Staff guidance and support for January exams

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  • Key information for students: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/students/your-studies/study-2020/your-course/assessment-arrangements/
  • Please be aware of the backup plan in place for students who are unable to take or complete an online exam
  • Details of technical support for students and staff having issues during exams is given in the guidance disseminated by your school. Please make sure you use those channels in the first instance, rather than contacting the DEO, as they are better placed to provide appropriate and timely support.

DEO dropins and training webinars for colleagues

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To support you in teaching and assessment online, the DEO are continuing to run daily drop-ins as well as subject-specific webinars for colleagues who teach or support teaching.  Upcoming webinars include:

  • Blackboard basics
  • Using Blackboard Collaborate for live sessions
  • Creating and reusing video
  • Design your Blackboard space: ideas, real examples and hands on practice
  • Designing and facilitating engaging online discussion
  • Blackboard tests: uses, ideas and hands on practice
  • Blackboard: mark offline and batch upload feedback
  • Mark online using Turnitin
  • Manage and record teaching attendance using Qwickly

You can find details on how to access dropins as well as signup instructions for webinars on our Events page.

To access recordings of previous webinars, please enrol yourself on the DEO Staff Development course on Blackboard (you may be asked to log in to Single sign on first).

If you have any queries please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

Blackboard Collaborate scheduled maintenance, Thursday, January 14, midnight – 4 am

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Blackboard Collaborate has advised us that there will be scheduled maintenance taking place on Thursday, January 14, between midnight and 4 am. During this time, users will experience intermittent availability. The purpose of the maintenance is to update Collaborate to the latest version.

During the maintenance, you can check Blackboard’s service status page.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Please check the IT service status page to see how the University’s systems and services are working and for planned maintenance information.

Questionmark Scheduled Maintenance: 16 January 0900-1500

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Dear colleagues,

Questionmark Scheduled Maintenance: 16 Jan 0900-1500

Questionmark have advised us that there will be scheduled maintenance taking place on 16 Jan 0900-1500. The purpose of the maintenance is to deploy system updates to ensure the ongoing reliability, security and up time of the platform.

During this time all users may experience service disruptions. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

Media files for teaching

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With blended learning continuing in Teaching Block 2, it is important that all video files created for teaching should be uploaded into Re/Play and not directly to Blackboard.

By using Re/Play, you are storing your content on dedicated video streaming servers which have been optimised for video delivery. In addition to this, there are other benefits to using this service over Blackboard:

  1. Dedicated video delivery with worldwide coverage
  2. Full integration with Blackboard
  3. You can control whether or not students can download your videos
  4. Access to closed captions provided by an automated speech recognition service
  5. Analytics on how your recordings are being used by your students.

Our guidance on how to access and use Re/Play can be found on our website.

Please forward this information on to any of your colleagues who will be teaching in Teaching Block 2.

If you have any questions, or wish to discuss your ideas for using video, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

10 Dec 9am – Turnitin service back to normal

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Turnitin have informed us that the service is back to normal.  There was degradation which may have meant users were unable to view submissions and/or similarity reports, or may have experienced slowness when accessing the service between the following times:

Wednesday 9th December: 15:13 – 21:30 GMT.

Apologies for any disruption this may have caused.  Further information is available on the Turnitin service status page.

9 Dec 5pm – further Turnitin service disruption may affect viewing submissions or similarity reports

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Turnitin have informed us that the service is experiencing further disruption.  You may find that you are unable to view submissions and/or Similarity Reports, or experience slowness when accessing the service.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

More information can be found on the Turnitin Status page

9 Dec 3pm – Turnitin service back to normal

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Turnitin have informed us that the service is back to normal.  There was degradation which may have caused a delay in generation of similarity reports between the following times today, 9th December: 05:36 – 13:20 GMT.

Students were able to submit as normal, although previews of submissions may have taken longer than usual to appear.

Apologies for any disruption this may have caused.

 

9 Dec 11am: Turnitin – slow similarity report generation

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Turnitin have informed us that the service is currently experiencing an unexpected degradation. During this time, you may find that Similarity Reports are slow to generate.  Students can submit as normal, although we have seen that previews of submissions can take longer than usual to appear.  The root cause has been identified and a fix has been implemented. Turnitin are continuing to monitor the situation and will provide an update as soon as the Similarity Report generation times have returned to normal.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

More information can be found on the Turnitin Status page