Category Archives: Service announcements

Places available on digital education workshops

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Book now for upcoming workshops run by the Digital Education Office.  These workshops are open to all staff as well as postgraduate students who have teaching duties as part of their role.

  • Friday 14th September 9.30 – 12.00:  Introduction to Blackboard for admin and support staff
  • Monday 17th September 1.30 – 4.30pm: Video for teaching and learning
  • Tuesday 18th September 1.30 – 4.30pm: Getting the most out of the Blackboard Grade Centre: advanced administration skills for EMA
  • Thursday 27th September 1.30 – 4.00pm:  Introduction to Blackboard for academic and research staff
  • Wednesday 3rd October 9.30 – 12.00:  Digital Education Office dropin (no booking required)
  • Thursday 11th October  9.30 – 12.00: Synchronous online teaching with Blackboard Collaborate
  • Tuesday 16th October  1.30 – 4.30pm: Designing and creating digital materials

Further information and booking.

If there is not a workshop scheduled that meets your needs or if you would like tailored training e.g. for your School, please contact us.

 

Blackboard upgrade completed, 23 July 9.30 am

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The Blackboard upgrade has been completed ahead of schedule, and Blackboard is available again now. The Digital Education Office has tested all key functionality, and is continuing with further in-depth testing. If you come across anything that isn’t behaving as you expect it to, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Further details of the upgrade, and other DEO developments, can be found on our website.

Re/Play upgrade complete

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We are pleased to confirm that Re/Play is now back online, the Digital Education Office and IT Services are still undertaking testing and the service will remain at risk.

There is still some indexing of content in the background which will effect recordings created after the 10th July being linked to a catalog. This will be completed by tomorrow morning and an update will be provided on this blog.

By upgrading to this version, we will benefit from new and improved features, including:

  • A better user interface and search function for staff in My Re/Play
  • An improved video management interface for staff
  • Dual video playback on mobile devices; this is for presentations that use two video sources created with the desktop recorder or with the video template in equipped lecture theatres
  • The ability to add quizzes into videos (both existing and new recordings)
  • Updated playback through better streaming

We will also be looking to evaluate the following –

  • Software solution for room capture
  • Inline annotation of videos for students
  • Inbuilt closed-captioning

We are continuing to extend the Re/Play service though our Re/Play extension project.

MyBristol unavailable on Thursday 12th July, 8 am to noon

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IT Services have announced that, due to essential security patching of servers, MyBristol will be unavailable between 8 am and midday on Thursday 12th July. This means that staff and students will be unable to access Blackboard via MyBristol, but can still access it directly at https://www.ole.bris.ac.uk during this time.

Please see the IT Services status page for updates: http://itstatus.bristol.ac.uk/

Re/Play Upgrade 16th July

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On 16 July between 9 am and 1 pm the Digital Education Office (DEO), in partnership with IT Services and Sonic Foundry, will be upgrading to a new version of Re/Play. This process will take around four hours and the service will be unavailable throughout (for both playback and scheduling).

Once back online, the DEO and IT Services will be undertaking testing and the service will remain at risk during this time.

By upgrading to the new version, we will benefit from new and improved features, including:

  • A better user interface and search function for staff in My Re/Play
  • An improved video management interface for staff
  • Dual video playback on mobile devices; this is for presentations that use two video sources created with the desktop recorder or with the video template in equipped lecture theatres
  • The ability to add quizzes into videos (both existing and new recordings)
  • Updated playback through better streaming.

We will also be looking to evaluate the following –

  • Software solution for room capture
  • Inline annotation of videos for students
  • Inbuilt closed-captioning.

We are continuing to extend the Re/Play service though our Re/Play extension project.

Turnitin Maintenance, Tuesday July 10, 4 pm – 12 midnight

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Turnitin will be taking their services down for maintenance between 4 pm and 12 midnight on Tuesday July 10. To ensure that services remain stable, particularly during high submission periods, this maintenance will include several hardware updates and performance improvements. Users will be unable to submit and grade during this maintenance window, so please ensure that any submission deadlines are adjusted to fall outside of the window.

You can stay up to date with Turnitin system status by following @TurnitinStatus on Twitter.

Blackboard upgrade, 22-23 July 2018

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This year, the Blackboard upgrade has been scheduled to take place between 7 pm on Sunday 22 July and midday on Monday 23 July. Blackboard will be unavailable during this time, so please do not schedule any activities requiring Blackboard during that period.

New Blackboard courses for 2018-19 units and programmes will become available to staff between 2 and 8 August.

Please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Digital Education Office drop-ins

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The Digital Education Office is offering drop-ins for Academic or Professional staff who may have queries about using Blackboard or Turnitin for online submission, marking or feedback. This is also an opportunity for colleagues to swap tips and share Electronic Management of Assessment (EMA) Practice.

No need to book just turn up. For more information about EMA please visit our EMA Page

Dates of drop-ins:

Wednesday 23rd May, 1pm-2pm: 1.05, 30-32 Tyndalls Park Road

Wednesday 30th May, 1pm-2pm: 3.16, Senate House

Wednesday 6th June, 1pm-2pm: 1.58 Queens Building

Wednesday 13th June, 1pm-2pm: WS402, Chemistry Building

Wednesday 20th June, 1pm-2pm: LR2, 43 Woodland Road

Wednesday 27th June, 1pm-2pm: TR2 Biomedical Sciences Building, Southwell Street.