately appear in the recording player for anybody having access to the recording.

    Moderators can review the captions. If you want to improve or correct anything in the captions, download the caption file to edit. Upload the new file when you are done.

    If you have any queries, please contact the Technology Enahnced Learning Unit at tel@worc.ac.uk

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