*This post was sent to all teaching staff as a Bb-Users’ email in August 2021* To help you prepare for teaching in the new academic year and to set up your Blackboard module(s) ready for your new students, please see the following essential guides: Prepare your Blackboard module(s) for the new year The Prepare your Blackboard […]
Help finding your way around Blackboard – for staff and students A reminder that our staff help pages at https://sites.reading.ac.uk/tel-support/ contain a wealth of information about how to use Blackboard, Turnitin, Stream and other technologies used in teaching and learning. If you’re still getting used to the new Blackboard navigation, please check out our Ultra […]
Blackboard Collaborate and Teams meetings offer a variety of platform features to engage students and facilitate interaction. Read on for a quick overview and links to further information. If you have queries arising from this blog post, please raise a Service Desk ticket or see ‘How to’ guides for further Blackboard Collaborate and Team meetings support […]
Stream auto-captions: how accurate do they need to be? Are you making effective use of the Stream caption editor? Whilst checking auto-captions for accuracy is important, you also want to make best use of your time for the maximum benefit of your students. W3C say that “Automatically-generated captions do not meet user needs or accessibility requirements, unless they are […]
Thinking about repurposing your screencasts for the next academic year? See the following practical tips to effectively prepare and edit your recordings for reuse in teaching and learning. Should I re-record instead of repurpose? Check the accessibility of your screencast before deciding to repurpose or update. Review the content for accuracy and relevance; it may be quicker to re-record rather than make extensive edits, or perhaps […]
Should I overwrite existing Stream videos? Pros: When updating your screencasts for your new student cohort, there are advantages to overwriting the original video located in Stream: The embed link is retained (meaning you do not have to update the embed locations in your rolled over Blackboard module) Video details, like name and description are retained. Comments, likes, and view history are retained. […]
Today (Thursday 20 May 2021) is the 10th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD). Designing learning that is inclusive and accessible to all students is crucial in helping everyone to fully engage and fulfil their potential. Not only that but designing in a way that actively benefits people with disabilities improves the experience for everyone and promotes an inclusive […]
Course rollover is the annual process whereby Blackboard courses from the current academic year are copied for use in the next academic year. Course Rollover for 2021 is scheduled to take place on Saturday 3rd July. As usual, Blackboard will be unavailable to users while the key rollover tasks are in progress, from 08:00 to approximately 17:00 […]
The prefix used to identify a Group for a Blackboard module in Microsoft Stream is changing. This is being updated on Monday 19th April. The update will take place over several hours during the day. MS Stream and the videos will still be available during whilst this takes place. What does this mean? The Group name […]
Blackboard Collaborate: Help! My students end up in the wrong sessions.. Have you set up live interactive sessions using Blackboard Collaborate, but your students have ended up in the wrong session?! There are a few simple reasons why this can happen; use these practical tips to ensure your students get to the correct Collaborate room. […]
