Scheduled Maintenance – Blackboard Collaborate Ultra January 13th 2022

Posted on by Martin Nutbeem

Blackboard have advised us that there will be scheduled Blackboard Collaborate maintenance taking place on Thursday, January 13th, between midnight and 4 am. During this time, users will experience intermittent availability. The purpose of the maintenance is to update Collaborate to version 21.24. You can read about improvements to functionality and features on the Collaborate Release Notes page.

During the maintenance, you can check Blackboard’s service status page.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Please check the IT service status page to see how the University’s systems and services are working and for planned maintenance information.

Re/Play: preparing for your Teaching Block 2 recordings

Posted on by Pete Herbert

As part of your planning for TB2, don’t forget that you can request changes to what is recorded within Re/Play. As standard, we only record the audio and the slides of your lectures, but other options are available:

  • Video Capture – if you use moving images or the visualiser as part of your teaching, you can request a faster capture which give smoother playback of moving images (eg your hand and writing).
  • Camera Capture – in a number of our equipped rooms, we have cameras installed to capture the chalk or white boards in addition to the screen. If you use these as an integral element of your teaching, you can ask for this to be enabled.
  • Live Streaming – if you need to stream what is being recorded in the room to students unable to attend in person, you can request this option, with the stream link available in Blackboard at the same time as the session.

If you would like to request any of the above, please email the IT Service Desk with the unit code at least 48 hours before the lecture.

If you have any questions, please email the Digital Education Office.

Turnitin scheduled maintenance – Saturday 8th January 2022

Posted on by digitaleducation

Turnitin have advised us that there will be scheduled maintenance taking place on Saturday 8th January from 00:00 – 08:00 GMT. Turnitin services will be unavailable at this time.  We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

You can stay up to date with Turnitin system status by visiting the Turnitin status page.

[Resolved] Re/Play playback issues 9th December- resolved

Posted on by Sophie Shippen

We are pleased to confirm the issue connecting to the Re/Play service, which was affecting playback of videos in Blackboard is now resolved. The Digital Education Office are continuing to monitor the service.

If you have any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

[Closed] Re/Play playback issues 9th December

Posted on by Sophie Shippen

Some users may currently be experiencing an issue connecting to the Re/Play service, which is affecting playback of videos in Blackboard. We are working with the supplier to investigate and resolve this problem.

We will provide updates on this blog as soon as we have them. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

[Resolved] Re/Play playback issues 3rd December- resolved

Posted on by digitaleducation

We are pleased to confirm the issue connecting to the Re/Play service, which was affecting playback of videos in Blackboard is now resolved. The Digital Education Office are continuing to monitor the service.

If you have any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

[Resolved] Editing lecture recordings still causing playback issues

Posted on by paddy.uglow

This is an update of a previous post regarding the same issue.

We are aware of some instances where editing a Re/Play lecture recording using the Re/Play editor has caused playback issues with the video. Our supplier has identified a bug in the current version of the software, but an update last weekend has failed to fix it. We are now working with our supplier to urgently identify the problem. We will send out further information when the bug has been fixed and tested.

For now, the best solution is to avoid editing any recordings from a lecture. However, if you do have a video that urgently needs editing, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk for further help.

We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

[Resolved] Issue with submissions to Blackboard group assignments

Posted on by Dan Wilson

We recently reported an issue with Blackboard group submissions which presented students with an error message despite their submission being successful. This bug also meant that group submissions were not generating receipts.

Blackboard have now informed us that this issue has been resolved and our testing confirms this.

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