[Closed] Issue with submissions to Blackboard group assignments reoccuring

We have been informed that an intermittent bug affecting group submissions to Blackboard assignments has reoccurred. This does not affect individual Blackboard assignments or Turnitin assignments.

When a student submits to a group assignment, the bug means that they may be presented with an error message: ‘Failed to submit Assignment. Please try again.’ Additionally, the submission may not generate any receipt so students will not receive a confirmation email. Despite this, the submission will be successful.

We have reported and further escalated the issue with Blackboard, and they are working on a fix as a matter of priority.

We also wanted to reassure students that their submissions have been made, despite the error message and lack of receipt. Students can check if their submission has been successful as follows:

  • Submit as usual.
  • If you encounter a red banner saying ‘Failed to submit Assignment. Please try again.’ use the left-hand menu to return to the Assessment, Submission and Feedback area.
  • Locate the assignment submission point as before and click on it.
  • You should be presented with a review page displaying the work you submitted.
  • We recommend you take a screenshot of this page for your own records. Be sure to include the submission date and time (under ‘ATTEMPT’ on the right-hand side) in the screenshot.

We apologise for the inconvenience and will blog again as soon as we hear anything further from Blackboard. If you have any concerns or questions, please get in contact with us: digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

Scheduled Maintenance – Blackboard Collaborate Ultra January 13th 2022

Blackboard have advised us that there will be scheduled Blackboard Collaborate maintenance taking place on Thursday, January 13th, between midnight and 4 am. During this time, users will experience intermittent availability. The purpose of the maintenance is to update Collaborate to version 21.24. You can read about improvements to functionality and features on the Collaborate Release Notes page.

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.

[Resolved] Re/Play playback issues 9th December- resolved

We are pleased to confirm the issue connecting to the Re/Play service, which was affecting playback of videos in Blackboard is now resolved. The Digital Education Office are continuing to monitor the service.

If you have any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

[Closed] Re/Play playback issues 9th December

Some users may currently be experiencing an issue connecting to the Re/Play service, which is affecting playback of videos in Blackboard. We are working with the supplier to investigate and resolve this problem.

We will provide updates on this blog as soon as we have them. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

[Resolved] Re/Play playback issues 3rd December- resolved

We are pleased to confirm the issue connecting to the Re/Play service, which was affecting playback of videos in Blackboard is now resolved. The Digital Education Office are continuing to monitor the service.

If you have any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

[Resolved] Issue with submissions to Blackboard group assignments

We recently reported an issue with Blackboard group submissions which presented students with an error message despite their submission being successful. This bug also meant that group submissions were not generating receipts.

Blackboard have now informed us that this issue has been resolved and our testing confirms this.

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

[Open] Issue opening attached documents in Blackboard

We are aware of a new, infrequent issue where some people are receiving 404 errors when attempting to open certain documents in Blackboard when using Edge. This error is currently being investigated by Blackboard and will be fixed in a future update.

To access the documents, please use an alternative browser, or right-click on the document link and select ‘Save As’ to download a copy of the document. Alternatively:

  1. Open Edge settings
  2. Select Downloads
  3. Set ‘Open Office files in the Browser’ to Off.

Our apologies for the inconvenience. Please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk if you have any questions.

[Open] LaTeX editor in Blackboard slow

We have identified an error when using the LaTeX maths editor in Blackboard that causes a significant time lag when trying to enter code into the editor. We have raised the issue with Blackboard and they are working on a fix that will be applied in a future update, but they have not yet provided a timescale for this. Investigation suggests that this issue is related to LaTeX equations that have been (correctly) entered into the editor between double dollar signs ($$…$$). To work around this issue, therefore, these equations can be re-created using the ‘MathType’ equation editor itself rather than LaTeX code.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused. We will provide an update as soon as Blackboard provide one. If you have any queries, please contact us.