Questionmark: potential issue affecting access to some areas of the system

Posted on by Roberta Perli

Questionmark scheduled maintenance was successfully carried out over the week. The critical test carried out by DEO at 9.30 this morning highlighted a potential issue affecting staff when accessing some areas of the system, eg logging in, running classic reports. Further tests carried out by DEO have been successful with no issues reported, however, staff should refresh their browser or clear the cache and log back in if they experience any issues with delays in logging into the system or running reports.

Contact the DEO helpdesk digital-education@bristol.ac.uk if you need any assistance with this issue

 

Xerte Upgrade 1st September

Posted on by Martin Nutbeem
IT Services will be upgrading Xerte to version 3.10 between 8am and 1pm on Wednesday 1st September. During this time, Xerte resources will be unavailable to staff and students. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes.
This upgrade brings security updates and improved functionality, including:
  • accessibility improvements
  • enhancements to 12 existing page types
  • new page types, including Interactive 360° Images, Hotspot Questions, Interactive Video and Interactive Timeline
We will update the blog when Xerte is available again. If you have any questions, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

Sky online access issue

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

We have become aware of a nationwide issue this morning for customers of Sky and Now TV which has affected their online access to University services, including Blackboard. It appears that Sky has now fixed the issue, but if staff or students continue to experience problems, they can contact the IT Service Desk for support on 0117 428 2100. As a reminder, if students experience any technical issue with assessments, they should contact the Blended Learning Team on 0117 374 2833.

Incident management for the reassessment period

Posted on by digitaleducation

As mentioned in today’s Education and COVID-19 bulletin (no 73) , the full process for incident management during the reassessment period is now available.  Staff should familiarise themselves with the process particularly around stakeholder engagement, communication with affected students and reporting and escalation.  Below is a summary of key actions.

Immediate

  • Ensure local back-up plans are in place and students are aware what they should do in the event of an incident

In the event of an incident:

  • Individual student:  for technical issues refer student to the Blended Learning Team helpdesk (tel: +44 (0) 117 374 2833 or email: service-desk@bristol.ac.uk): for non-technical issues refer the student to the School Office.
  • Exam level:
    • Implement agreed backup plans.
    • Communicate to affected students via agreed routes stating you are aware of the issues and informing them of what they should do.  If you are unsure of these, contact your School Office.
    • Contact the Exams Office if you think you may need to reschedule the exam.
    • Inform your FED of the nature of the incident and resolution.
  • Major incident: check the IT Status page and DEO blog in the first instance, if there is nothing reported, contact the DEO.
  • Report the incident to your FED and FEM so they are aware of the exams and students that have been affected and can coordinate the response via Silver (assessments).

Check Edge and Chrome are up-to-date if using Turnitin

Posted on by digitaleducation

Previously we reported that staff were unable to create or edit some Turnitin assignments and that students were sometimes unable to resubmit assignments.

We are pleased to say that Google have resolved this issue in their latest update for Chrome and Edge. The error never affected non-Chromium browsers such as Firefox and Safari.

We have asked that students who are submitting work to Turnitin ensure their Edge or Chrome browsers are up-to-date, or use a non-Chromium browser such as Firefox or Safari. If they don’t, they may find their ‘resubmit’ button doesn’t work.

For staff, the same advice applies to creating or editing Turnitin assignments with Post-Dates more than two weeks after the Due Date.

We apologise for the disruption caused. If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

Issue affecting some videos in Blackboard

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

We have been made aware of an issue whereby some videos embedded in Blackboard will not play. This issue only affects a particular type of video – those embedded directly into Blackboard using an older, deprecated method – and doesn’t affect videos that are hosted in Re/Play. We are updating the broken videos we know of with a working link, and are also working with Blackboard on addressing the root cause of the issue.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this has caused.