Category Archives: Uncategorized

DEO supports the development of student digital capabilities 2022/23

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The Digital Education Office (DEO) will be piloting a new tool to support the development of student digital capabilities in 22/23. The Jisc Digital discovery tool provides students with opportunities to reflect on skills, identify areas for improvement and be directed to the support and help they need for their time studying, as well as with any future life or career endeavours. As an institution, the tool will enable us to map existing support for digital capabilities and discover gaps in our provision. This project will be led by the Student Digital Learning Experience team within the DEO.

Students can keep up to date with the project by subscribing to our student-facing DigiTalk blog. The Student Digital learning Experience team are also developing resources, such as our Digitally Skilled video series, which are based on the Jisc digital capability framework, and can be found on our Student Support Learning Online page.

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

Re/Play Service Update February 2022

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This post summarises the current status of the Re/Play service giving details of what is working, what has been fixed and any open issues.

Open issues are listed below and provide details of any workarounds that can be used and when a fix will be applied.

Background on incident which occurred on the 7th February and current status

A problem with access to Re/Play recordings was identified around midday on Monday 7th February. The issue involved students losing access to Re/Play materials accessed via the left-hand menu in Blackboard. This was resolved on the morning of Tuesday 8 February and has been working without incident since that time.

Please note the following features of Re/Play are currently working normally and being used intensively:

  • lecture capture and automated recordings of teaching
  • creation and upload of new materials
  • streaming of live lectures
  • student access to video content through channels, the Re/Play course menu item and via URL links to content.

Open issue

  • Links to materials copied from old courses not working and students being returned to Homepage after clicking a link to old content

There have been a small number of reports of issues when re-using content from previous years courses.

Work to resolve this issue is substantially complete. A final review was due to take place in the week commencing 21 February 2022 but has been put back due to industrial action. 

Workaround: A simple fix has been used by DEO and school staff to resolve this issue.

Resolved issues

  • Staff access to some TB1 2021 materials removed – From Monday 31st January staff may have been unable to access some TB1 21/22 materials housed in Re/Play. No content has been lost or deleted and student access is unaffected. This issue was resolved by the 24th March.
  • No access to Re/Play materials added via the “Build Content” menu option – resolved
  • Student access to materials embedded using iframes – resolved

Current situation and support

Despite the issues listed above our use of RePlay continues to be very strong, for example between 20 September and 22 November 2021 almost 253,000 hours of materials were watched by our students. This data underline the potential impact of issues and the criticality of the Re/Play service and we sincerely apologies for any stress and disruption to colleagues and our students.

For help and advice please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

 

 

Fix for PowerPoint polling not opening in TurningPoint

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Some TurningPoint users may have been aware that PowerPoint Polling has been greyed out and unavailable when opening TurningPoint. This can be resolved by setting a repair in the Microsoft applications. Please complete the following steps. You may need to restart your computer.

  1. Click the Windows Icon (the four small squares in the bottom left of your screen)
  2. Click Settings Cog
  3. Click Apps
  4. Scroll down until you reach Microsoft Office 365 Apps for Enterprise – en-us
  5. Select this with a single click
  6. Click Modify
  7. When prompted click Yes
  8. When prompted select Online Repair, and then click Repair. You may have to restart your computer after the repair process is complete.

Most staff on laptops should be able to apply this fix. Those on desktops may require admin rights in which case IT Services would need to be notified to assist in running the fix. Please quote Incident# 61639 in your ticket to IT services.

Helpful hint

A helpful hint when using PowerPoint polling in TurningPoint is to set TurningPoint to open when you open PowerPoint. Complete the following steps.

  1. Open TurningPoint.
  2. Click on the Settings, which is the cog icon in the bottom right of the screen.
  3. Select Software.
  4. Under application, ensure ‘Add-in always loaded’ is checked.
  5. Select Close.

If you have any questions, please contact the Digital Education Office: digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

How to share a direct link to a video in Re/Play

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With recent issues in Re/Play, we have had questions about sharing Re/Play videos using a direct link, and so thought it would be useful to run through the steps you need to take in order to do this.

  1. Log in to Blackboard and select My Re/Play
  2. Click on the title of the presentation you wish to share 
  3. Make sure the Who Can View setting is set to My Organisation. 
  4. Click the “Share Presentation” button 
  5. Copy the Quick Link URL 
  6. Share this link by pasting it in an email, announcement, Padlet, or wherever best for your students.

When students follow this link, they will need to select the ‘authenticate’ option when prompted. After authenticating, they should be able to view the video in a new browser window. This link will work for anyone authenticated via the University of Bristol’s Single Sign On. 

If you are experiencing problems accessing your recordings via My Re/Play and need to share them urgently, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk so that we can assist further.

[Closed] Record Now – ‘Device Not Found’ in some rooms

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This problem has now been resolved.

We are aware that in some rooms staff using the Re/Play ‘Record Now’ desktop app to record have received an error message that there was no device found in the room. This issue is being investigated as a matter of urgency, and we are endeavouring to have all Record Now boxes back online as soon as possible. More information will be available as we receive it.

If you rely on Record Now to record your sessions please contact the Digital Education Office so that we can check your set up and manually schedule your session to record automatically, if needed.

Email: digital-education@bristol.ac.uk 

Questionmark scheduled maintenance Saturday 16 Oct 09:00-15:00

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Dear colleagues,

Questionmark Scheduled Maintenance: 16 Oct 2021 09:00-15:00

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 all users may experience service disruptions. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

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

RePlay – video links returning students to home page

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We are aware that some students are being retuned to the Blackboard home page when they follow a link to view a RePlay video.

If you know that your students are experiencing this issue, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk with the course id, and a location for the videos in the courses in question (eg, whether they are located in week folders, or found via a RePlay link from the course menu).

We appreciate that this is a crucial time of year for you and your students, and thank you for working with us to restore access to video content to affected students as soon as possible.

For more information, contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

New staff development webinar: How to effectively use Mentimeter Pro in your teaching

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Mentimeter has been a popular tool for interaction over the past 18 months and the University now has a Mentimeter Pro licence available for staff. Mentimeter is an online polling software that can be used to present live or asynchronous polls, quizzes and word clouds. It can be used for in person or hybrid sessions, as well as for online teaching either synchronously or asynchronously. The DEO will be running training on how to use Mentimeter Pro effectively in your teaching over the next few months.

Our first webinar, run by Naomi Beckett and Sophie Shippen, will be on the 22nd September from 10:30am – 11:30am on MS Teams. All the details, and information on signing up can be found on the DEO Events page.
More information about Mentimeter, and guidance on setting up your own account can be found on the DEO website.

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

Re/Play corrective work, Wednesday 8th September

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On Wednesday 8th September at 15.30, the Digital Education Office will be making a change to the Re/Play service to allow for presentations to be added via the text box editor in Blackboard. This piece of work is minor, and there should be no noticeable impact during the work, but please note that the service will be at risk between 15.30 and 16.30 while we make this update.

This will not affect recordings in rooms, but there may be a very short break in service at the start of this time.

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