Blackboard will be performing infrastructure maintenance on Saturday 3rd October between 1 am and 5 am. During this maintenance window, Blackboard may be unavailable for a period of up to 20 minutes. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.
[Resolved] B1 Workflow (Bulk Download/Upload) – issue accessing feedback files
The issue with the Blackboard tool used to bulk upload feedback documents to students (using the B1 workflow) has now been resolved.
If you have been affected by this issue prior to the fix and need advice, please contact the DEO – digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
B1 Workflow (Bulk Download/Upload) – issue accessing feedback files
An issue has been identified with the Blackboard tool used to bulk upload feedback documents to students (using the B1 workflow). Students and staff may find that, after upload and release of feedback is complete, they do not have access to the feedback files.
We apologise for any inconvenience. Blackboard have been informed and are working to resolve the issue. If you are, or may be, affected by this and need advice, please contact the DEO – digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
Turnitin service disruption now restored.
We have been advised that Turnitin experienced disruptions to their service on Friday 18th September between 22:00 and 01:00. Users may have been unable to upload papers or generate reports. This issue has now been resolved.
We apologise for any inconvenience. For more information please see Turnitin’s Status page.
Useful links for preparing online teaching
- Pre-record lectures – upload videos to Re/Play, embed them in Blackboard, and generate captions
- Schedule live sessions in Blackboard Collaborate – how-to video
- Organise Blackboard sites clearly – course design tips and guidance
- Make your Blackboard course available to students
- Tools and software available – including new tools for this academic year
- Peer-to-peer interaction and group work – including setting up and using Blackboard groups (Word)
- Online assessment – planning and running tests, online submissions and other types of online assessment
- Training and support – what’s available from the Digital Education Office
- For queries, email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
Making your Blackboard courses and organisations available to students
As an Instructor, if under “My Courses” or “My Organisations” on your Blackboard home page you see “not currently available” or “unavailable” after the course name, this means the course is unavailable to students. Instructors can still access and edit the course.
- Click on the course/organisation
- Under Control Panel, click on Customisation
- Click on Properties
- In section 3, Set availability, select Yes
- Click Submit.
If you have any problems or queries, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.
Questionmark scheduled maintenance: Saturday 19th September
Questionmark have advised us that there will be scheduled maintenance taking place on Saturday 19th September from 08:00 – 20:00 BST.
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 all users may experience service disruptions. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Issues to Turnitin’s service on Sunday 30th August. Now resolved.
Turnitin users may have experienced issues with its service on Sunday 30th August. This was due to an issue with a third party network party provider. All services have now returned to normal.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Reminder re: Reassessments video tutorials and a new FAQ
School / faculty administrators or Student Administration Managers (SAMs) are busy setting up reassessments. This is a reminder that videos covering the process are available from BEAM:
https://uob.sharepoint.com/sites/beam/SitePages/reassessment-training.aspx
User Guides and Reference Guides:
https://uob.sharepoint.com/sites/beam/SitePages/manage-reassessment.aspx
We have a new FAQ:
How do I make my reassessment available on a specific date?
Go to the submission point, select Edit and then add the dates and times in the in the ‘Availability’ section under ‘Display After’ and ‘Display Until’ .
Please ensure you have also watched Video 6 on how to allocate reassessment groups and make your assessment visible to students.
Change to Turnitin for anonymous marking
Please read this information if you use or administer Turnitin for anonymous marking.
With the recent Blackboard upgrade, essential to ensure our Blackboard service remains supported, we were also required to update the Turnitin integration. Unfortunately, in the newer version Turnitin have changed the Sync Grades functionality so it cannot be used to send submission information (marks or submission status) from Turnitin to the Blackboard Grade Centre while anonymity is on.
Does this affect me?
The change affects you if you have previously used Sync Grades to:
- Check to see which students have or have not submitted while an assignment is anonymous
and/or - Run anonymous moderation
If you are affected please read the information about alternatives to sync grades before setting up any new Turnitin assignments. If in doubt contact the Digital Education Office for further advice.