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 Archives: Service announcements
[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.
[Resolved] Re/Play edits failing to save
This update relates to problems with Editing in Re/Play
The issue whereby some edits made in Re/Play returned a ‘fail’ error was acknowledged as a bug by the supplier. A fix for this bug was implemented on the 18th March. DEO testing and monitoring suggests that this fix was successful.
The supplier has notified us that sometimes the fail message was returned in error, when edits had in fact saved successfully. If you received an error message previously, it may be that your edits have already been saved. You should be able to see from the video playback whether your edits have or haven’t saved successfully. Please contact us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk if you are unsure, or need further guidance.
Please note that if you edit the video while the captions are being generated, this can cause the captions to fail. They will then need to be requested again which can be done through the My RePlay area in Blackboard. Captions are automatically generated when the recording is made available to students. It can take up to 24 hours for the captions to generate.
If you have any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
[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] Blackboard Mobile App Access Issue
The issue with accessing Blackboard via the mobile app has been fixed by Blackboard.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
[Closed] Blackboard Mobile App Access Issue
We have been informed that there is currently an issue with users accessing Blackboard via the mobile app. When searching for a university, in order to sign in, you will see the following message: “There seems to be an issue on our side. Please try again later.” Blackboard are urgently working to restore access.
You can still access Blackboard on a mobile device by using a web browser.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Questionmark OnDemand Scheduled Maintenance 18 March 2023 09.00-1500
Questionmark will be carrying out scheduled maintenance on Saturday 18 March between 09:00 and 15:00.
The purpose of the maintenance is to deploy system updates to ensure the ongoing reliability, security and up time of the platform.
During this time users may experience service disruption. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk