Recording - Celebrating Excellence, Shaping Practice: Aberystwyth University's Exemplary Course Award Program

***Automatic Transcript - not checked for accuracy ***

February 5, 2026, 4:02PM

Emma Thompson-Chesters started transcription

Carol Chatten 0:03 So thank you everybody for joining. We've got right as far around as India, right around to the USA, so and everything in between I think. So yeah, that's absolutely brilliant. Thank you ever so much for joining us. This is our Blackboard user group and. It's today is going to be chaired by myself, Carol Chatton and Shelby, who we've got on the call. And so just to kind of give you a quick overview. So this is the session that we've got coming up today. We've got Ava or Ava. I think everyone calls it Ava now, don't they Ava to the rescue AI that. It publishes your feedback in Ultra. It's absolutely brilliant. And so this is by James and team, Lauren and Marie as well. So just to remind everybody that we want to make sure that any AI note taking things are switched off. We will disable them just because it goes against approvals and all that kind of stuff and you know, consent and whatnot. So, so please don't use those. And yeah, it's just to adhere to that for everybody and make sure. That if we did, it would have to be on prior approval. So that's that bit. So about this group. So for anybody who is is new or relatively new, it's just to let you know about this group. So we are a user group that is led by the group leaders who are part of the community ourselves. We are all from different institutions. That all have Blackboard installed. I'll show you who we are shortly and but the best bit is it's peers that present what they they are bringing to the table. So it's based on real practice that's happening. It's not theoretical, it's actually, you know, happening in institutions across the globe. And then we meet on the Thursday, which is 11:00 AM Eastern Time and 4:00 PM GMT. There's sometimes slight fluctuations if we've got the hour change going on. So just watch out for any updates when it gets to those times of the year. So in spring and autumn, but that's the rest of the time, that's when we meet. And we just, we welcome questions and things and we will be going through the slides just shortly. Here's the team that we've got. So, so we've got Chris from University of East Anglia in the UK. Unfortunately he's not well today, so usually he would join us in the full. Belt of energy from him, which is always wonderful. So it's nice to have Chris on the team. We've got Shelby today. Thanks. Thanks very much for co-chairing with me today, Shelby. We've got Mary Beth, who is again is also usually here. She's transiting between places at the moment, so she can't join us today. You've got myself. And then we are supported today by Emma as well. So a lot of you will probably already know Emma from from Anthology and Blackboard and things. So thank you very much everybody. If you've got a question that you want to ask, what we ask is that if you could pop your question in the chat and just put a queue at the front of it just so. So that we can identify it as being a question and then we'll go through and make sure that they all get picked up and we kind of keep on top of those and make sure that they'll get answered before the end of the session. And but that doesn't mean that you can't chat. So if you just kind of add in your chats, that's absolutely great. But if you've got a question, pop a queue in front of it and it just helps us to identify that. That's absolutely brilliant. So there's a couple of announcements coming up. This is the the new community. Again, probably most of you will already be on it. You've probably clicked on the link to get through to it. So, but if you do have any colleagues who aren't on it, please encourage them to join because it doesn't have to be just, you know, administrators of Blackboard. Or people who, you know, deal with it on a daily basis. It can be everybody because everyone can learn from peers that are presenting. So do send it out to your colleagues and encourage them to join up and join the community. And there's lots of goodies that can be got if you contribute and if you. Reply to people and if you, you know, have your input into that community so you can get all kinds of swag and goodies and things. So yeah, that's good. The exemplary course program is is open at the moment. And so we've. It's taking submissions up until the 27th of February and and so that's the the deadline for for that and and so we would just encourage anybody who thinks that they've got you know a course that's ready to submit, you've still got another couple of weeks to submit it and and so. So yeah, we really encourage you to to go to that as well and we we can put all these links into the chat shortly. And yeah, we've we've got several winners on here. Obviously we're going to be hearing from from James shortly and and his team about about that. But yeah, we do encourage you. And again, there's like a lovely award that you can win for that and it's just getting really good recognition. So do that now the how to participate. So it was the ECB rubric was updated last year. So if you are familiar with it, you might want to have a little look and see what changed since then, but you can. you can go on to the the exemplary course program website and there's all the information on there about it. And we just ask for a few different bits, a few different things to to get it on there and and then you can submit. Yeah, fantastic. Thanks Shelby. And the next bit, so we have actually got there was a request for reviewers. Now technically that that ended a couple of weeks ago, but I do believe it's still open. I might need to check with some of our anthology colleagues. So if you did want to be a reviewer, maybe just get in touch and I'm not sure if it's too late now. But yeah, if it's if the applications are still open, they haven't picked anybody yet, you might still be able to become a reviewer. There we go. Claire's just said she's not closed it. So if you wanted to get in a little a quick application to become a reviewer and again, several of us have been a reviewer in the past and it's a really great way to have a look at. What other people are doing. So again, if you have the time to do that, you do need to commit a little bit of time just to review courses. But if you do have the time to do that, I strongly encourage you to do it because it's a great experience and it's wonderful to have a look through those. So and there are lots of support to become a reviewer and videos and things like that, but those are the terms. Sales for it. So courses are submitted end of February and reviewing is done throughout March and then the award outcomes are shared in April. So it's very quick turnaround so you're not having to wait. There used to be like a little bit of a wait on it, but now it's it's much, much quicker so. Again, have a bash at it. You know, whether you're a reviewer or a submitter, just give it a go and you'll get some feedback either way. So yeah, OK, so our next session is coming up and that's from Terry Patterson and he's going to be looking at AI coding. So it's kind of taking a bit of a doctor. Strange love approach on the title. So AI coding and me or how I learn to stop worrying and love programming. So yeah, and that's a great session coming up from him in a fortnight. Now I realized that I had the wrong title on that first one. This is the actual proper title. I thought James was very, very polite then going. That's not my title. I don't know how that hasn't been updated. I'm sorry.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 7:37 I I thought I I was like, oh, I don't know if I can present on that. Uh, but yeah, this is the title.

Carol Chatten 7:40 I would even as I was saying it, I thought this isn't the right title, so I should have just slammed the brakes on at that point, but I thought I'll correct it now. Anyway, so there we go. So James is of course going to be talking about the ECP. That's why I was very excited about it and why this is really pertinent because obviously we're into a prime ECP submission. And so it's wonderful to have James. I had the absolute pleasure of attending his mini conference. Gosh, I don't know how long ago it was, like last year, maybe like a little while ago, and it was wonderful. And so I'm really, really excited to hear about what they've been doing and all the. The developments that they've been up to and everything. So, so yeah, they are celebrating excellence shaping practice at Aberystwyth's University Exemplary Course Award programme. And so we'll have James and Lauren and Marie presenting. So we can. So, yeah, if I hand over to James, is that OK? You you ready to present the right presentation now? Yeah, yeah, please that you know we had that the other time. Thank you.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 8:41 Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure I could do something on Ava, but we'll stick to the exemplary course award. Brilliant. Thank you, Carol. Prinam Darpal. Good afternoon, all. My name is Jim Woolley and I work as digital education lead at Aberystwyth University. And it's really nice to be able to talk about something that's so positive, such as the Exemplary Course Award programme. So we run our own local level of Blackboard's Exemplary Course programme here at the university. I'll be joined by previous winners, Lauren and Marion due course, and but I am also happy to be contacted about this as well. So my contact information [email protected] is on the screen at the moment. Before I get started, I'd be really interested to hear from colleagues on the call as to whether you're doing. a local exemplary course program at your institution. So if you could type in the chat the name of your institution if you run this at your your institution. Maybe we're the only ones, but we'll just give that a few seconds. OK. We might be the only ones then that run this at our own institution. Oh, great. Thanks, Rob. Yeah, there we go. Northampton, do it. Arkansas, do it. Yeah, brilliant. So a couple of people do do run their own local version of the ECP. And what I'll do today is I'll give you an overview of how we've been running it here at Aberystwyth. I'll talk you through the application process for our colleagues. I'll talk you through how we assess it and then I'll spend some time. Thinking about the impact, how it's really led to developments and change here at the university and also what I hope to do with it in the future. So Lauren will be joining live and Lauren's a lecturer in law and criminology and she won a couple of years ago. It was our first year in Blackboard Ultra. She won for the course. Dispute resolution in contract and taught and last year's winner, Mary Dunning from the Department of English and Creative Writing and Lifelong Learning won last year and she's done a recording for us. So we'll take a look at some of the exemplary practice that's been going on, but since we've been running it for four since 2014, we've had. Over 50 courses across the university engaged with the process. We run it once a year, so we run it. Deadline for colleagues is the end of January, so we just closed it for this year and it was really brought back to Aberystwyth from Blackboard conference by my colleague Mary Jacob. Set up the award and I've been running it for the past eight years. So in that time we've had colleagues from Lifelong Learning who deliver small five credit modules to the community asynchronously and some are run hybrid as well. They've won it. The majority of our applicants are on campus deliverers, but we do have some remote and distance learning courses that have won and we are a bilingual institution here at Aberystwyth. So Welsh language courses and English language courses have both applied as well. We've had large courses, small courses and each. Faculty has been represented through its history. So what I'm saying is that it's a really versatile programme for colleagues involved in all kinds of different teaching types. For the applicant themselves, much like the ECP, they self-assess before they they submit their application. Again, it's about driving forward that enhancement. It's allowing them to reflect on their practice and really think about what they might want to improve. So this is open to. All colleagues and we do have some colleagues that engage with the rubric, make some changes, but don't go forward to submit an application. So it is really about driving forward that enhancement. They complete the rubric and assess against the four areas, course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment and learner support. Then they submit their application form to us. There we go. We've got the goals and objectives. Now we do, we do tweak the Blackboard ECP, so we do amend it to meet our institutional aims and goals. So we do change it a little bit and make sure that we're using language that our colleagues are used to as well. So once we're training, when we're training colleagues on on getting ready to submit an exemplary course award, we do give them some advice. So we advise them to look at the course from the student's perspective. I think that when you're creating course content with as an instructor with edit mode on, it can be. A little bit tricky to see how your course flows, so we encourage them to engage with that student preview feature. We really emphasise that we're after quality here and not quantity. We don't want a course that has just got tests and journals and discussions on it and people using the wrong tool for the wrong type. Of activity. So, so for colleagues, we're really emphasizing that it's we're after a well designed activities, a well designed course environment. We're making sure as well that their materials accessible and this has been a big improvement for us since we've been in ultra to make sure that the material isn't hidden. In too many nested folders, we advise them to use release conditions to permit targeted materials, and we've got a whole range of merged modules across the institution, and because we teach in English and Welsh, we might want to target materials to a particular language. Or we might want to target alternative assessments to a particular group of students. And what's useful about the exemplary course program and took a little bit of a while to change the mindset is it's not actually about Blackboard. Well, it is, but it's more than that. It's about that course design around Blackboard as well and getting people. To design some really great assessments and thinking about how they integrate and how they achieve those in Blackboard. So to support colleagues with submitting an exemplary course award application, we run a series of training sessions for them. So we run a submitting an exemplary course session and this really prepares them for getting ready to submit the application. So we go through the process with them, but they also start reviewing their own course in that session and we share with them some best practice from other colleagues that have won it in the past. This year I've done something new as well. So I've designed some new sessions which have very much been led by these those four areas. So we run a design session on exemplary course design. We run a teaching session on exemplary interaction and collaboration, a separate one on assessment design and then. Another one on exemplary learner support as well and we're really using the rubric there to help to advise colleagues on how to improve their their current practice. So that's something we tried this year and there has been quite good uptake and again it's about driving forward that enhancement, those enhancement activities. And previous winners share their experience and we make those courses available to colleagues if they wish. And as part of the application process, they can request illuminate reports from ourselves and see how their students are using the courses. And we make sure as well that they are encouraged to use analytics and data to help inform their reviewing process, but also to help think about what those 3 exemplary practices are. So by default here we've got course progress enabled on all courses. And that's been useful for colleagues to see how their students are navigating their courses. Colleagues can also submit a module MOT for us from for from us as well. So we can review their modules from give some ideas, some tweaks, some things on what they might want to, what they might want to change. So we do do some support to help colleagues to be able to submit some exemplary course awards. We've also asked them to specify those three standout exemplary practices, and this is really for both themselves to think about what they're doing great, but also for our panel. To start to think about what areas of the course they might want to look at. So where do the do the applicants want the course reviewers to pay attention to? What is it that they're looking for there? And we we do give colleagues the option to either put in the 1000 word summary or an 8 minute Panopto. Recording as well. So over the past few years, we've had some great exemplary practice examples. A lot of colleagues have focused on course content accessibility. So I'll talk more about that when I speak about Ally in a few slides time, but thinking about kind of accessible course design as a university. We're approaching 30% of our student cohort having a learning difference. So accessibility is very much at the heart of our design principles and we've had some great practices on in class exercises and how they are, how their presence is in their blackboard courses as well. So how we're replicating. The activities we're doing in class in the Blackboard course. Other colleagues have focused on structured and consistent design, which we've then been able to take forward into things like our course templates. Colleagues as well have used some amazing strategies for announcements and messaging to really. Encourage students to engage with the course and now that we've got Ava as well, we'd be looking to do some work with colleagues to make use of that feature. Had some great active and scenario based learning and then some really fantastic authentic assessment design, preparation and guidance and thinking about how that is. Present in the Blackboard course. In terms of the assessment process, the mechanics of this, once colleagues submit their application, we create a copy of the course and then we've got a panel of experts that are enrolled on that as students. OK, so we don't enroll the panel on live courses, we we create that copy. And these panel of experts are made-up of senior teaching leaders. We've also got previous winners and we've got the student represented as well. So we've got our students union who also engage in this process. The panel read the applications, they assess the course against the criteria, against the rubric and and then the panel meet to to deliberate. They can we compile their scores and we amalgamate those when they're going through the the rubric there in that deliberation. The panel choose to award the winner, the exemplary course award winner. There have been times where there have been multiple winners where we haven't been able to separate the course. There have been times also when we there's been no winners. So, so yeah, we we have that discussion. We also give highly commendeds out and commendeds as well. One of the best things about the process for us is that the panel provide feedback to the applicants on the strongest aspects of the module and also areas for improvement. So again, it's taking it beyond just the award itself and thinking about how we might enhance that practice, how colleagues might enhance our own teaching in the future. Future. So they get that from my team, we compile that, but they also get some feedback from our Pro Vice Chancellor for Education and Student Experience and that has really helped to bolster the significance of this award as well. In terms of impact, there's many benefits for our applicants, so they get to think about and reflect on what it is they're doing well. This is a really positive program to engage with. So, So yeah, they get to reflect on that. It's also got other benefits for them as well. So if it can be used as evidence for a senior fellow application with advanced HE and it can also be used for academic promotions as well. We've got a mixture of different contract types of lecturers here at Aberystwyth, from teaching and scholarship through to teaching and research. And it's great for those colleagues who are engaging with teaching and scholarship contracts to be able to have something that demonstrates evidence of good practice. And for the panel members, they get to see what's happening in other departments. Sometimes I think that we're often kind of in departments or they're in their academic departments, they don't necessarily see some good practice from elsewhere. Where you know, part of that's my job to make sure that we are sharing that good practice. But for the panel members themselves, they get to see what kind of things are happening and and where we've used the exemplary course award recipients in a number of external reports. So we've got MEDA in Wales, which is our kind of governing body for tertiary education in England. It's the Office for Students. So we use some of the practice that we see in exemplary course courses to report back to them as to the brilliant practice that's happening on campus here. We've used it as case studies, so when we are looking at things like a great discussion activity and that we've come across the exemplary course award, we use that to promote that as a case study. We've also updated our course templates based on some of the practice we've seen in in exemplary. Course award. So some of this great student guidance that we've got out there, we've bought that into course templates. It also gives us the opportunity to think about what good looks like for our institution to create a benchmark here and for that benchmark to start becoming kind of normative practice and as well. And for colleagues who see these modules, it's a really great example to see, to think about how can I achieve that. So it provides some great examples for for colleagues that might be new to teaching, might be new to designing their virtual learning environment. We've got actually got some off the shelf examples that we can share with them. So it's really important or I found it's been really important to celebrate the success of the exemplary course award and I think that's why it's run for so long here locally at our institution. We've celebrated it at our student graduations before where recipients have got their, got their. Kind of certificates on stage. We've done a number of university celebration events as well from dinners. It's been folded into other reward and recognition activities. Carol mentioned she spoke last year at my mini conference on the exemplary course award. And we do fold this into our education and student experience conferences as well, giving colleagues the opportunity to share their practice with others, but also as the opportunity to share that great practice amongst amongst the rest of the staff community. It's been in local news and press here. Used it on open and visit days to showcase the best practice with teaching to say that actually we're doing some brilliant, brilliant work here and departments have used it in their publicity as well. So I would say that if you're considering doing the exemplary course award at your institutions that you think to about how you're going to. Collaborate that success as well. It's quite, it's quite easy and I find it quite easy to think, right, the applications are in, the winners have been notified and that's kind of it done, but it's about building that community around it. So we review this every year. This is not just like we take the exemplary course programme rubric off Blackboard's website and we just pop that out there. We do. We do review it every year and since I've taken over it, I've reduced the number of criteria. So do feel free to edit the ECP and make it work for you and your institute. I found that colleagues were spending too long kind of well. Well, there was a barrier to them completing the application form because it was so lengthy. The other thing that I've done as well is I've removed the self scoring element. So when I started looking after the ECA the first year I did it. And colleagues were scoring themselves out of the five for one criteria, 4 for another criteria. And I was finding that, you know, had these kind of 50 pieces of criteria and I was in this panel and people were discussing or should it be a three or should it be a four for this? And I did away with that and now it's all or nothing kind of the. If the applicant thinks they achieve it or they don't achieve it, then they get the points allocated to that and same with the panel as well. If they think the module achieves that criteria then then it's a yes. So we've removed that kind of self scoring. I've reduced the word count for the exemplary practices. Colleagues were expected to write maybe I think 3000 words initially, 1000 for each criteria, but now it did away with that. So now it's just 1000 words for all those 3 exemplary practices about lowering the barriers to application. We've also updated our required minimum presence. So we have a baseline standard across all courses and we've updated our required minimum presence based on some of this exemplary practice. So this is what I mean about driving forward and the excellence here is about kind of taking what's exemplary and making that every day so that all our students can benefit. So we were a little bit late to the party, I think with Blackboard Ally. But now in our baseline, all our courses need to be achieving 70% Ally score. And for the exemplary course award, we're looking for them as a minimum to get 85%. One of the things that I often think. About with the or I often ask the panel about is are there any issues with us replicating this as exemplary practice across the university? You know, kind of making sure that it's applicable for for all and for everyone. I don't stop developing this, so I do have some ideas for how I want to change it to. Future and I'd be really interested to hear from colleagues as well if they've got any suggestions too. So one thing I feel that's missing for me is a student voice aspect. How can we create a process in the future that would include students feeding in or nominating courses for for the recognition here? I am also considering taking those four areas of activity, course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment and learner support. I'm creating awards just based on those those four. So people can still go for the exemplary course award as a whole, but if they don't have to enough time or they're thinking about. They've got something really great that's just assessment based and they want to put that forward. How can we enable that? And I do need to encourage more people to apply to Blackboard's ECP program as well. So, so really kind of upping, upping the level there, the level of applications from from our institution. I've got some tips for successful implementation. I think it's really important to get that institutional buy-in. So making sure that your senior leaders are aware that you're running or thinking about running this type of activity. Fold it into other reward and recognition schemes across your university as. As well, again, just kind of building it into that business as usual. I've got built into business as usual on the screen there, but thinking about kind of normalizing it. So building in those celebrations, building in that training, building in that application process. Outline the benefits to individuals, course teams and departments. So this has played played into senior fellowship applications, academic promotions before as evidence of good exemplary practice across the university and draw on those examples and best practice in your day-to-day jobs as well. So bring the exemplary course. Practice into kind of when you talk about discussions, build up those case studies, um there or or other blackboard tools as well. Um. So I'm hoping my colleague Lauren, searching Lauren Criminology has joined the call. Yes. And so I, if it's all right with you, Lauren, I'm going to hand over to you to demonstrate your award-winning dispute resolution in con.

Lauren Harvey [lah26] (Staff) 29:44 Bye.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 29:53 Tracked and taught.

Lauren Harvey [lah26] (Staff) 29:55 Thank you, Jim. Can everybody hear me? OK, just to start with? Yeah. OK, let me share. Oh, it's been a while since I've done anything online, to be honest. So share my screen, OK. One second, I'll just share my PowerPoint. Sorry, my second screen isn't working at the moment, so I'm just working off one screen, which makes online stuff a lot more difficult. I will share this one. OK, can everybody see my screen OK?

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 30:35 Yeah, we can see the team. Yeah, brilliant.

Carol Chatten 30:35 Uh, yes. Yeah, it should. Yeah, that's perfect.

Lauren Harvey [lah26] (Staff) 30:37 Yeah, OK, let me just get my slides up. There we go. OK. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for having me today. Thank you, Jim, for inviting me to this. It's really nice actually to kind of look back to when Jim asked me to do this. It was a couple of years ago now that I was very privileged, but very privileged to win the exemplary course award at Aberystyth University and it was really nice actually to reflect. Look back not just on the process and what came after that, but also as well how I've kind of developed the module since then as well. So it's been a really valuable process for me as well. So looking back, I kind of identified 3 exemplary practices as part of the application process. So what I really drew out from my module, which I'm going to show you in a moment and do a little module tour, was first of all was a kind of learner support and communication. So I should mention that the module that I'm going to be demonstrating today, it was one of our I work as a lecturer in law and criminology and I work mainly on law and practice. Practice modules. So we have a programme of six law in practice modules that are intended to be very practice based and they're intended to prepare students for the solicitors qualifying exam. OK, so it's really important that they are very much hands on kind of practice based, looking at real world kind of authentic legal skills. And because this is quite different from the kind of academic, traditional academic subjects that they're normally taught, I wanted to make sure that there was a lot of support provided to them through Blackboard and also through the workshops as well. The assessments as well, I wanted to make sure they were authentic and I wanted to very much prepare. A lot of guidance which I will show you in a moment in Blackboard and also as well I wanted to make sure that the workshops and that the teaching style was very active and scenario based. So my kind of module aims in terms of kind of designing Blackboard and designing the teaching and that was to give them a lot of induction guidance to the module. And to Blackboard itself, a lot of kind of communication with them using kind of Blackboard announcements, lots of helpful links and lots of. I wanted to make Blackboard as easy to navigate as possible, very visual, very consistent, everything clearly labeled, very accessible. Giving them lots of schedules so they know where they are in the module. I also wanted to give them opportunities as well to feedback to me kind of before the sort of end of semester surveys come into play, but anything that wasn't kind of working out for them at that point that I could address earlier on in the module. I wanted to give them lots of support and guidance, lots of practical and collaborative learning experiences, authentic legal practice activities and lots of scenario based learning. So what I think I'll do is I will just pop off my slides and just show you around the module and pick out those kind of main. Things that were part of my aims. OK. So is that about the right kind of level of zoomed in? Do you want me to zoom in or out at all? Does that work for everybody? That OK? Yeah. OK. So this is the module. This is this year's version. So it might be slightly different, but hopefully a little bit enhanced based on the feedback I had.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 33:51 That looks good, Lauren. Yeah, yeah.

Carol Chatten 33:52 Looks good.

Lauren Harvey [lah26] (Staff) 34:01 And I do make use of the learning modules. I really like the learning modules in Blackboard because they're kind of really visual. They can scroll through them. Quite a nice way to sort of to divide up your of the different topics and the different areas. So we did introduce like a module orientation area. As I said, this is a very different style of module. So I wanted to make sure the first thing they did was go to the module orientation materials where they had a module introduction video by me and I did really stress they needed to view this before they started the module and also a module tour as well. So just basically what I'm doing now a tour on Blackboard so they know how to find things. As well as the handbook and the learning outcomes. So when I did create this module, we just moved to Blackboard Ultra as well. So I wanted to give them some guidance on kind of how technology was going to be used on this module and so just giving them some guidance on Ultra. How they can find Panopta captions on Blackboard, how accessible the module is, how they can download file formats and how they can subscribe to the Q&A forums that I use as well. So try to just make it as accessible and as easy as possible for them to use the technology. And I also put a Q&A discussion forum as well module, so they can ask kind of any questions at all. Generally speaking, the students don't tend to use this for kind of general questions, they tend to e-mail me, but for the assessment questions, they are quite heavily used as well. So under module information then I've given them quite a clear module schedule and so it's kind of colour coded by what topic we're going to be covering. Anything in red is assessment related as well. So you can see that I interspers quite a lot of assessment sort of help guidance preparation as well throughout the module. And it just tells them what week they're going to be doing what and who's teaching what. And I must admit I rely quite heavily on this schedule myself as well to see where I am and what I'm doing in terms of the module. So again, teaching staff contacts, I think it's really important that they know who's going to be teaching them on the module. It's quite visible how they can get hold of them and any of their office location and working hours as well. And then the student voice section. So this has actually had, I'm going to talk about the impact shortly, but this has actually been quite, it was quite a success and. I was quite hit with the panel and also with wider implications afterwards as well. So in our NSS it was always coming out that students didn't really know how they could provide feedback on their module, who their academic reps were. So I just popped this kind of content item and basically given them a link to provide module feedback and an honest. Anonymous one if they wanted it, telling them how I change things or what I've done as a result of the module survey from last year, telling them who their academic reps are and how they can provide feedback to them, and then telling them how they can provide feedback to the wider university as well. And then there's that link to that module feedback as well. So in terms of kind of assessment material. Tried to give them a lot of assessment guidance. As I say, this is a very different kind of more legal practice based assessment than they were used to, so I've given them. The learning outcomes, this is the information that I gave them from one of the workshops on the the the guidance, any recordings on that, but also wanted to give them some general assessment guidance as well. So we've got a Q&A forum there. That they can ask any questions. You can see this one was much more heavily used and what I do is that anybody asked a question was a general assessment question. I would just pop it in here so that the students can all have the benefit of the of that information. And then our general policies, things like a I unacceptable academic practice, referencing, legal research, extensions, special circumstances, assessment skills, those all come under the kind of general assessment policies. So lots of information, but trying to present it to them in a way that is really easy for them to kind of locate. Exactly what they need and make it really clear for them as well. So looking more kind of the learning content now I'll just show you one of my areas that I teach civil litigation practice and what I did was put a under the learning module, put a learning folder in for each of the topics that I teach. Teach and very much used a very consistent and similar structure for each one of those, so the students know exactly how to find things and and what they can expect. And basically I put a link to the specific reading list just for that topic, as well as the general reading list at the top. I would give them any pre workshop materials, so the workshop outcomes and any preparatory work that I wanted them to do in advance of the workshop and then anything to do with the actual workshop itself would go in this area, so that would be the workshop slides. The recordings. And then the activities that we do. So you can see that the answers are in here now, but obviously the answers went in here to begin with. After the workshop, the answers go in. So the idea is they can return to these workshop activities again and again as a kind of a revision exercise and consolidation. And then I'd make use of a Blackboard test at the end of each workshop topic, just to kind of consolidate for them and to practice their final assessment, which was a Blackboard test as well. And as I say, this was kind of a consistent structure that I used throughout all of the topics. Something I've added in since the ACA is a module revision and consolidation, so a checklist for them in terms of what they need to be, make sure that they know for the final exam and all of the kind of practice tests. So that they can have as much practice as possible of the final assessment, all in kind of one area. I did put a section in on graduate skills and employability as well. So how does specifically this module prepare me for a career in legal practice? So it's it's basically reminding them to keep a portfolio of all the practical work they do, the module skills that they're gaining, and employability skills as well they're gaining on this module. And then finally then we've got a section right at the bottom, just general learner support links that kind of from the wider university that are not so module specific, but how can they find Technical support and support for their academic skills, anything on advice, health and well-being and the library services as well. So just general information. And. And lastly as well, you can see from the announcements that I do keep in regular contact with them. So they have a lot of information through announcements just so that they kind of clear communications on what they should be doing and when and hopefully positive communications for them as well. So that is my kind of my module in a very kind of a brief overview and I just wanted to finish off really by just very quickly talking about the impact that I felt from going through that process. OK, so I felt that this was an extremely valuable process to have gone through. I'm asking you to kind of identify 3 exemplary practices from your module and to judge your own module against those four key areas of learning and teaching. It really is a great opportunity for kind of reflection on your module. See what needs enhancing, see where those. The weak areas are, I must admit, at one point when I was over the summer and I kind of looked beneath the surface of my module when I was preparing for the ECA and I realised that one of my colleagues didn't use any kind of headings or styles in their PowerPoints and I had to remedy all of that. I was questioning my sanity at that point. But I think you've got to keep in mind why you're doing this. It's not just to win a competition. The idea is you're going to enhance your module and it's much better for the students. Someone might really be actually trying to read that with a screen reader, so the fact is it needs to be accessible. And it does enhance their student learning experience as well. And the top right hand picture on the screen here just shows my module SES survey. The students do really, really like this module, so I do feel like those efforts are very much not in vain. There was also an opportunity after the process as well. The the feedback I got on the module, the module from the panel was really, really helpful actually. It was really nice to know what I was doing right. It was really nice to get some ideas for enhancement that I have actually gone away and tried to incorporate into the module as well. And also it makes my summer a lot easier. It's a really good basis and I've got this kind of base level of a really good module design. I sort of roll it out on all my other modules and just then enhance and tailor that module to the individual needs of that particular module. But generally speaking, it's saved me so much time. Time to have that really good basis. There's also been some more kind of department and university wide impact as well. So that student voice section that I showed you, we actually the head department really like this as a result of seeing it in in the ECA. Kind of video. So we rolled that out department wide. So every module in law and criminology has a student voice section now replicated from my module. And then we showed the PVC for education and student experience. She really liked it as well. She asked me to kind of report back to the central sort of student. Student voice team and they're looking at kind of rolling that out on a university wide level as well. So it has had some wider impact as well. And finally it's had some even wider impact, even went as far as as Malaysia. I went out to Malaysia in November and I had updated my sort of my staff profile. I was doing some. Student recruitment, guest lectures and I actually had a request from one of the universities out there who said please could you do us a guest lecture from your award-winning module? And yeah, I was thinking how do they know about that? But obviously I put it on my my staff profile and they'd obviously be like doing their due diligence and looking at my staff profile in advance. So there's some pictures of the screen of me delivering a lecture from this module in Malaysia as well. Going forward, as Jim mentioned, hopefully the plan is to kind of use this or part of this at least to go towards a potential senior fellowship application as well. So overall a hugely rewarding and and really valuable. Rice S.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 44:55 Amazing. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks for sharing this with us. I know you've got to got to go, haven't you? But yeah.

Lauren Harvey [lah26] (Staff) 44:58 Bodies. I do have to leave. Thank you everyone for having me. Yeah. Thank you, Jim. Take care. Bye.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 45:07 Thank you for joining. Cheers, Lauren. So I'm going to share a recording now from last year's winner. Again, we're going to have a module tour from from Mary Dunning, who's, I'll just remember to share my audio. There we go. Who's a lecturer in lifelong learning and English and.

Carol Chatten 45:08 Thanks, Lauren.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 45:26 Creative Writing. So this is a lifelong learning course and it goes back to a slide I spoke about about the ECP being applicable to so many different courses that we've got. So I'll let Mary introduce their course. Hi, Jim has asked me to film a video in relation to my exemplary course awards. I'm not around this week, I would have joined you live, but I'm filming this video just to kind of talk you through my exemplary course award, which I won last year for my lifelong module in creative writing. So the module was called Writing Women, Feminism in Poetry and Prose. It was a creative writing module. It was my first year running it last year. I've just run it again this year. It's a a popular module and it's all done online. So when I filled out the application I decided to film a video just like this Panopto so that I could show. The blackboard and kind of talk the adjudicators through the module and how it all looked online. I felt like obviously the purpose of the application is to identify 3 exemplary can't talk 3 exemplary practices. And I felt like it was easier to kind of talk about those while demonstrating them in a way. So I filmed a video. You can also write up to a thousand words, whatever works best for you. And what I will say is before I went and filmed that video and prepared the application, I spoke with Jim because it was said that we could, there was the session that we could attend, which is what you're doing now, where he kind of talked us through what they were looking for. And then I also had a meeting just with him where he kind of gave the module a bit of an MOT and came back to me with. things that that could be improved. So it was things like adding a little bit more information where maybe a folder didn't have something written up about it. And so I took that and I I made those improvements and I filmed my video and I submitted my application. So I will just pop the module here for you and I'll talk you through the exemplary practices that I identified in my own module. Yours will probably be different. But for me, the things that I felt were most important and most, most kind of, I don't know what the right word is, but most important about my module were there was continuity and clarity right the way through. So we began with, you know, module information. Do you know what I'm showing you? I think this is the course that I ran this year. I'm going to put it back to the the twenty... 2024 course, just so that it is exactly as it did look. So the module information um had everything that the students needed to know initially, so there was clarity in terms of the learning outcomes, the assessment, who I was, how they could communicate. I know Lifelong Learning does kind of provide this now as a template as well. Um I put up a course schedule, so what we'd be doing week on week, because I was releasing new new units every week, and I wanted everyone to kind of be able to see what the plan was and and know that in advance. Um And it was really consistent. So every week I would release a new unit. I've changed them this year, I've called them units, but last year I called them weeks. Not that that's massively relevant. So for example, the first week we've got fairy tale women. They'd have reading material within that worksheets with some questions to consider about the reading material and maybe some critical material. And then a forum where they could answer the questions, give their thoughts on the reading material feedback, and then also upload their own creative work in relation to the prompts I'd given them and feedback on each other's work. So just that continuity that it was the same every week. different reading materials, different questions, different talking points, different creative writing prompts, but the structure was the same, so they knew exactly what to expect. Um The second exemplary practice that I identified was the sharing. And the engagement and the fostering of an inclusive environment. I think with creative writing in particular, it can be a place where people are quite vulnerable, where difficult conversations might come up, and I really wanted people to be able to feel safe. um within the module to share with each other, to feed back on each other's work, to know that they could share work without being judged on on a personal level, and that we were always kind of looking at the work and not at the the writer. And then just accessibility. I think I made sure that the module was as accessible as possible. Um Students who had any accessibility issues, I navigated. So at the beginning of the module, I made sure to reach out to anyone who had declared any disabilities. Just ask whether there was anything we could do to make their studies easier, and I kind of reiterated that right through. So those were the the exemplary practices that I identified in my own module, and that's what I talked about when I. Put my video together. I will also offer to send Jim my application video in case he wants to share that with you. It goes into a little bit more detail about the module. I'm not sure that's what he wants me to do right now. I really am filming on the cuff here. Can you tell? So yeah, that that was the application process. I think what I would say is absolutely engage with the team. So I had a meeting with Jim. I don't know whether it's just Jim or there's other people on the team who will talk to you, but engage with that, engage with the module MOT, listen to the feedback, do what they suggest. and submit the application. It's worth doing. Great. So that was Marie who won it last year. And like I said, we just closed the applications here and we've got 4 modules that have submitted for this year. So our panel are currently looking at those if anybody is interested in knowing. Anything further about the exemplary course award here at Aberystwyth, I'll pop the link to our pages in the chat. But I want to say a massive thank you very much to you all. Thank you, Carol. I did say when you came to my mini conference kind of 14 months ago, I said that you'd have me do that. I'd offered to do this at some point, so. So yeah, and do you want to go to questions?

Carol Chatten 52:56 Yeah. So I I think, I mean there was a lot of kind of like, oh, the other question and then it's like, oh, and James has just answered it. So I think we've got a time just for a couple of like really, really quick questions if anybody wants to to pop it in if, if. Yeah. If you want to like stick any further questions in in the chat. Yeah, I mean, I was, I was wondering about, do you have teams that submit or do you tend to have individuals who submit? Do you have teams of people? Yeah.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 53:24 Yeah, it's a bit of, yeah, we have had teams in the past and that's absolutely fine. You know, it's part of the application. We asked them to list anybody that significantly contributed to the design of the course and and see it. So yeah, we have had teams in the past and you could scale this up, couldn't you? You know, if you could scale this up to schemes.

Carol Chatten 53:39 Yeah.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 53:43 So you could look at a collection of modules and think about how that might work as a scheme design and use the ECP as a kind of a template for that, but have to change it. But that could be great. You could do it at a departmental level. We're very small here, so you know, 50 modules for us over kind of that.

Carol Chatten 53:53 Yeah, yeah.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 54:03 Pit time period is a lot of our modules, um, over time. So uh, so yeah, but yeah, you can have teams.

Carol Chatten 54:07 Absolutely. I just say it's it's nice, isn't it? When you've kind of got teams coming together with different skills and things and it's done, it doesn't just rely on one person. It's lovely to see that kind of, you know, interspecialty kind of working going on. Yeah, fantastic. And then. Yeah, I was just kind of, you know, I was just wondering again, does anybody submit to to your award and then go on to submit to the CP or does it tend to be that they do it in hand or do they wait and do an internal one first and then?

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 54:37 We really need to get people submitting to the Black Party CP. There's just something, I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's kind of people are doing it for a particular reason here and be that kind of promotion or senior fellowship application or that evidence of kind of exemplary practice.

Carol Chatten 54:39 Yeah. Yeah.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 54:57 Practice and and I try every year, you know, I try, I go, I will sit with you and kind of help you. We promote it. But yeah, that's the next step for us. Like I said in the slides for the developments for the future is kind of, you know, how do we, how do we get get those colleagues to to put in an application. They've done the work.

Carol Chatten 55:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's. I suppose it's building confidence, isn't it? So yeah, I suppose if you feel confident that you know they've been appreciated and and noticed it internally, then hopefully they'll go, yeah, great. OK, let's let's push this further then. And you know, I suppose it's like, you know, safety, isn't it kind of being in a safe environment where you know, in work and things.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 55:18 Yeah.

Carol Chatten 55:32 Yeah. So I mean nobody's popped any further questions in because to be honest, I think you were incredibly thorough, all of you. And I think there was lots of lovely comments coming through about how how great the area was looking from from Lawrence demonstration and everything. And obviously you know what like Mary said, I think it's. It's great to see what people are creating and to kind of see some of that good practice going on and what you're doing. And I think some of those layouts and especially with the development of Blackboard and how they, you know, the content creator is getting better and obviously the banners and the thumbnails and all that kind of thing. It's just great to see what people can actually do with. With the technology, so Luke's just just asked with regards to embedding the student voice, could you leverage students to nominate ECP worthy causes and using students as a trigger? And yeah, I I picked up on that. I thought that's a brilliant thing to do, you know, have that student nomination. So yeah, have you.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 56:29 I think that's definitely the next step for us. And like I said, it's an area that we want to explore that student voice, that student nomination and also ways. I think it will help us with the ECP to think about, well, how do we communicate exemplary practice because primarily we've been aiming it at staff.

Carol Chatten 56:29 Even expand.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 56:44 To say, well, this is a process, but actually, you know how much are we singing the praises of those courses. It was really interesting when Lauren went out to Malaysia and the course was introduced as award-winning at the university and so kind of, you know, getting students to see the value of that, but the rubric is written with. For staff to apply. So I think I want to do some work about how do you communicate these criteria to students? You know, do you make it? We'll need to look at making it into a different format, maybe some infographics. And then we'd also need to make sure that it's not kind of the most popular course that actually this really great course.

Carol Chatten 57:16 Mm.

James Woolley [jbw] (Staff) 57:24 Design. So thinking about the ways in which we encourage that.

Carol Chatten 57:28 Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. So, yeah, that's really great to hear Claire as well. So having that extended, you know, submission window would be absolutely brilliant because yeah, as as he's kind of saying it's good for for, you know, it's not just. It's all about all the course design. It's not just you know certain elements of it. So yeah it just it's absolutely it's it's brilliant. I'm conscious of time because we've just like reached the top of the hour. So I'll I'll I will unfortunately I'll have to wrap up because I feel like we could probably keep chatting about it for for ages. I think there's a lot more that people are are kind of. And possibly honored to hear about, but if I just quickly share the last few few slides on here. So yeah, mark your Diaries for the next session in a fortnight, which is on the 19th of February and we're going to be hearing from Terry who is a. Definitely a Blackboard guru about all things, you know, analyzing Blackboard and he knows a lot of like the back end bits and things. So definitely keep an eye out for that one for for next week. So and again, oh, next, next one, there we go. So there's some bits on there and we will get some links out. To you. So yeah, thank you very much for that. And I just want to say, could give James a massive round of applause and his colleagues. Thank you ever so much. I think that was a really wonderful session. Lots to think about. Lovely to see all those examples and love just. Wonderful to see the incredible work that you're doing at Aberystwyth to celebrate and to, you know, get it known out there about the good work that that your staff are doing and the support that they're also getting. So thank you ever so much. And yeah, we'll be getting all the resources online and we've got James's presentation if you want to recap it and the recording. If you've got any further questions, jump on the community and and ask away. And yeah, I'll wrap up on there and we will see you next time. Have a wonderful rest of the day, everybody. Thank you.

Emma Thompson-Chesters stopped transcription