The issue with some assignment submission email receipts not being received was resolved on January 17, and is no longer occurring. Please accept our apologies for not providing a separate update sooner.
Category: Blackboard
[CLOSED] Some Blackboard Assignment Email Receipts not being received
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
- Refreshing Blackboard courses – preparing your Blackboard course for a new teaching block
- Make your Blackboard course available to students
- New Unit Teams for TB2 are now available to activate if you wish to use them
- Ensure your Re/Play set up is right for Lecture Capture
- Online assessment – including planning and running tests, and electronic management of assessment workflows
- Daily DEO drop-ins
- DEO training – on Develop
- Tools and software
For queries, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Blackboard Planned Maintenance Downtime Sunday 29th December
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.
[RESOLVED] Issues accessing other tools via Blackboard
Normal access to tools accessed through Blackboard has been resumed. There were issues between 07.44 and 11.13 on December 3.
Original post: https://blackboard.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2024/12/03/open-issues-accessing-other-tools-via-blackboard/
[CLOSED] Issues accessing other tools via Blackboard
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
(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
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.
Problem with ‘Record Now’ ad hoc recording software
We have been made aware of reports of issues with the Record Now software that is used to manually create recordings in rooms. This problem has not affected the recordings of scheduled activities but may mean that there was a delay in publishing these to Re/Play.
IT services have now resolved this issue. If students have reported that they are having problems accessing recordings they should be able to retry the service now.
Please see the IT service status pages for further information.
Updated Marks and Feedback integration
The University will update its current offline marking tool, which allows administrators to bulk download and upload assessments, starting in October 2024. The update will not change the functionality of the tool, and all older files will still be available.
Why is this happening?
Blackboard no longer supports our current version of the offline marking tool, which allows administrators to bulk download and upload assessments. They will be replacing our old Marks and Feedback extension with a newer version that uses a more modern integration standard, called Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI). This change was planned to take place during the summer break, but technical issues have pushed it back until now.
LTI benefits
- Interface improvements
- Compatibility with Blackboard Ultra
- Time stamps for uploads
- Long-term support
Key differences
The new Marks and Feedback tool mirrors the functionalities of the old version. There are slight differences in the menu for accessing the new tool. However, the overall functionality will remain the same, and the student experience will not be affected. The key differences are:
- A slight change in the way staff access the new tool
- Bulk downloads that take more than two minutes to process will appear in the ‘previous download’ view
- Previous downloads will no longer be available as a column in the assignment list.
Key dates
After 30 September 2024, the existing Marks and Feedback extension will be unavailable for downloads, uploads and releasing grades. From 1 October, new Blackboard offline assignments will use the Marks and Feedback LTI. Files that were submitted before this change, and to old courses, will still be available in the new tool.
How to access the new Marks and Feedback tool
Depending on whether your course is using Blackboard Original or Blackboard Ultra, you will have different ways of accessing the tool.
For Blackboard Original, instructors will be able to access the tool via Course Tools under Course Management. The ‘Assignment Anonymity’ tool will be replaced by ‘Marks and Feedback Settings’, while ‘Marks and Feedback’ will replace the following items:
- Download assignments
- Download, Upload, and Release uploaded grades
- Release uploaded grades
- Upload grades and feedback.
In the image to the right, the items highlighted in red will be replaced by the Marks and Feedback LTI tool links, in green. (Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
For Blackboard Ultra, instructors will need to navigate to the Course Content area and then click on the right-hand Course Tools section to open the panel showing ‘Marks and Feedback’ as well as ‘Marks and Feedback Settings’.
In the image to the left, you can see the new LTI tool links highlighted in green. (Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
Useful links
- Blackboard Offline workflow for Blackboard Original
- Blackboard Ultra assessment workflows (full Blackboard Offline workflow available from 4 October)
Further information
Any further updates will be added to this blog. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.