Blackboard is now available as a read-only service, until Tuesday 25 July at 7:30 am, as we complete our move to an externally-hosted service. The move will bring improved resilience and reliability. Staff and students can access materials on Blackboard while it is read-only, but changes should not be made until the full service returns on 25 July at 8:30 am.
Find out more about the changes at our project page.
This is a final reminder that Blackboard will be unavailable on Friday 21 July from 1:00 am up to 12:00 noon. This is to allow a final copy to be made for the new externally-hosted service. A “read-only” version of Blackboard will then be available until Tuesday 25 July at 7:30 am.
Find out more about the changes at our project page.
As part of the move to external hosting project, we will be upgrading Blackboard to version Q4 2016. This brings many improvements and increased functionality as well as a new visual theme. Accessibility and mobile improvements will remove course themes and course menu colour customisation options.
The Learn 2016 Theme is cleaner and has ‘responsive design’ elements, allowing it to resize and reorder content to take best advantage of the screen size. It will give users a more consistent experience across devices and is optimised for delivery over mobile. Many functions that previously did not work well on mobile devices, such as discussion boards and tests, are much improved.
This theme has been created to follow accessibility standards (WCAG 2.0 principles [link: https://www.w3.org/2004/10/wcag2-nav/wcag20princ.html]) which results in a clearer design that works for all users. Good practice such as keyboard navigation and suitable colour contrast are built into the theme with no need for users to enable them prior to use. To further improve accessibility, legacy ‘course themes’ and colour customisation features have been removed. Course differentiation can be achieved using banners and images, we will provide guidance on how to create and upload graphical content using free online tools. Contact us at tel-help@bristol.ac.uk to arrange support/training. We can run bespoke sessions for a school or teaching team on request.
The screenshots below show a course with the old theme (top) and new theme (bottom):
Blackboard will be:
Blackboard was unavailable between approximately 15:30 and 16:40 on the 19 April. It Services have now restored the service and will monitor performance. Apologies once again for the inconvenience.
The team will be attending the Academic Registry Divisional meeting between 9:30am and 11:30am on Tuesday 14th March. Please use Topdesk to raise any tickets and we will get back to you as quickly as we can.
IT Services have successfully completed the necessary work to the system infrastructure which required Blackboard (and other systems) to be unavailable this morning. Many apologies again for the inconvenience. We have tested the service and believe it to be running well, but please do email tel-help@bristol.ac.uk if you experience any problems.
Please note that Blackboard will be unavailable today (Friday 24 February) for essential maintenance work. It should be available again by 2 pm. Further announcements will appear here.
Following the recent incidents affecting the availability of Blackboard and other University services, IT Services have identified essential work which will improve the resilience of these services, reducing both the likelihood and the impact of any incidents in the future.
We are, of course, aware that any significant period of Blackboard downtime will be disruptive, and are doing our best to minimise the impact. If you have any concerns or questions about this work, please get in touch with us at tel-help@bristol.ac.uk, and please accept our apologies for the inevitable inconvenience it will cause.
We are launching a new contextual help feature for staff on 19 January 2017. This provides:
To get started, click the ‘Support’ button at the right of the screen in Blackboard.
This feature will be developed and extended in the future.
On 21 July (8:00am to 3:00pm) IT Services will undertake essential maintenance work to the database that supports Blackboard. Blackboard will therefore be unavailable on that day – we apologise for any inconvenience caused. The work is being done to improve the stability of the service.
There will be a further half day of downtime on the morning of Thursday 4 August, for essential updates to Blackboard. We do not anticipate any further planned downtime over the summer.
We have been made aware of phishing scams which attempt to point users to fake versions of Blackboard. The links are in emails claiming to be from Blackboard.com. We are not aware of this having happened at the University of Bristol, but please be vigilant.
Please check links are really www.ole.bris.ac.uk . If in doubt go to the service via MyBristol or directly to https://www.ole.bris.ac.uk/.