Scheduled Maintenance – Blackboard Collaborate Ultra October 14, 2021

Posted on by Martin Nutbeem

Blackboard have advised us that there will be scheduled Blackboard Collaborate maintenance taking place on Thursday, October 14th, between midnight and 4 am. During this time, users will experience intermittent availability. The purpose of the maintenance is to update Collaborate to version v21.18. 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.

RePlay – video links returning students to home page

Posted on by Suzanne Collins

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.

Adding Re/Play videos to your Blackboard course

Posted on by digitaleducation

There are two recommended ways of adding Re/Play videos to your Blackboard course. Both ensure that the videos are only made available to users within the relevant Blackboard unit spaces. Which you choose will depend on how you want the video to appear to students:

  1. Add it as a standalone item. This shows the video as an individual Blackboard item in a small player.
  2. Insert a link and thumbnail image. This allows additional text to be added around the video to contextualise it. The student clicks on the link to open the video.

A third option – embedding a video player within a Blackboard item – is available, but not recommended, as it means the video would be viewable by anyone within or outside the University if shared.

Instructions, including video guides, for all these methods can be found at: Uploading, enhancing and adding videos to your course (bris.ac.uk). 

If you wish to use the third option, embedding a video within a Blackboard item, the ‘Who Can View’ permission for the video in ‘My Re/Play’ must be set to ‘Everyone’. This means that the video can be shared with anyone within or beyond the University who has access to the link. To set this permission:

  1. Log on to Blackboard
  2. Select the ‘My Re/Play’ tab at the top
  3. Locate the presentation you wish to set permissions on
  4. Click on the padlock symbol to unlock it
  5. Click on the video
  6. On the right-hand side, in the ‘Who can view’ section, adjust the slider to ‘Everyone’

If you embed a video in this way but don’t set the permission to ‘Everyone’, then students will be asked to authenticate by Mediasite (as shown in the screenshot below), but will still not be able to access the video.

Mediasite Authenticate screen

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

Updates and improvements to Digital Education tools

Posted on by hilary

There have been updates and improvements to many of our services over the summer, including new tools and features.

New tools – Teams, Mentimeter, H5P

  • Mentimeter is online polling software that can be used for polls, quizzes and word clouds.
  • H5P provides additional options for online quizzes and learning materials.

Re/Play

Re/Play has undergone major change over the summer.

  • Record Now replaces the Ad Hoc Recorder to enable unscheduled recording in rooms with Re/Play boxes.
  • Automated streaming can now be enabled from rooms equipped with Re/Play recording boxes – see our live streaming FAQS for more information (including how students view the stream in Blackboard).
  • Mosaic is the new tool to record teaching (replacing the Desktop Recorder). Staff can download it onto their laptops. To request Mosaic in a teaching space (eg to record in a room without a Re/Play box), please contact the IT Service desk.
  • The way that students view Re/Play content has also changed to a more user-friendly interface with a ’tiled’ view.
  • Underpinning these software changes, there has been major work updating the architecture on which the service sits to improve service performance and better support new activities such as streaming.

Blackboard

  • Improved text editor – key features include better copy-and-paste, improved editing from mobile devices, improved accessibility, display of computer code snippets, easy text wrapping around images.
  • Reusable comments bank – a new feature will allow individual markers to maintain a bank of reusable comments.

Xerte

Xerte has also been upgraded to deliver accessibility improvements, enhancements to 12 existing page types, and new page types, including Interactive 360° images, hotspot questions, interactive videos and timelines.

A full list of tools and essential links for the start of term are also available.

Duplicate groups appearing in Qwickly Attendance by Course Groups

Posted on by Suzi Wells

An issue has caused activity groups from last year to appear alongside this year’s groups in Blackboard courses. If you have set up Qwickly by Course Groups, in many cases the result is duplicate activity groups appearing in the Qwickly Attendance tool. You may therefore find two instances with the same name, one containing students and one empty.

If you are taking attendance by group in the Qwickly Attendance tool, you may need to click on both instances of a group to find the one that contains students – if a group contains students, they will be listed on the page as soon as you select the group.

To resolve this issue, we are working on removing timetabling groups that do not contain any students.

There are two options you can take in Blackboard to manage this issue while we are working on a fix.

  • Option 1 – rename empty groups to start with {S}Z rather than just {S}. This should move them down the group selection list in Qwickly, making it easier to find and use this year’s groups to take attendance. However, this may mean your groups page is still slow to load (link to how to rename groups).
  • Option 2 – delete the empty groups. Please note that this carries risks, for example if a group with students is deleted in error it may not be possible to retrieve information already entered for that group.

The DEO will blog again when we have more information on an institutional fix. Please be assured that this does not impact the use of Qwickly to take attendance from the start of term.

How to rename or delete empty groups

As mentioned above, to manage this issue while we are working on a fix you can rename or delete the empty groups. To do this:

  1. Go to your Blackboard course and navigate to Users and Groups > Groups
  2. Step through the pages by clicking the arrows under Group Settings until you can see the S+ groups (these start with the {S} symbol)
    Screenshot showing the navigation arrows beneath Group Settings
  3. Find the duplicate (empty) group, as in this example
    Two groups are listed with the same name, the second is highlighted as it has 0 students

Option 1 – rename the empty group

  • Click on the down-arrow next to the group name with 0 students and click on Edit
  • Change the name by adding Z to the name starting with {S} (for example, {S}ZPSYC…) and click on Submit

Option 2 – delete the empty group

  • Click on the down-arrow next to the group name with 0 students and click on Delete
  • You will be prompted with ‘This action is final and cannot be undone. Would you like to continue?’ Click on OK

Students not able to view some Re/Play recordings – 27 September

Posted on by Pete Herbert

We are currently investigating a small number of reports of students not being able to view some Re/Play recordings in Blackboard. If your students need to view a particular recording urgently, and are having difficulty accessing it, we recommend that you delete the item and re-add it using the following steps:

  1. Log on to Blackboard.
  2. Select the My Re/Play tab at the top.
  3. Locate the presentation you wish to add as a content item.
  4. Ensure the padlock symbol in the bottom right corner is unlocked. If not, click on it.
  5. Navigate to the area in your course where you want to embed the presentation.
  6. Ensure Edit Mode is ON.
  7. From the menu at the top of the page, select Build Content and then Mediasite – link to Presentation/s.
  8. Enter the name of your presentation in the search box and select the grey Search Presentations button.
  9. When located, click in the box to left and Submit.
  10. On the next screen, click OK.
  11. Your presentation will now appear at the bottom of the page and can be moved to the location you wish.

If you have a large number of recordings that urgently need re-enabling, or any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Re/Play ‘Record Now’ for ad hoc recording

Posted on by Pete Herbert

As part of our summer programme of work on Re/Play, we have now launched the new podium PC app for the recorders in equipped rooms, ‘Record Now’. You can use this application to record sessions in rooms where the activity is not timetabled to be recorded.

1. Log in to the room’s PC and click the icon to run ‘Record Now’.
2. If prompted to log on please use the Grey Authenticate button NOT the link to Mediasite log in.
3. Give a title to the presentation.
4. Choose how long to record for (the default is 55 minutes, but this can be adjusted in 5-minute intervals).
5. Choose how and what you want to record:

  • ‘Slides’ records a slow frame rate – not suitable for video playback or animation
  • ‘Video’ is suitable for video playback, animation and on-screen pointers
  • ‘Camera’ (if available) will record you as well as your slides.

6. Pause or end the recording early by pressing ‘Pause Recording’ or ‘Stop Recording’. You can also use the lectern button to do this (short press to pause/restart, long press to stop).
7. Your recording will appear in ‘My Re/Play’.

For an illustrated version of this guidance please follow this link

Please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk with any queries.

Qwickly Course Tools slow to load

Posted on by digitaleducation

We have had reports of the slow loading of the Qwickly Course Tools on the Blackboard home page and we are investigating this with the supplier. If you are experiencing problems using the tool to change your course availability for students, you can also set course availability by clicking the ‘padlock’ icon at the top right of the banner bar in your course:

The Qwickly Attendance tool, accessed in courses, remains unaffected. Please see the guidance on how to manage and record teaching attendance using Qwickly.

Student Support from the Digital Education Office – information for staff

Posted on by digitaleducation

Over the last year, the Digital Education Office (DEO) has been working with students via our Student Digital Champions to create support materials, to consolidate and update the various places students can get help with their digital education, and to deliver digital skills training. 

You can now point your students towards:  

  • Learning Online – Student Support for guides, resources and links for students to support their digital learning.
  • Digitally Ready. A digital induction course for new students or those who need to refresh their basic digital skills.
  • Digitally Ready: Reflect and Reboot – A self-reflective skills building course for returning students. 
  • DigiTalk: The student blog of the Digital Education Office, for all things digital education from a student perspective.  

We also have a team of Student Digital Champions who are working with us to channel the student voice into our work, as well as co-creating resources and solutions around the student digital learning experience. Students with ideas, concerns or feedback can talk to their course reps in the first instance, who should be in regular contact with our Student Digital Champions.