Please note that, if a Blackboard course has both Blackboard assignments with Turnitin enabled and Turnitin LTI submission points in it, and a student submits similar work to both, the similarity scores for the later submission may be higher, due to it matching the earlier one. This can occur when, for example, a student’s summative submission is based on their previous formative submission. The supplier is aware of this issue and is currently working on a fix.
You can avoid this issue by ensuring that, within one course, you either use Turnitin LTI submission points or Ultra assignments with Turnitin enabled, but not both.
If you have experienced this issue and need assistance updating the similarity reports, please get in contact with us by emailing us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Please note that Blackboard Ultra assignments with Turnitin enabled do not have an interface to for managing permanent deletions from Turnitin’s Paper Repository. This means that, currently, every permanent deletion request needs to be referred to Turnitin, and may take several days to process. (This is not the case for standalone Turnitin LTI assignments, where paper deletions can be managed from within the Turnitin interface.)
The same applies to restoring any papers deleted in error – these will also require referral to Turnitin, and require additional time to process.
If you need help on how to deal with paper deletions, please get in contact with us by emailing us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
We have identified an issue with our Blackboard receipting tool, which is currently not always sending out email receipts to students after they have submitted their work. However, the receipts are always being stored in Blackboard.
As a temporary measure, we advise students to check the “Submitted” section of “My Marks” after submitting their work. If a receipt is not recorded there, they should attempt to submit their work again and then contact their school if the issue persists. However, if a receipt is present, they should take a screenshot, note the time, and be assured that their work has been successfully submitted.
We are prioritising this matter and have raised it with Blackboard as an urgent issue. We will provide updates as soon as the issue has been resolved.
UPDATE: Issue has been resolved. We are investigating the cause with Blackboard. Students making submissions should now receive receipts via email. Students who submitted work between Wednesday 15 Jan and Friday 17 Jan should still check receipts as described above. Please report any new instances of issues receiving receipts to digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
Students were not affected by this issue and were able to submit their work. The incident did not impact the upload feature or any other functionalities within Turnitin.
We have been informed that users may currently experience some delays in the generation of Turnitin similarity reports. However, students can continue to submit their work, as this incident does not impact the upload feature or any other functionalities within Turnitin.
The supplier is actively working to restore the service to optimal performance, and we are closely monitoring the situation. We will provide updates as we have them.
(Update: 21.11.24: This issue has now been addressed by Blackboard and normal service has resumed)
We have been made aware that the document preview interface for submitting a Blackboard Ultra assignment is currently taking longer than usual to load. Please note that this does not affect students’ ability to submit their files.
If, when uploading a file, a student encounters delays in the document preview loading, or the message “The conversion needs more time. Please try again later,” they can proceed with the submission without waiting for the conversion to complete, provided they are confident they have attached the correct file.
After submission, they should return to the submission point and click the download icon to verify that their work has been uploaded correctly. If everything appears as intended, they can consider their work submitted and record their receipt number as usual.
This issue is currently affecting multiple universities. We have reported it to Blackboard and will provide updates once it has been resolved.
On Tuesday, 19 November, between 11:00 and 13:00, SafeAssign will undergo a maintenance update.
During this time, the service will be completely unavailable, and any submissions will need to be resubmitted after the maintenance. This upgrade is critical for improving system performance and ensuring more efficient plagiarism detection for Blackboard.
Ahead of the assessment period, we would like to remind you of two issues that may interfere with student access to their Turnitin submission points:
The “Open in New Window” setting in Blackboard for Turnitin submission points
The use of Internet browsers with strict privacy settings (eg Safari with its default factory settings).
For Administrators: Blackboard ‘web link options’ for Turnitin submission points
We recommend that instructors and administrators edit their Turnitin assignments to open in the same window as the Blackboard page, as opening in a new window may be treated as a “pop-up” window and blocked by some browsers. To do this:
Click on the chevron next to the Turnitin assignment and select Edit
Scroll down to the Web link options section and change “Open in New Window” to “No”
Click Submit at the bottom of the page.
You will see a pop-up asking if you would like to change the Turnitin submission to open in a new window; click Cancel.
You will exit the Edit page; click on the assignment to check that Turnitin opens in the same tab.
For Markers and Students: Internet browsers with strict privacy settings
We are aware that people are sometimes seeing the error message ‘Invalid or missing state’ when trying to access Turnitin. This issue has been reported to Turnitin and is linked to the privacy settings of the users’ internet browser.
Please make the following information available to students and staff in your school, to assist them if they encounter this error.
If switching browsers is not a suitable solution or you, we suggest updating the browser’s security settings to enable JavaScript and third-party cookies. The ‘Invalid or missing state’ message comes up when launching a Turnitin assignment in a new browser window with third-party cookies and/or JavaScript blocked. This can be resolved by editing the browser’s Privacy & Security preferences so that it will not block any background scripts that Turnitin is trying to load.
Please follow the steps below for your preferred browser:
In Safari, select Safari > Preferences > Security > Web content > Enable JavaScript
In Firefox, select File > Preferences > Privacy & Security; if Strict is enabled, please change this to Standard
In Microsoft Edge, select Microsoft Edge > Preferences > Cookies and Site permissions > JavaScript > Allowed (recommended)
In Google Chrome, select Settings (you can open the Settings page by clicking the icon with three stacked horizontal lines in your browser’s menu bar) > Privacy & Security > Site Settings > Content > JavaScript > Ensure that the option ‘Sites can use JavaScript (recommended)’ is enabled.
If you would rather not enable JavaScript and/or third-party cookies in general, please instead add “api.turnitin.com” and “api.turnitinuk.com” to the sites that are allowed to use JavaScript / third-party cookies.
Once you have completed reviewing your browser’s Privacy & Security preferences, please close your active browser and re-open a new browsing session so that any changes can take effect.
The University will update its current offline marking tool, which allows administrators to bulk download and upload assessments, starting in October 2024. The update will not change the functionality of the tool, and all older files will still be available.
Why is this happening?
Blackboard no longer supports our current version of the offline marking tool, which allows administrators to bulk download and upload assessments. They will be replacing our old Marks and Feedback extension with a newer version that uses a more modern integration standard, called Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI). This change was planned to take place during the summer break, but technical issues have pushed it back until now.
LTI benefits
Interface improvements
Compatibility with Blackboard Ultra
Time stamps for uploads
Long-term support
Key differences
The new Marks and Feedback tool mirrors the functionalities of the old version. There are slight differences in the menu for accessing the new tool. However, the overall functionality will remain the same, and the student experience will not be affected. The key differences are:
A slight change in the way staff access the new tool
Bulk downloads that take more than two minutes to process will appear in the ‘previous download’ view
Previous downloads will no longer be available as a column in the assignment list.
Key dates
After 30 September 2024, the existing Marks and Feedback extension will be unavailable for downloads, uploads and releasing grades. From 1 October, new Blackboard offline assignments will use the Marks and Feedback LTI. Files that were submitted before this change, and to old courses, will still be available in the new tool.
How to access the new Marks and Feedback tool
Depending on whether your course is using Blackboard Original or Blackboard Ultra, you will have different ways of accessing the tool.
Blackboard Original view
For Blackboard Original, instructors will be able to access the tool via Course Tools under Course Management. The ‘Assignment Anonymity’ tool will be replaced by ‘Marks and Feedback Settings’, while ‘Marks and Feedback’ will replace the following items:
Download assignments
Download, Upload, and Release uploaded grades
Release uploaded grades
Upload grades and feedback.
In the image to the right, the items highlighted in red will be replaced by the Marks and Feedback LTI tool links, in green. (Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
Blackboard Ultra view
For Blackboard Ultra, instructors will need to navigate to the Course Content area and then click on the right-hand Course Tools section to open the panel showing ‘Marks and Feedback’ as well as ‘Marks and Feedback Settings’.
In the image to the left, you can see the new LTI tool links highlighted in green. (Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
On Monday, 26 August, between 10:00 and 13:00, SafeAssign will undergo a maintenance update.
SafeAssign users may experience disruptions for up to two hours while the service is temporarily unavailable. Once the maintenance is complete, Blackboard submissions using SafeAssign will be processed with a delay. However, no data loss is expected.
This downtime is necessary for a backend infrastructure update as SafeAssign transitions to a new system.
