Category Archives: Service announcements

Automatic captions in Re/Play are now active

Posted by

From January 2022, captions will be automatically added to all new content in Re/Play. Note that these captions are not designed to meet the requirement for accessibility for students who need them to study – students in this situation should always talk to Disability Services in the first instance as there is separate support in place for them. 

For recorded lectures, captions will be added to content once they are published, which is usually 48 hours after recording. This 48-hour window allows for any minor edits to the video to be made, before captions are timestamped. This will prevent them being out of synch with the content. Content manually uploaded to Re/Play will have captions added automatically once uploaded. They should be available a short time after upload, almost always within 24 hours. 

This video from the DEO explains the process in under 3 minutes.

Editing captions 

No automatically generated captions will be perfect, however. It is very common to see errors in automatically generated captions, but in the main they will be understandable. Setting expectations for how students should use captions is important: captions should enhance the learning experience rather than provide an alternative to the lecture. Students should always be using handouts, readings, and other course materials to check important terminology.  

Because the AI software ‘learns’ over time, however, editing errors can really help to improve accuracy in the long run. If you want to check and edit your captions, it’s easy to do so. Look for the ‘Edit Captions’ button in Re/Play under the recording you want to work on.  

Screenshot identifying the edit caption option in Mediasite

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, select any text in the captions in the left-hand editing bar to change it. Notice the ‘find’ and ‘replace’ buttons too, which should help you check any key terminology quickly. Remember to ‘save’ regularly, and always before you leave the editor.  

Screenshot showing the captioning editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What to do if you need more help 

If you find that your captions are so inaccurate they are unusable, or that it would take a long time to edit them, please contact the DEO so that we can help. We will soon have a small team of student caption editors who will be able to help edit captions when needed. They will be allocated on a first come basis, but also taking into account urgency and impact (eg, lectures which are critical for an exam, or recordings that will be used again by a large number of students).   

We have also set up a university-wide task and finish group to review process and support for the use of auto-generated captions, exploring approaches to improve captions where quality is low and assessing impact on roles and workload. Your faculty education director will be able to raise issues to this group, so please contact them with any feedback or concerns. 

New feature: exclude cover sheet or other text from Turnitin similarity reports

Posted by

‘Exclude assignment template’ is a new option for Instructors which allows a template to be attached to a Turnitin assignment, the content of which will automatically be excluded from the Similarity Report. The template could, for example, include standard text or a cover sheet.

How to access this new feature? 

When setting up or editing a Turnitin assignment, ‘Exclude assignment template’ is found under Optional settings:

Figure 1: Exclude assignment template menu.

You have two options:

  1. Create and upload a template file, eg in a Word document.
  2. Click Create Custom Template and add text directly into the interface.

Make sure you check the template requirements:

  • Templates must have at least 20 words of text.
  • Uploaded file templates must be less than 100 MB.
  • Accepted file types for upload: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, PostScript, PDF, HTML, RTF, OpenOffice (ODT), Hangul (HWP), and plain text.

When you have added your template, submit the Turnitin settings as usual.

Please note that once a student has made a submission to the assignment the template for that assignment can no longer be edited.

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

[Resolved] Editing lecture recordings causing playback issues

Posted by

We are pleased to confirm that the issue whereby editing a Re/Play recording using the Re/Play editor caused playback issues has been resolved. Our supplier identified a bug in the current version of the software, and an update was applied last weekend to fix it.

The Digital Education Office has tested the issue and confirmed that it is no longer occurring, so editing can resume. If, however, you do encounter any problems, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk as soon as possible.

We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

[Open] Issue with submissions to Blackboard group assignments ongoing

Posted by

Unfortunately, the intermittent bug affecting group submissions to Blackboard assignments is still ongoing. 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

Hiding marks and feedback until ready for release

Posted by

As exams are marked and coursework submissions start for TB2, schools should please ensure that Blackboard Grade Centre columns are hidden from students until marks and feedback are ready to be released. To prevent students from seeing marks too early, you should also ensure Total and Weighted Total columns are hidden. Check a column header for a circle with a red line through it which indicates the column is hidden from students.

Demonstration column

If it is not hidden, and you need to hide it, click the down arrow next to the column header and select Hide from students (on/off).

The menu to hide columns from students

If this option isn’t available, or if the column has a green tick next to it, you will need to hide it in a different way:

Total column

  1. Click the dropdown arrow next to the column name.
  2. Click Edit Column Information.
  3. Scroll to the bottom and set Show this column to students to No.
  4. Click Submit.

For Turnitin users, please be aware that a persistent bug means you must make the submission point unavailable after making any changes to the settings. For more details, please see our previous blog post on Turnitin submission point availability issues.

For more information on administering Electronic Management of Assessment workflows, please see our EMA guidance page.

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

Teams for teaching survey – closing date 4 Feb, noon

Posted by

If you have used Microsoft Teams for teaching, or might consider using it in the future, we would be grateful if you could take this survey. It should take less than five minutes. The feedback will inform future development and support for Teams for teaching.

Please also pass the link to colleagues who you think may be interested.

Take the survey or find out more about Teams for teaching.

Scheduled Maintenance – Re/Play, January 22nd 2022

Posted by

Mediasite have advised us that there will be scheduled Re/Play maintenance taking place on Saturday, January 22nd, between midnight and 4 am. During this time, users will experience brief periods with no availability. The purpose of the maintenance is to update Re/Play to the latest version. This is not a major update and will be addressing a number of bug fixes.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.