Category: Blackboard

[Open] Blackboard annotate intermittent issue

Posted on by digitaleducation

Blackboard is continuing to investigate an intermittent issue with document rendering in the Annotate tool, which is affecting users globally.

When this happens, students submitting assignments with attachments might see an error message asking them to try again later. Please note that this does not stop the submission, but it can be confusing as students cannot view the document’s content during the upload process. However, students can confirm that their submission has been successful by looking at their digital receipt.

Blackboard developers are collaborating with their partners to fix it, and a solution will be included in a future update.

If you have any questions or encounter this issue and need support, please email us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[Closed] Blackboard Annotate: intermittent document rendering issue

Posted on by digitaleducation

Blackboard is currently investigating an intermittent document rendering issue affecting the Annotate tool. Instructors using Blackboard assignments and attempting to annotate papers via the online interface may be affected.

The supplier is actively working to restore the service to optimal performance, and we are closely monitoring the situation. We will provide updates as we have them.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[CLOSED] Some Blackboard Assignment Email Receipts not being received

Posted on by digitaleducation

We have identified an issue with our Blackboard receipting tool, which is currently not always sending out email receipts to students after they have submitted their work. However, the receipts are always being stored in Blackboard.

As a temporary measure, we advise students to check the “Submitted” section of “My Marks” after submitting their work. If a receipt is not recorded there, they should attempt to submit their work again and then contact their school if the issue persists. However, if a receipt is present, they should take a screenshot, note the time, and be assured that their work has been successfully submitted.

We are prioritising this matter and have raised it with Blackboard as an urgent issue. We will provide updates as soon as the issue has been resolved.

 

UPDATE: Issue has been resolved. We are investigating the cause with Blackboard. Students making submissions should now receive receipts via email. Students who submitted work between Wednesday 15 Jan and Friday 17 Jan should still check receipts as described above. Please report any new instances of issues receiving receipts to digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

Useful start of term Digital Education links for staff

Posted on by Robyn Frith
  1. Refreshing Blackboard courses – preparing your Blackboard course for a new teaching block 
  2. Make your Blackboard course available to students  
  3. New Unit Teams for TB2 are now available to activate if you wish to use them 
  4. Ensure your Re/Play set up is right for Lecture Capture 
  5. Online assessment – including planning and running tests, and electronic management of assessment workflows 
  6. Daily DEO drop-ins 
  7. DEO training – on Develop 
  8. Tools and software 

For queries, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk. 

Blackboard Planned Maintenance Downtime Sunday 29th December

Posted on by chris.poyser

On Sunday 29th December, between 01:00 and 07:00 Anthology (Blackboard) will perform routine maintenance on our Blackboard environment. This activity will require downtime, users will be unable to access Blackboard during this period and may see a “503 Service Temporary Unavailable” error message.
If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[CLOSED] Issues accessing other tools via Blackboard

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

Update: Normal access to tools accessed through Blackboard has been resumed. There were issues between 07.44 and 11.13 today. 

There is a global issue creating intermittent issues with accessing other tools and services through Blackboard. This is affecting, for example, access to Re/Play, Turnitin and Marks Extract. The Blackboard engineers have identified the issue and are working on fixing it. We will provide an update on this blog as soon as we have one.

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

[Closed] Slow document conversion when submitting to Blackboard Ultra

Posted on by digitaleducation

(Update: 21.11.24: This issue has now been addressed by Blackboard and normal service has resumed)

We have been made aware that the document preview interface for submitting a Blackboard Ultra assignment is currently taking longer than usual to load. Please note that this does not affect students’ ability to submit their files.

If, when uploading a file, a student encounters delays in the document preview loading, or the message “The conversion needs more time. Please try again later,” they can proceed with the submission without waiting for the conversion to complete, provided they are confident they have attached the correct file.

After submission, they should return to the submission point and click the download icon to verify that their work has been uploaded correctly. If everything appears as intended, they can consider their work submitted and record their receipt number as usual.

This issue is currently affecting multiple universities. We have reported it to Blackboard and will provide updates once it has been resolved.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

SafeAssign Maintenance, Tuesday 19 November

Posted on by digitaleducation

On Tuesday, 19 November, between 11:00 and 13:00, SafeAssign will undergo a maintenance update.

During this time, the service will be completely unavailable, and any submissions will need to be resubmitted after the maintenance. This upgrade is critical for improving system performance and ensuring more efficient plagiarism detection for Blackboard.

If you have any questions about this update, please refer to the Blackboard support, or email us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.