Author Archives: Suzanne Collins

Changes to Blackboard Submission Receipts will not be Implemented

Posted by

In a prior blog post, we announced that Blackboard was deprecating support for the Receipting Building Block, which we use to customise the receipts students receive when submitting work to a Blackboard Assignment. This would have resulted in changes to the email receipt that students receive after submission.

Following further discussions with Blackboard, we are pleased to announce that these changes will no longer be implemented, meaning that: 

  • Students: will continue to receive a detailed email receipt including a link that they can use to download a copy of their submitted document(s).  
  • Administration Staff:  will continue to be able to review submission receipts stored for within the content system of a given course. 

The default wording on student receipts will continue to be: 

Your submission has been received. We have recorded the following details: 

Submission ID: ID NUMBER 

User: STUDENT NAME 

Student ID: STUDENT NUMBER 

Assignment: NAME OF SUBMITTED DOCUMENT(S) 

Course: NAME OF COURSE 

Date of Submission: SUBMISSION DATE AND TIME 

This submission contained the following attached files: 

LINK TO FILES AND SIZE OF FILES 

Please retain this email receipt. Do not reply to this email. If you have any queries about your submission, please contact your school. 

 

 

Re/Play updates and improvements

Posted by

Re/PlayAs part of the ongoing work reviewing and improving the Re/Play service, the DEO has upgraded Re/Play over the summer to the newer, more robust LTI 1.3 version. The core service of automatic lecture capture will still work in the same way and there are many improvements, but there are some changes that may affect existing videos and your future work. 

The key changes are: 

  • Streamlined and improved workflows to add Re/Play content directly within Blackboard: You should ensure you are familiar with these workflows for adding content to Blackboard. 
  • Improved integration of permissions using Blackboard roles: Provided you follow the revised workflows, this will ensure your students get the best experience as it uses their Blackboard roles to grant the correct access to Re/Play content. In addition, it enables all instructors on a course to find and edit a unit’s recordings. 
  • Improved search functionality, allowing for filtering of search results: You should familiarise yourself with these changed filters as you may need to adjust them to find what you are looking for. 
  • Older content may need review: 
    • Make sure any older content added to Blackboard is working as expected, and re-add anything that isn’t playing for you. This is relevant for rolled over content which was added prior to June 2022.  
    • If you used the now out-of-support ‘iframe embed’ workflow (adding recordings using the html editor), replace those with the new ‘embedded player’ option wherever possible. 

We have updated our Re/Play guidance – Re/Play videos: upload, enhance, share – to include more details on all of the above.

We recommend you bookmark this link to refer to as you get used to the changes. 

In addition, we have responded to the feedback and consultations we have had with staff and students in the Digital Learning Environment review focus on Re/Play and have made some further improvements to the lecture capture experience.   

  • Lectures will now be recorded by default in the higher framerate, meaning that they will capture handwriting or animations smoothly without the need to request a ‘screencast’ in advance 
  • Recordings will be made available to students after 24 rather than 48 hours 

Where to get more help and training 

You can find all of the guidance for getting the best from Re/Play via the DEO’s Re/Play webpages. Re/Play | Digital Education Office | University of Bristol  

There are also a number of Re/Play related workshops and training sessions planned for the start of term. 

DEO have new Re/Play training which you can find and book via Develop. https://develop.bristol.ac.uk/ilp/pages/description.jsf?menuId=1108#/users/@self/catalogues/1464674/coursetemplates/3160151/description  

IT Services have user guides and run sessions on the audio visual equipment in rooms. 

  

 

Mentimeter – do not use ‘Shared Presentations’

Posted by

In Mentimeter, a ‘Shared Presentations’ feature has appeared on the left-hand side toolbar as part of a recent update, as well as an option on the menu in each presentation called ‘Move to Shared Presentations’. We are advising you not to use this feature, as it shares both the presentation and results with everyone within the University. We are aware that this is not suitable for University use and are therefore discussing disabling this feature with the software provider. 

If you have already moved your presentation to this new area, it’s very easy to move back:  

  • Go to Share Presentations 
  • Select the three dots on the right-hand side 
  • Select ‘Move to My Presentations’ 

If you would like to share your presentation to collaborate with another member of staff, you can do this in the way you are used to, from the ‘My Presentations’ section:  

  • Select the three dots next to the presentation you want to share
  • Select ‘Invite Collaborators’, and type the email address of the user you wish to share with 
  • Select ‘Invite Users’ 

Or 

  • Select the three dots next to the presentation you want to share 
  • Select ‘Share’ and then ‘Invite Collaborators’ 
  • Type the email address of the user you wish to share with 
  • Select ‘Invite Users’ 

Please note that Groups are only for sharing templates. 

If you have any questions, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.  

Summer digital education improvements

Posted by

Each year, the Digital Education Office delivers a summer plan of work on our digital education environments and systems. This plan includes any significant system changes or software upgrades, but also includes more minor changes to systems and processes, ensuring everything works well for the next academic year.  

We regularly update the Service Improvements Page over the summer, documenting and advertising expected and completed work. If you are interested in keeping up to date, it is worth bookmarking this page. Any major changes will also be announced via other channels, such as this blog. 

This year, many of these improvements have been prompted by outputs from the ongoing Digital Learning Environment (DLE) Review. Staff, students and professional services colleagues have been asked to share their experiences of using the digital education environment, as well as work with us to imagine the teaching and learning of the future. To find out more about the DLE review, please visit the DLE SharePoint page for staff. 

 

Teaching staff – complete the Digital Experience Insights survey

Posted by

If you teach as part of your role at the University, we need to hear from you!

This year, we are participating in the digital experience insights survey for Higher Education teaching staff, created by Jisc to better understand the way that digital tools and practices are used across the UK HE Sector. Jisc is the UK digital, data and technology agency focused on tertiary education, research and innovation. Some of the questions will feed into a national benchmarking exercise run by Jisc; the results of previous surveys can be found from their webpages.

The Digital Education Office, alongside the Digital Learning Environment Review project team, will also be using the survey results to add important data to our review work, as well as identify those areas which are the highest priority for you.

The survey shouldn’t take longer than 10-15 minutes to complete, and is anonymous.

The survey will close on the 15th June.

Start the survey by following this link. 

 

Jisc Digital Experience Teaching Staff Insights Survey. Complete the survey. Make sure your views are counted. Image of a teacher with two students in a library setting.

 

[Closed] Re/Play timeout error message

Posted by

This issue is now resolved. See the updated blog post for the latest information. 

We are aware of reports of a timeout error message when trying to access Re/Play from a Blackboard course menu link (eg to the unit collection of recordings). The supplier has identified the issue is related to search based functions, and is working to resolve it as soon as possible. Recordings added or shared by other methods (eg added via the build content tools in Blackboard) are currently unaffected.

We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

Re/Play guidance for the 2022/23 academic year

Posted by

During the summer of 2022, there have been significant improvements made to the Re/Play service as part of the DEO summer work and service improvements.

Move to a new LTI connection with Blackboard is complete

As with many of our tools, Re/Play has moved to a new, more modern, method of connecting to Blackboard (called an LTI) which will improve the stability and reliability of the system. This work has been completed successfully. For the main use of the Re/Play system, this connection will not be noticeable to users – lecture capture will work in the same way as before, and the recommended Re/Play course menu links will provide students with all of a unit’s collection of videos in the same way.

However, there are some minor changes to the way that content is manually added into Blackboard using tools like ‘Build Content’. If you add Re/Play videos to Blackboard, please refer to the information below on how to add Re/Play videos to your Blackboard course.

New guidance for using Re/Play

We have revamped and updated our Re/Play guidance to make it easier to find the help you need, when you need it. Please refer to the new Re/Play pages.

Additionally, the Central Teaching Spaces pages now lists whether rooms are Re/Play equipped (ie are set up to record lectures via the Re/Play recording boxes), or are hybrid equipped (ie have the AV equipment required to enable two-way communication for students both online and in person).

How to add Re/Play videos to your Blackboard course

Automatically recorded lectures are made available to students via the course collection, which is usually accessed from the ‘Re/Play’ link in the Blackboard left-hand menu. However, if you want to add Re/Play recordings (either lecture capture or uploaded) to specific sections of a course, there are several ways to do so. Some of these methods look a little different to last year, due to the LTI connection.

Our updated guidance ‘Re/Play videos: upload, enhance, share’ walks you through the recommended methods.

Note that these methods are recommended as they get the most from the connection between Blackboard and Re/Play, and should ensure the best student experience. This includes making sure students have the right permissions to access the videos. If you would like to use an alternative method, please contact the Digital Education Office for advice, to ensure that your students will be able to access the videos in the way that you would like them to.

[Resolved] Re/Play: Missed Recordings

Posted by

The issue that was experienced on 26 September, where some sessions were not passed to Re/Play to record, has been resolved. This was caused by an issue with the provisioning app, which passes timetabling information into the Re/Play system. This issue has now been fixed.

While IT Services were working to fix the issue, we manually provisioned all recordings in order to prevent any further missed recordings. Therefore, the vast majority of recordings were processed yesterday (27 September) as planned. We sincerely apologise for any that were missed, or which were not the correct length. 

Recordings that were processed on 27 September may temporarily be assigned to the DEO as ‘owner’, so even though they are recorded and in the system they may not be immediately visible to the usual owner in their ‘My Re/Play’ area. We are working to rectify this situation, and appreciate your patience as we carry out our work on this.

If there is a recording that you need immediate access to – for example, for urgent editing – please email us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk with details of the recording, so that we can restore your access.

 

[Closed] Re/Play: missed recordings

Posted by

This issue is now resolved – see here for the update.

We are aware of an issue affecting the automatic recording of some lectures since 26 September. Although the majority of scheduled recordings were processed correctly, for some sessions the recording ‘red light’ did not come on, and the session was not recorded.

Work has been undertaken on 26 September to mitigate this issue for future recordings. 

Important! If you do not see the red light come on when you begin a session that you want recorded, please use Record Now to manually start the session. Full instructions on manually recording using Record Now are found from our Lecture Capture pages. The recording will appear in your ‘My Re/Play’ area, but can be added to your Blackboard course space in a number of ways.

In order for lectures to be triggered to record (either automatically or manually), they need to be held in Re/Play equipped rooms. The list of Central Teaching Spaces contains information on whether a room is equipped to record.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue.