Access to Blackboard Courses

Adding staff and students to courses

  • All enrolments on Blackboard courses are automated and managed through Aberystwyth University (AU) systems:
  • Students must be registered on the module in the Student Record (Check your Student Record)

All staff, including External Examiners, must be correctly enrolled in the Module Management System.

If you can’t see a course in Blackboard:

  • Students – check your Student Record and then contact your department.
  • Staff – speak to the Registry staff in your department.

Any changes to staff or student records are sent to Blackboard every hour, at 35 minutes past the hour. You may have to wait up to an hour for any changes to be visible in Blackboard. Staff and students must not be manually added to a course via Blackboard. If you need to add someone to a course and you don’t think you can use Module Management to do this, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk to discuss your requirements. Staff manually enrolled via Blackboard are made unavailable on the course automatically.

Staff Roles

Staff can be added to courses with different roles. Module Management roles map to the corresponding roles in Blackboard

Module Management Blackboard
Lecturer Instructor
Tutor Instructor
Assistant Teaching Assistant
Grader Marker
Builder Course Builder
Departmental Administrator Departmental Administrator
Subject Librarian Academic Services Librarian
Course Viewer Viewer
External Examiner External Examiner
Aspire Administrator Aspire Administrator

The Blackboard help site provides information on the permissions for each role.

In addition to the roles listed on the Blackboard help site, the following AU specific roles are available:

  • Departmental Administrator: access to all areas of the course
  • Subject Librarian: only used by Information Services and reserved for members of the Academic Engagement team to check reading lists and support staff and students.
  • Course Viewer: can be used to give access to other staff to view resources (e.g., for Peer Observation). Only available materials and Panopto recordings are visible.
  • External Examiner: copy of the Instructor role and should only be used for External Examiners.

Removing staff and students from courses

Any student who changes module through the Student Record will be automatically removed from the old Blackboard course on a Monday night. Any staff removed from a module in Module Management will be automatically removed from the Blackboard course on a Monday night. This means that you may see old courses in your Blackboard list for up to a week.

Contact for this page:
Information Services, Aberystwyth University, Hugh Owen Library, Penglais, Aberystwyth, SY23 3DZ
Tel: 01970 62 2400 Email: is@aber.ac.uk