Service announcements and essential information from the Digital Education Office
Turnitin have informed us that their services will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance on Saturday 25 October between 16:00 and 22:00 BST. During this maintenance window, users will be unable to submit or mark papers, or to view marks, feedback or similarity and AI reports.
Further information is available on the Turnitin status page.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
We have identified an issue with Turnitinuk regarding bulk uploading files.
When attempting to bulk upload files, you will receive an error message that states, ‘Editing has been disabled for this native account’. Due to this, you will be unable to upload any files.
If your current workflow is affected, please get in touch with the Digital Education Office at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk with the subject line “Issues with Turnitin Bulk Upload”. Please include the Unit ID and the name of the affected assessment in the content of the email.
One of the advantages of our move to Blackboard Ultra is the ongoing potential for new feature releases and updates. New releases take place on the first Thursday evening of every month, which is much more frequently than for Blackboard Original. We will communicate about new features and changes via this blog. If you want to be kept up to date with the latest information, we recommend subscribing to the blog.
This release has new or updated features in the following areas:
These changes impact instructors, students, and administrators. Below you’ll find our highlights, and more detail on the most relevant updates.
Save and Cancel buttons now appear more consistently in Assignment Settings. Changes include:
Fill in the blank questions now display blanks in line with the surrounding text, whether the question is presented as a sentence, paragraph, or table. Blanks also now have hidden ARIA labels to improve screen reader accessibility.
Please see the Release notes for more information on these updates and others in this release.
For more guidance on using Blackboard Ultra, please explore Ultra Essential Guidance.
Students can view an Ultra orientation and advice on using Ultra from their Help for Students sections (or equivalent) in your Blackboard course.
One of the advantages of our move to Blackboard Ultra is the ongoing potential for new feature releases and updates. New releases take place on the first Thursday evening of every month, which is much more frequently than for Blackboard Original. We will communicate about new features and changes via this blog. If you want to be kept up to date with the latest information, we recommend subscribing to the blog.
This release has new or updated features in the following areas:
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Below you’ll find our highlights, and more detail on the most relevant updates.
Block styling has been added to Documents, giving instructors new ways to add visual appeal and guide student attention. Each styling option adds colour and an icon to a block. The options are:
Please see the Release Notes for further information and best practice guidance for using block styling.
Instructors can now add question titles when working on questions in tests, forms, and banks. Question titles are optional, they are not visible to students and they are non-unique. Question titles are recommended. They can help with the organisation of questions and to quickly identify questions that have presented issues during an assessment.
Question titles appear when:
Titles do not appear when the instructor views or marks submissions for the test or form. Students do not see the question titles when they take a test or review their submission.
Other updates in this release include:
Please see the Release notes for further information on these updates and others in this release.
For more guidance on using Blackboard Ultra, please explore Ultra Essential Guidance.
Students can view an Ultra orientation and advice on using Ultra from their Help for Students sections (or equivalent) in your Blackboard course.
Turnitin has expanded its capabilities to detect the output of AI tools that re-arrange AI-generated text in an attempt to bypass AI-detection tools (sometimes called “humanisers”).
This AI detection update is incorporated into Turnitin’s AI writing report and does not require any changes in your assignment settings. There are no visual changes to the report or the highlighting in the report. Reports generated before August 27, 2025 will need to be resubmitted if you want them to make use of this new capability.
Questionmark OnDemand are performing scheduled maintenance on their platform on Saturday 20th September 2025 and advise of potential downtime or service disruption during this time.
Please see more information on their web pages here: Questionmark OnDemand – Scheduled Maintenance – Questionmark
New Unit Teams have been created for 2025/26. A Unit Team is created for every unit in Blackboard and students on the unit are automatically enrolled as members. Unit Directors for the course are enrolled as owners. Your students will not be able to view or access your Team until you have activated it.
Microsoft Teams are a great way to interact and collaborate with colleagues and students on your unit. Unit Directors will be sent an email with a link to their Unit Team and information on how to activate it. If you think you have not been sent an email for a course you are a Unit Director on, please check that the correct information is in the unit catalogue. You will be able to ask any owner of a Team to be added to it.
Before activating your Unit Team, check out IT Services’ Unit Team activation and set-up for step-by-step instructions on how to set up your Team. If you do not wish to use your Unit Team, please do not activate it and hide the Team instead of deleting it.
For further information, please see the DEO’s MS Teams for Teaching web page.
If you haven’t already done so, to get the best experience with Microsoft Teams, we recommend installing the Teams desktop client.
If you have any technical questions regarding Unit Teams, please contact the IT Service Desk.
If you have any educational questions regarding Unit Teams, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
From 5 August 2025, Turnitin has introduced a new AI writing score column within the Assignment Inbox of the classic Standard Assignment in Feedback Studio. This feature is retroactive and applies to previously submitted work.
The AI writing score column is only visible to instructors on the course. Students do not have access to it.
Before the AI writing scores become visible, users must first read, scroll down and accept a disclaimer. This will appear the next time you access a Turnitin assignment and only needs to be accepted once. If the disclaimer is declined, the AI score will remain blurred in the submission list.
If you have any questions about this feature, please get in contact with digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
One of the advantages of our move to Blackboard Ultra is the ongoing potential for new feature releases and updates. New releases take place on the first Thursday evening of every month, which is much more frequently than for Blackboard Original. We will communicate about new features and changes via this blog. If you want to be kept up to date with the latest information, we recommend subscribing to the blog.
This release has new or updated features in the following areas:
These improvements impact instructors, students, and administrators. Below you’ll find our highlights, and more detail on the most relevant updates.
Several user interface and navigation improvements have been made to Learning Modules. Learning Modules now include a collapsible table of contents and assessment items appear in a full-sized panel.
With the Force sequence option on, students must use the Next and Previous buttons to move through content in order. Students can’t use the table of contents to jump ahead unless they have already completed the item they are navigating to.
Please see the Release Notes for further information.
Other updates include:
Please see the Release notes for further information on these updates and others in this release.
For more guidance on using Blackboard Ultra, please explore Ultra Essential Guidance.
Students can view an Ultra orientation and advice on using Ultra from their Help for Students sections (or equivalent) in your Blackboard course.
Turnitin have informed us that their services will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance on Saturday 9 August between 16:00 and 22:00 BST. During this maintenance window, users will be unable to submit or mark papers, or to view marks, feedback or similarity reports.
Further information is available on the Turnitin status page.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.