Places are available on Digital Education workshops and webinars before and after Christmas, including introductions to Blackboard, creating and managing online tests, and advanced use of the Grade Centre, as well as talks from AbilityNet on digital accessibility.
Category Archives: Service announcements
Bulk upload of feedback for group assignments – issue fixed
This message is for staff marking group assignments using EMA workflow B1 (the marks and feedback batch upload tool in Blackboard). Group assignments are where one student submits on behalf of a group.
An issue was recently identified as potentially affecting a small number of courses with group assignments due to have feedback bulk uploaded.
We are pleased to say that this has been fixed by Blackboard.
Feedback for group assignments can now be bulk uploaded as normal using EMA workflow B1.
If you have any questions please contact the Digital Education Office.
Turnitin issue resolved: 5th December 2.30pm
Turnitin had reported they were experiencing issues with viewing similarity reports. This issue is now resolved, and all services are reported to be back to normal.
Turnitin service disruption: 5th December
Turnitin are currently experiencing an unexpected service disruption. During this time, users may not receive Similarity Reports. You can track Turnitin’s status here: https://turnitin.statuspage.io/
Blackboard maintenance, Monday 9th December 1 – 4am
Blackboard will be performing essential maintenance overnight on Monday 9th December. Blackboard will be unavailable for around 3 hours during the maintenance window which will run from 1 – 4am GMT. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions or concerns please contact the Digital Education Office.
Important message for staff marking group assignments using B1 workflow – issue affecting feedback files
This message is for staff marking group assignments using EMA workflow B1 (the marks and feedback batch upload tool in Blackboard).
There is currently an issue affecting feedback files for group assignments only (group assignments are where one student submits on behalf of a group). Students may get an error message when trying to open feedback files which have been batch uploaded using the B1 workflow. This has been reported to Blackboard and they are working on a fix urgently.
We recommend not uploading feedback files for group assignments using workflow B1 until this is fixed. Feedback files can still be added using the standard Blackboard method as described in marking instructions for EMA workflow B2. We will update this blog as soon as we have further information from Blackboard.
If you have any questions please contact the Digital Education Office. However please be aware that the Digital Education Office is operating at extremely limited capacity at present due to industrial action. This is impacting both our response times and ability to respond to certain requests due to lack of specialist knowledge available.
Turnitin issue resolved – Unable to submit assignments 13th November
Turnitin had reported they were experiencing issues with uploading submissions to Turnitin.
This issue was resolved at 6:40pm on the 13th November. Paper processing times may take longer then usual as service gets back to normal.
Turnitin service disruption 13th November 4:30pm
Turnitin have reported that they have been experiencing issues with uploading submissions. Submissions may not upload, or take longer then expected to upload. Their engineers have identified the issue, and are working towards a resolution. You can track Turnitin’s status here: https://turnitin.statuspage.io/
Winter workshops and webinars from the Digital Education Office
Places are available on Digital Education workshops and webinars before and after Christmas, including introductions to Blackboard, creating and managing online tests, and advanced use of the Grade Centre, as well as talks from AbilityNet on digital accessibility. We are also running a series of EMA drop-in clinics around the University.
Introduction to creating and managing tests in Blackboard Webinar, 11th December 14:00-14:45
If you are interested in using Blackboard for online tests come and join our webinar on 11th December 14:00-14:45. We will look at how to create question pools, different types of questions and how to deploy tests in your course. Sign up here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/introduction-to-creating-and-managing-tests-in-blackboard-tickets-80828358797