IT Services will be upgrading Xerte to version 3.9 between 8am and 1pm on Wednesday 14th April. During this time Xerte resources will be unavailable to staff and students.
This upgrade brings security updates, and improved functionality including:
We will blog again when Xerte is available for staff and students.
Blackboard Collaborate has advised us that there will be scheduled maintenance taking place on Thursday, April 8th, between midnight and 4 am. During this time, users will experience intermittent availability. The purpose of the maintenance is to update Collaborate to the latest version. The new version will provide an improved video gallery for instructors.
During the maintenance, you can check Blackboard’s service status page.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Please check the IT service status page to see how the University’s systems and services are working and for planned maintenance information.
Blackboard have confirmed that the issues causing file uploads to fail for some users within Collaborate have now been resolved.
Please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk if you continue to experience issues uploading files with the Blackboard Course code and name of Collaborate Session.
We are aware of an ongoing issue with the File Upload function in Collaborate. The issue presents as uploaded files failing to convert after an extended period.
We have reported this problem and can confirm Blackboard are currently investigating.
In the meantime, you can use the Share Content > Share Application/Screen function and choose either Share Entire Screen or Share Application options during your session.
We apologise for any inconvenience and will update here as soon as the issue has been fixed.
Blackboard Collaborate has advised us that there will be scheduled maintenance taking place on Thursday, February 25th, between midnight and 4 am. During this time, users will experience intermittent availability. The purpose of the maintenance is to update Collaborate to the latest version.
During the maintenance, you can check Blackboard’s service status page.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Please check the IT service status page to see how the University’s systems and services are working and for planned maintenance information.
Blackboard has advised us that there will be scheduled maintenance taking place on the following dates:
During both maintenance periods, you can check Blackboard’s service status page.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Please check the IT service status page to see how the University’s systems and services are working and for planned maintenance information.
Blackboard have confirmed that the issues causing file uploads to fail for some users within Collaborate have now been resolved.
Please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk if you continue to experience issues uploading files with the Blackboard Course code and name of Collaborate Session.
We are aware of an ongoing issue with the File Upload function in Collaborate. The issue presents as uploaded files failing to convert after an extended period.
We have reported this problem and Blackboard are currently investigating.
In the meantime, you can use the Share Content > Share Application/Screen function and choose either Share Entire Screen or Share Application options during your session.
We apologise for any inconvenience and will update as soon as the issue has been fixed.
Blackboard Collaborate has advised us that there will be scheduled maintenance taking place on Thursday, January 14, between midnight and 4 am. During this time, users will experience intermittent availability. The purpose of the maintenance is to update Collaborate to the latest version.
During the maintenance, you can check Blackboard’s service status page.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Please check the IT service status page to see how the University’s systems and services are working and for planned maintenance information.
Collaborate use in the University has been incredibly successful since the lockdown created the need to teach online. In April Collaborate has facilitated 2.88 million cumulative minutes of online learning and been used by just under 9.5 thousand users.
Staff created 5728 individual sessions. 2468 recordings were made, with over 1253 hours length in total. A total of 8488 individual recordings were viewed.
Blackboard have made some changes to the Collaborate tool to maintain quality and make scheduling large sessions for 250 to 500 users easier for instructors. A new ‘Large scale session (250+)’ option is available in Session Settings. Previously larger sessions would require liaison with the Digital Education Office and would be created on a separate server. To improve performance, they have disabled some functionality for students in large scale sessions, such as sharing audio/video, drawing on whiteboard and Breakout Groups. Chat functionality is also off by default but can be turned back on during a session.