A module site is where the learning, teaching and assessment materials & activities are found on Blackboard.
To ensure consistency of experience for students, as well as for adhering to best-practice, accessibility, and legislative guidance, it is important that Blackboard sites are built and managed to agreed standards, and are peer reviewed prior to launch.
Further general information.
The following outlines the key information and types of content that must be placed within the relevant areas of the site.
All content must be current, accessible, free from copyright issues, intuitive and informative
This must be a Learning Module labelled ‘Module Information’. You need to ensure that the relevant areas are completed and accurate.
Must contain:-
Should ideally contain: -
With learning and teaching content you must use a Learning Module labelled ‘Learning Materials’ at the top-level of the site. Learning information, resources and activities must be structured in a coherent and easily navigable way inside the ‘Learning Materials’ Learning Module. It is not sufficient to just add files.
Must: -
This must be a Learning Module labelled ‘Assessment’ that contains key assessment information, including submission points.
A fully completed Assessment Brief template for each summative assessment must be included.
Must contain: -
Other contributing staff should be enrolled on the module sites with the following roles:
Please note that Heads and Principal Lecturers within your Institute, as well as applicable Professional Services staff, can all access your site automatically.
Where an External Examiner is associated with the module on SITS, then they will be automatically added to the corresponding module site with the role of Marker. They will not be able to access the site by default; when you are ready, you can enable their access.
For security reasons, and to mitigate the risk of a Data Breach, it is strongly recommended that you do not share sensitive information with External Examiners via the Blackboard site, instead use SharePoint to control and restrict permissions, and to guarantee that students cannot directly access the content. If Blackboard is used, then you need to ensure that all External-Examiner-only content is hidden from students and that you do not title any content targeted specifically at External Examiners using student names or other identifiers.
You must check that all your students are able-to and are accessing your site.
Blackboard mirrors the student record system (SITS), therefore if students are missing from a Blackboard site then SITS should be investigated and updated accordingly (do not manually enrol a student onto your Blackboard site). This ensures that records are accurate across multiple systems. Once a change has been made on SITS, Blackboard will be updated shortly after.
To ensure no data is lost, do not remove a student who may have left or is intercalating from your module site. System interfaces will ensure that records are updated appropriately, including a student’s ability to access the site. If you wish to prevent a student from accessing your site in the meantime then untick the ‘allow access to the course’ option for that student in the Class Register.
The module tutor should be the initial point of contact for all issues related to content whether usability or academic within the Blackboard site; supporting or signposting students as appropriate.
Last-minute course organisational changes must also be communicated in a timely and appropriate manner through Blackboard, using timed announcements.
A link to the module Reading List is included with the default template and should not be removed.
Blackboard sites contain a wealth of tools for: designing and organising content; communication; supporting collaboration; monitoring engagement.
Other areas to consider within a module site are;
As with any online delivery, ALL content on the site needs to be;
To comply with the university's Copyright Licence, you should only provide links to articles and books on Blackboard via your module OneList reading list. You must not add PDFs of journal articles or books that you have downloaded or scanned yourself to Blackboard sites or to OneList reading lists as this breaches our licence terms. If for any reason you need to add a PDF to a OneList reading list you must contact the digitisation and scanning service first. For further guidance please see the Copyright and Teaching Materials page.
Where possible text should be directly added to Blackboard rather than as an attached document.
A Blackboard Ultra 'Document' item allows you to add and organise many different items on a single page. However, care should be taken to avoid making individual Document pages too long, with consideration given to splitting content across Documents, if appropriate.
Video and audio files must not be uploaded directly to Blackboard. For an efficient user-experience, these types of files need to be played through a dedicated media-streaming platform, such as the University’s Video Portal, and can be easily embedded into your Blackboard site. The Video Portal also generates caption files, which are a requirement for all pre-recorded content. Remember to check and set permissions to ensure that your students can see the video.
Assignment submission due-dates and times should be carefully considered to ensure that support is available to students at submission time.
You must ensure that the purpose of any tool deployed is clearly conveyed to the students, and that you are comfortable in the use of these tools and with providing basic support to the students.
Where Risk Assessments are required for a particular session or activity then the completed Risk Assessment form must be clearly linked for students to access, and you must go through the form with your students prior to the session or activity to ensure that they understand it. Please see the Health & Safety StaffHub site for Risk Assessment guidance.
At course completion, students will retain access to the site but it should no longer be actively developed. Content should be reviewed at the end of each delivery cycle; prior to copying / building the new site for the next cohort.
Before launching, you must view your site using the Student Preview mode, and run through the pre-launch check. Allow plenty of time to build, check and update your site prior to launch.
Before module delivery commences, assessment briefs and module Blackboard sites must be peer reviewed. The latest version of the 'Moderation of Assessment Briefs, Module Blackboard Sites and Assessed Student Work' template form can be found on the Q&S Programme Monitoring & Review page.
*Make sure all the students that are enrolled on the module site are also enrolled on the programme site you are linking-to or students will get an Accessed Denied Error!
For clarity, a programme Blackboard site is for reports and information at programme level and is not to be used for teaching and assessment; rather it should complement the separate module sites. For more information, see the "Blackboard Programme Site Threshold Standards".
For credit bearing apprenticeship, undergraduate and post-graduate provision, Blackboard module sites are created automatically providing that the instance of that module exists on SITS/ICON with a tutor associated with it.
When copying or adding content to a Blackboard site, you must be aware of the Accessibility Directive and understand about designing accessible resources before placing materials on any new module sites (indicated by Ally's green, amber and red dials on uploaded files). Where content is copied from an earlier course you must check the content for accessibility, relevance and accuracy.
The template comes with an agreed ready-made structure which promotes consistency and incorporates some key information for students and staff. The structure must not be changed or hidden.
During the first academic year of Ultra, modules that had been developing their Ultra site ahead of March 2024 have the choice of using Learning Modules or folders to organise content.
From 2025/26 onwards, all sites must use Learning Modules to organise content at the top level of the site