Developing Content and Resources

Using document templates, colour schemes and imagery in your modules that are consistent with Trinity's Identity Guidelines helps to create a more accessible and intuitive environment for your students. For example, if all teaching staff on a module use the Trinity PowerPoint templates then the designs will match Blackboard's own colour scheme and make it is easily for students to parse the content of slides without unnecessary visual elements — as opposed to different PowerPoint files using different layouts, fonts and colour schemes which can clash and be confusing for students.

Journal Articles

It is important not to upload entire PDFs of journal articles or books directly into Blackboard (unless they are clearly stated to be available under a licence such as Creative Commons). Instead, you can link to articles in Blackboard through the Library — you can follow the guidance on the Library website so students can log in and access these article more easily after clicking on your link in Blackboard.

Reading Lists

You can use the MyReadingList feature in Blackboard to link to your module's reading list on the Library website. For more information on setting up your reading list, please visit the Library's MyReadingList@TCD help pages.

Accessible content supports best practices such as Universal Design for Learning and College's guidelines for creating accessible materials. When content is accessible, students can use a range of tools to access the content including using Ally to download files in a wide range of alternative formats such as the Immersive Reader option which allows students to adjust fonts sizes more easily and enable an audio narration of a file directly in their web browser.

Making your content accessible

Before uploading files such as PowerPoint or Word documents to Blackboard, use the Accessibility Checker feature to check for and address accessibility items in your content — for example, adding alternative text to images, adding headers to sections or checking the reading order. This greatly improves the experience for students using screen readers or other accessibility tools.

When you upload files to Blackboard, you will see an accessibility icon for a tool called Ally next to the file — you can click on this icon to see a report with suggestions on items you can address to make your content more accessible. Ally doesn't make the content accessible by itself, instead it guides you through the steps needed to make the content accessible.

Optimise your files

You should also take steps to optimise your content before uploading it — for example: a sample PowerPoint file containing high resolution images might be 80mb initially, but if you use the Compress Images feature in PowerPoint, you can reduce the image size to 6mb often with minimal loss to perceived image quality. This can greatly benefit students on slower connections or who use mobile devices with data limits to access your content.

You can use Panopto to create videos for your students to support flexible and innovate teaching approaches. For example, under a flipped classroom model, students could watch a video in advance of class time so there is more time for active learning approaches within the classroom. You can use Panopto — preferably via the option within your Blackboard module or via the TCD Panopto website — to create, upload, edit and publish videos directly in your web browser. Panopto lets you record videos and also supports uploading of existing video files you may have created in other applications such as Camtasia.

Using Panopto within Blackboard to host your videos means students can easily stream your videos and access features such as automated captions (which you can then edit as needed) and they can adjust the video quality or playback speed depending on their requirements.

You should avoid uploading video files directly into Blackboard as it is not designed to be a video streaming service so leads to a poor student experience, places strain on Blackboard's server capacity and requires more bandwidth to play than a video which has been optimised by Panopto for online viewing.

For support with using Panopto within your Blackboard module and via the TCD Panopto website, please visit the IT Services' help pages or contact the IT Service Desk.

The Documents feature within Blackboard allows you to create pages within your Blackboard module that can contain a range of content types such as text, images, knowledge checks and embedded Panopto videos. Blackboard Documents are key to making an intuitive and appealing design for your module as they allow you to provide students with information directly within the Blackboard module. Consider adding images and icons to your Blackboard module and explore different layout ideas.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers a solution to educators who wish to avoid student exclusion and marginalisation.

By frontloading inclusion in the design of their courses / modules, etc., UDL helps educators avoid the work of having to develop individual accommodations down the line, and helps students avoid the burden of having to ask for them.

UDL is about creating and implementing instruction that meets multiple learning needs, preferences and circumstances in order to ensure all students have equitable access to learning.

The three core principles of UDL are:

• multiple means of engagement;
• multiple means of representation;
• and multiple means of action and expression.

For more information about UDL approaches, please visit our Universal Design for Learning.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is a rapidly-evolving area of digital teaching and learning which needs to be considered when developing digital learning activities and assessments in your modules. Our GenAI Hub is designed to:

• help you understand GenAI and how it works;
• illustrate how GenAI can be used in teaching, learning, assessment and research;
• give you insight into how GenAI is currently used to enhance teaching, learning, assessment and research at Trinity;
• identify risks and challenges to be considered when using GenAI.

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are resources that are made available for reuse and adaptation. UNESCO provide the following definition of OERs:

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials.

For example, an OER might be a diagram that another lecturer has created that they make available for colleagues to share and adapt as needed.

The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education has created a website covering Using Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) for Teaching and Learning that provides examples to help you to understand, use and create OERs.

Creative Commons Licences

Creative Commons provides a way for people to share their material under a range of possible terms in a clear and transparent way. For example, you could create a diagram and make it available under a CC BY-SA licence where credit must be given to you as the author and adaptations of your diagram by others must also be shared under the same licencing terms.

As you visit different educational websites, you will often see material with a Creative Commons icon such as the example below — you can then visit the Creative Commons website to get more details on the terms of use.

If you are making a resource available under a Creative Commons licence, it is important to consider whether you are able to do so for all the content contained in your resource. For example, if you have created a PDF resource covering Exam Tips for Students but your PDF contains an image of students studying that was purchased from a stock image website, you may not be entitled to release that image under a Creative Commons licence as part of your PDF resource as the image may be subject to its own terms of use. When in doubt, use images that are also available under a clear Creative Commons or equivalent licence.

Including imagery throughout your Blackboard module can help to add visual interest and signpost different sections to students. Sourcing imagery for your modules can be time-consuming - however, there are a number of resources available to help you in this process.

Blackboard - Unsplash Stock Images

Within Blackboard, there is an Unsplash integration that allows you search Unsplash (a website that contains a mixture of free and premium imagery) and quickly add a free image to your Blackboard module - for example, as your module's banner image, to a folder or within a Blackboard Document to represent a particular concept and add visual interest to the Document.

Trinity Image Bank

If you are looking for Trinity-specific imagery, you can contact the Communications team to get access to a wide range of images of campus and student life - for more information, please visit the Trinity Image Bank webpages.

Other Sources for Stock Images

There are also stock images available on websites such as Pixabay or Wikimedia Commons; whatever website you decide to use, please check its terms of use — for example, some images may be available under a specific Creative Commons licence which requires you to cite the original author.

When we design content for our Blackboard modules, we typically do so on a laptop or desktop computer. However, many of our students may be engaging with our modules using their phone or tablet's web browser or via the Blackboard app.

Typically, Blackboard will dynamically adjust the size of your module's content (for example, images on your module homepage etc.) to fit on a mobile screen. It is still useful for you as the module designer to test the module on your mobile device to see if everything appears as intended.

There are also certain activities, particularly related to assessments, that you should ask students not to complete via a mobile device. For example, a student might try to complete a high-stakes online exam via their phone but may find that some features are not available in the Blackboard app, questions may display differently in the app or they may encounter connectivity issues.

For more information and advice on the use cases for the Blackboard app, please visit the IT Services help webpages.

Once you have developed your Blackboard module's content and activities, it is useful to test it using the Student Preview option so you can get a sense of what it will be like for students to navigate your module.