Author: Hanrahan Highland

Questionmark Perception terminal server maintenance 11 April 2016

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

The Questionmark Perception terminal server will be unavailable, due to necessary maintenance work, on Monday 11 April 2016 between 10 am and 11 am. This will only affect staff accessing Authoring Manager remotely via the terminal server. It will have no effect on staff using Authoring Manager where it is installed on their own PC, or on staff using Enterprise Manager. It will also have no effect on students taking assessments in Questionmark Perception.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Issue with editing Turnitin submission points in Blackboard

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

We have recently encountered an issue whereby staff editing Turnitin submission points in Blackboard, with multiple Blackboard tabs open in the same web browser, have accidentally overwritten part of a submission point with information from another tab. We therefore strongly recommend that while editing Turnitin submission points in Blackboard you only have one Blackboard tab open in your browser (Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc). We are investigating the underlying causes of this issue with both Blackboard and Turnitin.

Brief QMP outage, 27 January, 3.15 pm

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

IT Services will be moving the server on which Questionmark Perception is located, in the afternoon of Wednesday 27 January. During the move, QMP will be available on a virtual server. Users should not notice any change, except for possibly a brief outage as the service is switched between the physical and virtual server at 3.15 pm, and a similar outage when it is switched back, which should occur at around 3.45 pm. There should be no significant effect on any activity taking place on Questionmark Perception, but the period between 3.15 and 4 pm should be considered an “at risk” period.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Brief Turnitin outage 26 January 2016, 8 am

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

Tunitin have released an update for their integration with Blackboard that addresses a potentially problematic issue. This update adds a confirmation message when a member of staff clicks on one of the “Delete Assignment” links that can be found on the Turnitin Assignments page. As deleting a Turnitin Assignment without asking for confirmation could cause significant problems, we have decided to apply this update promptly.

There will therefore be a brief outage of access to Turnitin via Blackboard at 8 am on Tuesday 26 January. 8 am to 9 am will be an “at risk” period, during which users may experience a slight degradation in speed of access to Turnitin as the update is rolled out across the Blackboard servers.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Brief QMP service interruption, Thursday 14 January

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

IT Services are preparing to relocate the Questionmark Perception server. As part of this process, there will be a 30-second interruption to the Questionmark Perception service shortly after 8 am tomorrow, Thursday 14 January. There is very little chance of data loss during this brief outage, but we recommend that work should not be done using Questionmark Perception between 8 am and 8.30 am tomorrow.

Turnitin update issue

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

An update to the Turnitin system within Blackboard has brought a new feature – the ability for staff to delete any Turnitin assignment from the list of assignments shown when you click on “Turnitin Assignments” under Course Tools in the course’s Control Panel. Unfortunately, the “Delete Assignment” link appears directly under the “Sync Grades” link for each assignment – and there is no confirmation step, so as soon as you click on the link the assignment is deleted. There is thus a small chance that an assignment could be deleted accidentally by a member of staff trying to sync grades. This will delete the submission point, all assignments submitted to it, and the associated column with all its grades from the Grade Centre.

We are working with Turnitin to adjust this, but in the meantime we would urge you to take extra care when on the “Turnitin Assignments” page in Blackboard courses.