Talis Elevate is a tool for collaboratively annotating learning resources, including PDF documents, images and videos. It can be used within Blackboard Ultra course areas.

Elevate has been used for a range of purposes, including encouraging close reading, promoting active reading, recording and analysing student interaction with resources, and for activities that feed into class discussions.

If you would like to be involved in a pilot starting in January 2023, please get in touch with Peter Beaumont or your Learning Technology Development contact. We will be able to provide advice, guides and training to get you started. Any modules involved will need to be using Ultra course view.

To view the full staff development programme for October 2022 please click the image below.

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Microsoft Bookings is a Microsoft 365 app that makes scheduling and managing appointments easy.  Microsoft Bookings can be accessed through your Microsoft 365 account. Launch the app chooser (top left-hand corner) and search for Bookings.

Follow the prompts to set up your bookings calendar and it will sync with your Teams/Outlook calendar. 

Some of the great features include:

• You can set up a shared calendar with colleagues.
• You can add days/hours you want to allow your students to book.
• You can tick a box to make it an online Teams meeting.
• Students will only see the Bookings calendar that you publish online for the services, times and staff you choose.

Once you have created the Calendar you will get a link that you can share with students. Once the appointment is booked it’s added to your Outlook calendar and the calendar of the student!

This is a relatively new app that we’ve not really used before so give it a try, we would love your feedback.  If it’s successful we can run a training session over the next couple of months.

Our Microsoft Bookings guide will help you get started and contains some FAQ’s.

Visit the Microsoft Bookings page for more information.

Blackboard Collaborate has seen a lot of updates over the past year. Here are five improvements you might be interested in.

1. Breakout Rooms can be populated using Blackboard groups

Many of us have wanted to set up groups before a session starts and now you can. Create group sets in Blackboard at any time then choose to use the groups in a Collaborate session using the ‘Course group set’ option.

2. Breakout Groups can be paused

There may be situations where you want to bring the students out of Breakout Groups temporarily, before you select ‘Resume’ and they can carry on with what they were doing.

3. Attendees can download the files and contents of the whiteboard

I’ve been asked a few times about exporting the contents of the whiteboard, and now there is a button that allows you to export the contents of the Whiteboard or files opened through ‘Share Files’, as a PDF.

4. Attendees are informed if their browser is not supported

Up-to-date versions of the main web browsers are recommended for the best experience in Blackboard Collaborate. Now students will be advised of this when they enter, although specific browsers will be blocked from entering.

5. Attendees can change their preferred language

Some students may find it easier to work with the Collaborate user interface in a different language to the default one on the computer they are using. This is easy to do from My Settings, then Session Settings, then Default Language.

Following the 2019 upgrade to ‘Ultra Base Navigation’ within our Blackboard environment, the institution has decided to move forwards with the transition of courses to Blackboard Ultra Course View.  It has been decided that there will be a phased approach and a number of modules, that have been identified as ‘Early Adopters’, will move to Ultra ready for September 2022.   All remaining modules will move to Ultra in Sept 2023.  

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To mark GAAD, ‘Anthology and Blackboard’ is hosting a 24-hour global event called…

Along with other institutions Edge Hill University is excited to be taking part, following our success in the event last year, Edge Hill University was placed 3rd in Europe for the most fixes.

The event is focused on making accessible and inclusive digital learning content. The goal is to encourage staff to fix as many digital course files as possible using “Blackboard Ally”.

Make sure your content counts.

Any fix you achieve, however small, on ‘Fix Your Content Day (19th May)’, through the Ally tool will be included in the count and added to the total number of fixes made by Edge Hill University.

Remember Ally can also be used to improve WYSIWYG (text editor) content, fixes here will count too. Here’s a demonstration of using the WYSIWYG editor with Ally.

Support for participation.

Learning Services is holding a two-hour Fixathon 12-2pm (19th May), in person from the Catalyst ‘Oak Room’ and online via web conference, where you can drop in, ask questions about accessibility and bring any documents you want to work on.

Are you up for the challenge?

Get involved by making improvements to your content during ‘Fix Your Content Day’. Simply click where you see the red, orange or green Ally indicators next to the content you share with your students and follow the guidance to make those positive changes.

Track the Leaderboard.

When the clock strikes May 19th in the first time zone on Earth (Kiribati), the global leaderboard is launched and the competition begins.

Leveraging usage data from Blackboard Ally, the Leaderboard ranks each participating institution by their total number of files improved out of their total number of students and also tallies the total number of files improved across all Blackboard Ally users over the 24 hours.

Earlier posts may help you on your accessibility journey.

• Featuring Edge Hill’s Build Accessible initiative.
• User experience Blackboard Ally and other tools.

Here at Edge Hill University, Learning Services offer students their own Caption.Ed account. Caption.Ed is a real-time and pre-recorded captioning tool that can be used to caption live taught sessions or recordings they produce and save to their computer.

Automatic captions can offer students a means to engage with academic content, the resulting editable captions can be improved so that recordings are meaningful to users.

It is important to note that automated captions are not entirely accurate and are not a substitute where communication support is required.

Student Volunteers

Five Student Advisors volunteered to try the new Caption.Ed app in ways that helps and supports them through their studies.

This is what our students had to say about Caption.Ed and how they are using it not only to generate captions, but also to create an editable transcript of a recording or live session, they also liked how simple Caption.Ed is to set up and use.

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Callie Horton

Callie is in the 3rd year of her BA (Hons) History with Politics degree.  Callie used Caption.Ed during lectures to capture a transcript of what her tutor was saying.  She described to us how it enabled her to fully listen to the lecture, knowing that Caption.Ed was working in the background capturing the transcript.  “This meant I could fully listen to the content rather than desperately trying to note everything down”. 

Find out how Callie has been using Caption.Ed.

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Alexander Evans

Alex is a third year BSc (Hons) Geography & Geology student.  Alex used Caption.Ed to add captions to YouTube videos where the auto captioning feature may have not been accurate and also for online lectures.   When asked about the benefits of the desktop and browser app his response was: “The desktop app can be used to caption any video, not just something in a specific browser which means its possibilities are endless…..The browser app is very useful due to its pure ease of access, once pinned in the top right hand side of your screen it can be used to caption anything within the browser almost instantly.”  

Find out how Alex has been using Caption.Ed

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Laura Glancy

Laura is studying MA English and Nineteenth-Century Studies.  Laura used Caption.Ed to provide transcripts of meetings. She found this really helpful in preparing her research notes and found the timestamps particularly beneficial.  When asked how Caption.Ed supported her studies Laura commented: “It also saves excessive notetaking, which would be handy in seminars/lectures.” 

 Find out how Laura has been using Caption.Ed

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Maya Gibson

Is a third year BA Hons (Film and Television Production) Student.  Maya used Caption.Ed to generate captions to add to films that she had produced in her course.  Maya loved using the browser version and commented how the software is “Very clear and easy to use with quick results.”  

Find out how Maya has been using Caption.Ed

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Paula Garlic

Paula is studying her third year BSc (Hons) in Psychology.  Paula used Caption.Ed to transcribe interviews which was part of her dissertation.  She described to us how it really cut down her usual process of doing this and asked if she would recommend Caption.Ed to other students her response was: “Definitely, I think it is a really worthwhile tool and I will be using it in the future”. 

Find out how Paula has been using Caption.Ed

How do I get access?

To get your free account, email a request here. Our team will process your request and you will receive an invite with further instructions on how to access the software.

Further Reading: Caption.Ed for Online Learning!.