Author Archives: Hanrahan Highland

New app launched to request teaching software

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IT Services has launched a new software request app for teaching staff. The app has been designed to streamline the process of requesting software for the start of the upcoming academic year and enables you to see previous software requests made by your school.

To ensure your request is ready for the start of teaching in September, please submit your request as soon as possible. The deadline for submission is 16 June 2023. 

Access the app and find out more on the Teaching and Student Software SharePoint page.

If you need technical support with the app, please contact the IT Service Desk using the self-service site.

[Closed] Intermittent issue loading Re/Play videos

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Some people are experiencing intermittent issues when trying to view Re/Play videos, receiving an error message stating “The video could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format cannot be supported.” This has been reported to the supplier of the Re/Play service, who has replicated the issue and is investigating the root cause. They hope to have resolved this soon.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

[Closed] Blackboard access disruption for some Internet Service Providers

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Blackboard has performed maintenance work this morning to improve the reliability and robustness of their network. For some Internet Service Providers (ISPs), this work is taking time to propagate through their networks, resulting in some people having difficulty in accessing Blackboard globally. The issue should resolve itself in time. In the meantime, if you are having difficulty accessing Blackboard, you may be able to resolve this by using a different ISP; for example, you could:

  • use a mobile phone as a hotspot
  • use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
  • move to a different location (such as on campus) to connect to a different network.

[Closed] Persistent Blackboard access disruption

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The Blackboard access issue from yesterday, which was fixed by Blackboard at source, is persisting for some users today – notably, people attempting to access Blackboard on campus. IT Services is investigating why this is the case, supported by Blackboard. In the meantime, you may be able to access Blackboard using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or by using a mobile phone as a hotspot.

If you are still encountering problems on your own device, you can attempt to resolve them by flushing your DNS, using the instructions found on the IT Services status page.

[Resolved] Intermittent Blackboard access disruption

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From around 8 am today, a global Domain Name Server issue disrupted access to Blackboard (and linked) services for some users, while others were unaffected. Whether or not you were affected was due to the route taken through the Internet from your computer to the Blackboard servers. Blackboard put a fix in place soon after the incident was observed, but due to the nature of the issue, this has taken some time to propagate to all users. Blackboard has informed us that a normal service should be restored for all users by 5 pm today.

[Resolved] Students not receiving submission receipts (and other Blackboard issues)

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Between around 12.00 and 1.15 today, a global Domain Name Server issue affected the blackboard.com domain, meaning that some services that need to access this domain were unable to. These included accessing Turnitin and Qwickly Attendance through Blackboard, and there was also a delay in submission receipts arriving (due to domain checks in mail servers). This issue has now been resolved, and all services should be working normally.

Access to the University’s Blackboard environment was unaffected.