[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.

[Closed] Turnitin loading error for instructors

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

Students making submissions are not affected by this issue.

Turnitin UK 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

Reminder – Turnitin maintenance 14-15 January 2023

This is a reminder that Turnitin services will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance by the supplier from Saturday 14th January 2023 at 17:00 until Sunday 15th January 2023 at 01:00 GMT. During this maintenance window users will be unable to submit or mark papers, or view marks, feedback and similarity reports.

Further information is available on the Turnitin status page.

[Open] Turnitin M14: 11 error with PowerPoint submissions

There have been occasional and intermittent errors reported by users when attempting to access PowerPoint files submitted to Turnitin. Affected files cannot be opened within Turnitin and students may not get a digital receipt.

The error typically reads:

Turnitin M14 error message

The Digital Education Office has reported this issue to Turnitin, who are investigating. Currently, they believe it to be related to certain uses of images in PowerPoint, including PowerPoint templates and animations.

The issue can be avoided if students save PowerPoints as PDFs for submission. Students can save work created in PowerPoint as a PDF by selecting “Save As” and changing the file type to PDF.

If you require further guidance, or have any other queries, please contact the Digital Education Office.