IT Services has restarted the University’s DNS servers, which has fixed the on-campus Blackboard access issue that was persisting this morning. If you are still experiencing any issue, please contact IT Services or the DEO.
Category: Blackboard
[Closed] Persistent Blackboard access disruption
The Blackboard access issue from yesterday, which was fixed by Blackboard at source, is persisting for some users today – notably, people attempting to access Blackboard on campus. IT Services is investigating why this is the case, supported by Blackboard. In the meantime, you may be able to access Blackboard using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or by using a mobile phone as a hotspot.
If you are still encountering problems on your own device, you can attempt to resolve them by flushing your DNS, using the instructions found on the IT Services status page.
[Resolved] Intermittent Blackboard access disruption
From around 8 am today, a global Domain Name Server issue disrupted access to Blackboard (and linked) services for some users, while others were unaffected. Whether or not you were affected was due to the route taken through the Internet from your computer to the Blackboard servers. Blackboard put a fix in place soon after the incident was observed, but due to the nature of the issue, this has taken some time to propagate to all users. Blackboard has informed us that a normal service should be restored for all users by 5 pm today.
[Closed] Intermittent Blackboard access disruption
Access to Blackboard (and linked) services is currently experiencing some intermittent disruption, due to a global DNS issue. Blackboard is investigating the issue – updates can be found on its status page.
If you are having access issues, using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or restarting your router (if you have access to it) may help.
[Resolved] Students not receiving submission receipts (and other Blackboard issues)
Between around 12.00 and 1.15 today, a global Domain Name Server issue affected the blackboard.com domain, meaning that some services that need to access this domain were unable to. These included accessing Turnitin and Qwickly Attendance through Blackboard, and there was also a delay in submission receipts arriving (due to domain checks in mail servers). This issue has now been resolved, and all services should be working normally.
Access to the University’s Blackboard environment was unaffected.
[Closed] Students not receiving submission receipts
Blackboard is currently reporting an issue which may be preventing students from receiving submission receipts for Blackboard assignments. We are looking into the issue.
Changes to sender address used for Blackboard announcement emails
A change has occurred to the address that announcement emails in Blackboard are sent from. Previously, email announcements were sent from “no-reply@bristol.ac.uk <donotreply@blackboard.com>”. This has changed to include the email address of the announcement creator, eg “an.other@bristol.ac.uk <no-reply@bristol.ac.uk>”. If you have any email filters set up to detect these emails, they may need to be updated.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this change.
[Open] Issue affecting ‘Forced Completion’ setting in Blackboard tests
An issue has been identified with the “Forced Completion” setting in Blackboard Tests.
When Forced Completion is set to ON, the auto-submit feature necessarily also becomes active and cannot be switched off. This behaviour is expected and as designed. However, if you then switch Force Completion OFF again, the option to deactivate auto-submit remains unavailable.
Blackboard are investigating the issue and we will post further updates when available.
In the meantime this can be resolved by:
- Removing the force completion setting and clicking submit.
- Re-entering the settings page and clicking submit a second time.
- Re-entering the settings page for a third time, where the option to change auto-submit should be available again.
The Digital Education Office generally recommends that Force Completion is set to OFF. If it is ON, then students must finish the test in one go. If a student leaves the test for any reason, eg closes their browser by mistake or loses Internet access, they will not be able to re-enter it. Staff would then need to clear the attempt, in which case the student would have to start again. This can lead to significant additional administrative work for staff and as well as cause undue distress for students.
If you have any questions, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
[Resolved] Qwickly Attendance timing out
The issue identified yesterday which resulted in a time-out error when taking Qwickly Attendance is now resolved. Our supplier has confirmed that they have fixed the problem, and the system is now working as expected.
Instructors who need to enter past attendance for sessions which took place on Monday, February 13th can do so by following the steps in this video: https://goqwickly.com/product-resources/?id=141#howtovideos.
Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
If you have any queries please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
[Closed] Qwickly Attendance timing out
We are aware of reports of Qwickly Attendance timing out when users try to record attendance, resulting in an error message. We have reported this to the supplier, who is working to resolve it as quickly as possible. We will post any updates to this blog.
We apologise for the inconvenience that this is causing.