IT Services will be carrying out essential maintenance on our Xerte server between 8am and 12pm on Tuesday 6th August. This is not an update to the Xerte authoring tool and will not bring any changes to the service.
The tool will be unavailable for periods during this time, we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
We will blog here when the service is available again for staff and students.
On Wednesday 31 July, between 09:00 – 11:00 BST, SafeAssign will undergo a maintenance update.
Learn clients will experience impacts for up to seven hours. All submissions during this time will be queued and will be processed at the end of the maintenance period.
This downtime is essential for a backend infrastructure update, as Blackboard is transitioning to a new infrastructure.
If you have any questions about this update, please refer to the Blackboard status page or email us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.
Turnitin has informed us that, from 16 July, two new improvements will be added to the AI writing report:
These changes apply to new submissions only and will not retroactively affect existing submissions.
If you have any questions about these updates, please email us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.
On 16 July, Turnitin will upgrade its AI writing detection feature to include a new paraphrasing detection capability. This enhancement will help identify instances where paraphrasing tools have been used to modify AI-generated text in student submissions. The detection will run automatically for all assessments submitted to Turnitin LTI assignments. Therefore, there is no need to update your reassessment submission points to have access to the AI paraphrasing detection tool.
Student-submitted content that may have been modified using an AI paraphrasing tool will be flagged as likely AI-generated in the AI writing report. The report will highlight text that Turnitin’s model predicts was likely written by an AI tool in a different colour from content that was likely AI-written and subsequently modified using an AI paraphrasing tool, to distinguish between them.
Turnitin will not differentiate between likely AI-paraphrased matches and likely AI-generated text in the AI writing report. However, as Turnitin continues to develop and improve this feature, their aim is to include such differentiation in the future.
Turnitin’s paraphrasing detection tool is not designed to target grammar-checking tools like Grammarly, which modify spelling, grammar, and punctuation, but rather other AI content written by large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3.5.
The University has produced guidance that has been made available to students about Contract Cheating, Academic Integrity, and Using AI at University. Furthermore, it is important to reassure students that ‘Turnitin evidence is always interpreted by academics and used in context, to supplement judgement rather than to replace it’ (Turnitin’s artificial intelligence detector tool).
We will update this blog with additional information as soon as the supplier releases more resources. In the meantime, if you have any questions about this new development, please refer to the Turnitin AI Writing Detection Capabilities or email us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.
Turnitin has released additional resources to learn more about the new AI writing detection features in the classic report view:
The DEO has recently recruited and trained a team of Student Developers (SDs) to support the move to Blackboard Ultra. Our SDs are an important part of how we will support this move.
The overall objectives for the SDs are to:
In wave 1, SDs will be working with faculties and the project to establish how best to use SDs in the major move to Ultra planned for academic year 25/26.
Each of the six old faculties will be allocated two dedicated student developers, with two back-up developers who can be drawn on if demand or skills require it.
Each student developer can work up to 15 hours per week.
For wave 1, the project will trial two management approaches for SDs:
Allocation of back-up student developers will be managed by the project.
SDs will be able to:
They will also be asked to:
The Ultra project will:
Faculties and schools will:
The project will take steps to ensure that SDs are providing good, useful support but it is important that faculty staff check work undertaken by the SDs as part of their review/refresh of unit and programme courses before they are released to students.
It’s anticipated that faculty staff will engage in a dialogue with their SDs, to fine-tune the support offered. Any major suggestions, issues or concerns should be raised with the project in the first instance and not with the SD.
To support faculties moving to Blackboard Ultra for the 2024/25 Academic Year, the DEO and the Ultra project are establishing dedicated faculty liaison roles. The aim of these roles is to be a named contact in the DEO for Ultra wave 1 participants – someone who can direct staff to the support they need and ensure the project better understands faculty and school needs and any blockers or barriers. The role will advise on customisation of central training and guidance to better fit with local needs, encourage the dissemination of good practice, and provide guidance to Ultra student developers.
Faculties involved in wave 1 will be receiving more information on their faculty liaison shortly. For all general project enquiries, please contact blackboard-ultra@bristol.ac.uk.
We are aware that some users are seeing the error message ‘Invalid or missing state’ when trying to access Turnitin. This issue has been reported to Turnitin; the following workarounds should re-enable access.
If using Safari or Firefox, we recommend that users try accessing Turnitin via Chrome or Microsoft Edge in the first instance.
If the error persists, we ask that instructors edit their Turnitin assignments to open in the same tab as the Blackboard page. To do this:
If you experience any problems, please contact the DEO via digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
The Resource List tool has temporarily been made active again by Anthology (Blackboard) and all existing links should now be working. It is still advised that you replace these links with the new Talis Aspire Reading List link, as the old tool will not be available in future years.
Due to the deprecation of the Resource List tool by Anthology (Blackboard), you will need to replace the old links with the new Talis Aspire Reading Lists tool to access the reading lists from within your courses.
To replace a link in the left-hand menu in an Original course, click the ‘plus’ symbol at the top of the menu and choose ‘Tool Link’. “Talis Aspire Reading Lists” will appear within the drop-down menu. Once created, click the link to set up your reading list (you may be asked to authenticate the tool on first use); you will then see your reading lists and you will be able to add the required list to your course.
You can also add a link within the content area of your course via the ‘Build Content’ drop-down menu.
If you are using an Ultra course, you can find the Talis Aspire Reading Lists link under ‘Course Tools’.
If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Questionmark will be carrying out scheduled maintenance on Saturday 20 July between 09:00 and 21:00.
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 users may experience service disruption. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
We are pleased to advise that service has been restored: Turnitin long loading times now resloved.
Due to an unexpected service incident, users of Turnitin and Turnitin UK may have experienced slowness when navigating the service, when logging in, uploading submissions, and accessing Similarity Reports. Users accessing these services via an integration may also have been affected.
The incident occurred between the following times:
BST: June 18, 09:20 – June 18, 12:20
PDT: June 18, 01:20 – June 18, 04:20
AEST: June 18, 18:20 – June 18, 21:20
We regret any inconvenience this may have caused if you were impacted by today’s incident.