Blackboard upgrade, Wednesday July 5, 3.45 pm – 6 pm

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

On July 5, we’re updating Blackboard to use the new Ultra Base Navigation. This update will give Blackboard a modern look and feel and provide easier access to important information.

Ultra Base Navigation has a modern, intuitive navigation menu that sits outside of courses and is always available.

Your courses will not change. They will look and operate exactly as they do now.

The benefits of Ultra Base Navigation include:

  • A modern, intuitive user experience.
  • Improved accessibility.
  • It works well on mobile devices. This navigation is designed to work well regardless of what device you’re using.
  • Just one click away. No matter where you are, UBN provides clearer paths to where you want to go, minimizing clicks and saving time.

To enable Ultra Base Navigation, Blackboard will be unavailable for a short time on the afternoon of July 5, between 3.45 pm and 6pm. After this, you will see a redesigned login page for Blackboard and can use the new navigation as soon as you log in.

You can find more information, with screenshots, on the project webpage: Blackboard Ultra Base Navigation. If you have any questions, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[Open] Turnitin intermittent loading error for staff

Posted on by digitaleducation

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.

Live captions

Posted on by david.c.morgan

Guidance is available for providing live captions in PowerPoint. By enabling this feature, the spoken content of your presentation is temporarily captioned and displayed on students’ personal devices, which can be viewed in their preferred language. This not only helps students understand lecture content more effectively but assists them in retaining information and actively participating in discussions.

While live captions in PowerPoint can greatly benefit students with English as an additional language, it is important to note that students with disabilities may have separate requirements. If you have a student who has expressed a need for live captions due to a disability, please ask them to contact Disability Services.

Posted in Uncategorised

Questionmark OnDemand Scheduled Maintenance Saturday 17 June 2023 09.00-1500

Posted on by Roberta Perli

Questionmark will be carrying out scheduled maintenance on Saturday 17 June 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

Re/Play – caption updates

Posted on by david.c.morgan

Full transcripts of Re/Play presentations are now available for staff to download. These text files can be downloaded by selecting Download to Computer in a presentation when viewing it in My Re/Play. Transcripts can be accessed by either the presentation owner or anyone with editor or moderator rights.  

You may now notice a tag appearing for some presentations, which says ‘edited captions’. A team of Student Caption Editors have been working in the DEO to correct automatic speech recognition errors in some Re/Play presentations.  

If you, or someone else in your school, is editing captions, you can now also add the ‘edited captions’ tag in the Information tab in My Re/Play. These tags will be visible to both students and staff in Re/Play collections, and help students to recognise which captions are likely to be more accurate. Ideally, all captions should be checked for key terminology and usability.  

Teaching staff – complete the Digital Experience Insights survey

Posted on by Suzanne Collins

If you teach as part of your role at the University, we need to hear from you!

This year, we are participating in the digital experience insights survey for Higher Education teaching staff, created by Jisc to better understand the way that digital tools and practices are used across the UK HE Sector. Jisc is the UK digital, data and technology agency focused on tertiary education, research and innovation. Some of the questions will feed into a national benchmarking exercise run by Jisc; the results of previous surveys can be found from their webpages.

The Digital Education Office, alongside the Digital Learning Environment Review project team, will also be using the survey results to add important data to our review work, as well as identify those areas which are the highest priority for you.

The survey shouldn’t take longer than 10-15 minutes to complete, and is anonymous.

The survey will close on the 15th June.

Start the survey by following this link. 

 

Jisc Digital Experience Teaching Staff Insights Survey. Complete the survey. Make sure your views are counted. Image of a teacher with two students in a library setting.

 

The look of the Blackboard submissions page is changing

Posted on by digitaleducation

The interface for Blackboard submissions such as essays, some timed assessments and some exams is changing on June 2, 2023. There is no change to functionality.

After June 2, if students need to upload a submission, this option will be contained within a ‘concertina menu’. This makes the interface less confusing, allowing them to select the options they need without having to navigate the options they don’t.

Below are three images: one showing the current interface and two showing the new interface.

Old submission point: this is the old submission point for Blackboard which has all upload options on display.
The old interface has all the ‘Attach Files’, ‘Write Submission’ and ‘Add Comments’ functions on display.
New submission point (unexpanded): the new submission points have three clickable options: one called "Create Submission", one called "Upload Files", and one called "Add Comments"
The new interface places the same features behind concertina menus.
New submission point (expanded): once the "Upload Files" option is clicked, three buttons are revealed; one for "Browse Local Files", one for "Browse Content Collection", and one for "Browse Cloud Service". 
Once expanded with a click, the same options are available.

New app launched to request teaching software

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

IT Services has launched a new software request app for teaching staff. The app has been designed to streamline the process of requesting software for the start of the upcoming academic year and enables you to see previous software requests made by your school.

To ensure your request is ready for the start of teaching in September, please submit your request as soon as possible. The deadline for submission is 16 June 2023. 

Access the app and find out more on the Teaching and Student Software SharePoint page.

If you need technical support with the app, please contact the IT Service Desk using the self-service site.

[Open] Footnotes in Blackboard submissions can be rearranged unless in PDF

Posted on by digitaleducation

An error has been identified in Blackboard that can affect the display of submitted documents containing footnotes and formatting styles. The error rearranges the footnote order, affecting the marker’s view of the document. The Blackboard developers are aware of the error, and are working on a fix. In the meantime, we recommend that students submit documents in PDF where they contain footnotes.

This error affects the DEO’s “Blackboard Online” workflow, and we have updated the recommendations in our EMA – Blackboard Online Workflow guidance accordingly.