Access to PGR theses and new PGR organisations

This information is relevant if your school uses Turnitin to run similarity checks on PGR theses (practice, submission and re-submission).   

PGR students who submitted work to a Turnitin submission point in Blackboard before September 2023 will not be able to access their theses in Blackboard after August 2023. This is due to the supplier ending support for the older Turnitin integration with Blackboard. 

As we have communicated to schools directly, the DEO has been working with AQPO and representatives of administrative and academic staff to update the Blackboard Organisations for PGR Turnitin Submissions. 

Please take the following actions by 31 August 2023: 

  • Encourage students who may be affected to download their submissions before 31 August 2023.  
  • If you are one of the School Administrators who have received a form to complete for setting up new organisations, please complete the form by July 28. 
  • PGR student administrators should start using the newly created Turnitin Upload organisations which has been set up with the Turnitin LTI and the Academic Progress Monitoring form page. 

Please also note that, from 1 September 2023, staff who need access to the older theses will need to contact the DEO. 

[Open] Turnitin intermittent loading error for staff

It has been reported that staff may be experiencing intermittent issues with slowness when opening the Feedback Studio in Turnitin, and receiving errors when attempting to grade or add feedback.

Students making submissions are not affected by this issue.

Turnitin UK is aware of the issue and is currently working to bring the service back to optimum health. We will update this blog with any further developments.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us by emailing digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[Closed] Issue affecting marking groups in Turnitin

We are aware of an issue affecting the availability of marking groups when attempting to filter by marking group in the Turnitin inbox. We’re currently in contact with our service suppliers and will be looking to get this resolved as soon as we can.

In the meantime, Markers can locate their students in the unfiltered assignment inbox and select them to carry on with the marking.

[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.

[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] Turnitin degraded performance affecting Similarity Reports

Turnitin are reporting degraded performance affecting Similarity Reports. The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented. During this time you may experience slow loading times for similarity reports.

Students remain able to submit work and view marks and feedback.

We apologise for any inconvenience and will blog again when this issue has been resolved. You can also track this incident on the Turnitin status page.

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

[Resolved] Turnitin loading error for instructors

Turnitin has now solved the issue that gave intermittent access to Turnitin, slowness when opening Similarity Reports, and generated errors when attempting to grade or add feedback to student’s submissions. Staff accessing these services may have been affected between 10:19 and 15:31 today, January 16.

Students were not affected by this issue.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us.