[CLOSED] Issues accessing other tools via Blackboard

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Update: Normal access to tools accessed through Blackboard has been resumed. There were issues between 07.44 and 11.13 today. 

There is a global issue creating intermittent issues with accessing other tools and services through Blackboard. This is affecting, for example, access to Re/Play, Turnitin and Marks Extract. The Blackboard engineers have identified the issue and are working on fixing it. We will provide an update on this blog as soon as we have one.

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

Lecture Recording Issue – Friday 15th November 2024

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We are aware of an issue affecting the automatic recording of some lectures on Friday 15 November 2024. While most scheduled recordings were successfully processed, some sessions were not recorded due to the recording ‘red light’ not activating. 

To avoid disruptions, we recommend checking that the red light activates at the start of your session. If it doesn’t, you can use the Record Now feature to manually start the recording. Instructions for using Record Now are available on our Lecture Capture pages. Manually started recordings will appear in your ‘My Re/Play’ area and can be added to your Blackboard course space in several ways. 

If you have been affected by a recording not being captured, and a recording from a previous year could serve as a useful substitute for your students, please contact us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk for assistance in sharing it. 

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. Our team is actively working with the supplier to investigate and resolve the issue.

[CLOSED] No access to complex release conditions in Blackboard Ultra

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(21/11/24)This issue was addressed in a patch from Blackboard. Full functionality has now been returned to Blackboard Ultra’s Release Conditions.

Access to complex, multiple-rule release conditions in Blackboard Ultra courses is currently unavailable. This is preventing the establishment of new rules and the review and verification of existing rules. We understand the potential impact of this and the concern it may cause.

Alongside Blackboard, we’re urgently investigating the cause of this issue and seeking a resolution as soon as possible. We will provide updates here when they are available.

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

 

 

[Closed] Slow document conversion when submitting to Blackboard Ultra

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(Update: 21.11.24: This issue has now been addressed by Blackboard and normal service has resumed)

We have been made aware that the document preview interface for submitting a Blackboard Ultra assignment is currently taking longer than usual to load. Please note that this does not affect students’ ability to submit their files.

If, when uploading a file, a student encounters delays in the document preview loading, or the message “The conversion needs more time. Please try again later,” they can proceed with the submission without waiting for the conversion to complete, provided they are confident they have attached the correct file.

After submission, they should return to the submission point and click the download icon to verify that their work has been uploaded correctly. If everything appears as intended, they can consider their work submitted and record their receipt number as usual.

This issue is currently affecting multiple universities. We have reported it to Blackboard and will provide updates once it has been resolved.

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

SafeAssign Maintenance, Tuesday 19 November

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On Tuesday, 19 November, between 11:00 and 13:00, SafeAssign will undergo a maintenance update.

During this time, the service will be completely unavailable, and any submissions will need to be resubmitted after the maintenance. This upgrade is critical for improving system performance and ensuring more efficient plagiarism detection for Blackboard.

If you have any questions about this update, please refer to the Blackboard support, or email us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.

Student access to Turnitin submission points – reminders for assessment period

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Ahead of the assessment period, we would like to remind you of two issues that may interfere with student access to their Turnitin submission points:

  1. The “Open in New Window” setting in Blackboard for Turnitin submission points
  2. The use of Internet browsers with strict privacy settings (eg Safari with its default factory settings).

For Administrators: Blackboard ‘web link options’ for Turnitin submission points

We recommend that instructors and administrators edit their Turnitin assignments to open in the same window as the Blackboard page, as opening in a new window may be treated as a “pop-up” window and blocked by some browsers. To do this:

  • Click on the chevron next to the Turnitin assignment and select Edit
  • Scroll down to the Web link options section and change “Open in New Window” to “No”

  • Click Submit at the bottom of the page.
  • You will see a pop-up asking if you would like to change the Turnitin submission to open in a new window; click Cancel.

  • You will exit the Edit page; click on the assignment to check that Turnitin opens in the same tab.

For Markers and Students: Internet browsers with strict privacy settings

We are aware that people are sometimes seeing the error message ‘Invalid or missing state’ when trying to access Turnitin. This issue has been reported to Turnitin and is linked to the privacy settings of the users’ internet browser.

Please make the following information available to students and staff in your school, to assist them if they encounter this error.

If using Safari, we recommend that users try accessing Turnitin via Chrome or Microsoft Edge in the first instance, as Blackboard and Turnitin submissions have been successfully tested with these University-supported browsers.

If switching browsers is not a suitable solution or you, we suggest updating the browser’s security settings to enable JavaScript and third-party cookies. The ‘Invalid or missing state’ message comes up when launching a Turnitin assignment in a new browser window with third-party cookies and/or JavaScript blocked. This can be resolved by editing the browser’s Privacy & Security preferences so that it will not block any background scripts that Turnitin is trying to load.

Please follow the steps below for your preferred browser:

  • In Safari, select Safari > Preferences > Security > Web content > Enable JavaScript
  • In Firefox, select File > Preferences > Privacy & Security; if Strict is enabled, please change this to Standard
  • In Microsoft Edge, select Microsoft Edge > Preferences > Cookies and Site permissions > JavaScript > Allowed (recommended)
  • In Google Chrome, select Settings (you can open the Settings page by clicking the icon with three stacked horizontal lines in your browser’s menu bar) > Privacy & Security > Site Settings > Content > JavaScript > Ensure that the option ‘Sites can use JavaScript (recommended)’ is enabled.

If you would rather not enable JavaScript and/or third-party cookies in general, please instead add “api.turnitin.com” and “api.turnitinuk.com” to the sites that are allowed to use JavaScript / third-party cookies.

Once you have completed reviewing your browser’s Privacy & Security preferences, please close your active browser and re-open a new browsing session so that any changes can take effect.

If you experience any problems, please contact the DEO via digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Questionmark OnDemand Scheduled Maintenance 16 November 2024 09:00 – 15:00

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Questionmark will be carrying out scheduled maintenance on Saturday 16 November 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

Problem with ‘Record Now’ ad hoc recording software

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We have been made aware of reports of issues with the Record Now software that is used to manually create recordings in rooms.  This problem has not affected the recordings of scheduled activities but may mean that there was a delay in publishing these to Re/Play.

IT services have now resolved this issue. If students have reported that they are having problems accessing recordings they should be able to retry the service now.

Please see the IT service status pages for further information.

New Item Notifications

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We have been made aware of reports that some users have been receiving multiple email notifications regarding new items available on the courses they are enrolled on.

We have contacted Blackboard (Anthology) and they have acknowledged this as an issue and are investigating the cause. They have advised that this was a one off incident and it shouldn’t occur again.

If you have been a recipient of these emails we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

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

 

Questionmark OnDemand Scheduled Maintenance 19 October 2024 09:00 – 15:00

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Questionmark will be carrying out scheduled maintenance on Saturday 19 October 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