Turnitin have reported that the earlier problems with the service have been fixed, and the system is operating normally now.
IMPORTANT NOTICE re: Wimba Create
Dear colleague
Blackboard (who own Wimba) recently announced that they will cease to support Wimba Create on 31 December 2014. Development of the product has already stopped and the final version of the software has been released.
Please visit the webpage below for information on the significant implications of this for users. We hope to identify and implement a suitable replacement product so the web page also explains:
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how you can follow progress with the replacement activity
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how you can feed in your requirements for a replacement product
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who to contact for further information
http://www.bris.ac.uk/esu/e-learning/projects/wimbareplacement/eolnotice.html
Best regards
Technology Enhanced Learning Team
Service problems with Turnitin – 10th December
There are currently problems with the Turnitin UK service and some users may be receiving error messages and having trouble completing submission.
Turnitin have confirmed they are aware of the problem and are working on it.
If you have students submitting directly to Turnitin, please ask them to try again later. You may also want to consider extending the deadlines for submissions due today.
We will keep you informed, as we receive information from Turnitin, via this blog.
If you have any questions, please email TEL-Help@bristol.ac.uk
Turnitin scheduled maintenance on Saturday December 21st 3 -7pm
The Turnitin service may be intermittently unavailable during a scheduled
maintenance period on Saturday, December 21st, 2013, from 3 – 7pm
maintenance period on Saturday, December 21st, 2013, from 3 – 7pm
An announcement will appear for users within Turnitin in advance of when
the system will be unavailable for this scheduled maintenance.
the system will be unavailable for this scheduled maintenance.
Instructors are encouraged to modify assignment due dates either before or
at least several hours after the scheduled maintenance window.
Blackboard unavailable – Tuesday 10th December 5 – 8pm
On Tuesday the 10th December our colleagues in Information services will be undertaking work that will affect Blackboard. This work is scheduled to take place between 5pm and 8pm and during this time the Blackboard service will not be available for users.
More information about this work can be found on the Information Services web site here
If you have any questions please contact the main service desk service-desk@bristol.ac.uk
Mobile Authentication improvements
Dear Students and Staff
We are happy to announce the following improvements to the Blackboard mobile app:
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You will now login to Blackboard using the Blackboard Mobile app, which means the login boxes will be the proper size (no more zooming in on your phone, just type in your username and password)
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The app can remember your login (removing the need to login on your phone over and over again). One small caveat, if you are using a mobile device that you share with others (ie a tablet) you should disable this – click Settings, Privacy, Remember password
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Push notifications which alert you when … will work more effectively. When you get a mobile notification and click on it – you will be taken to the app, and directed to the part of Blackboard that generated the notification (until now clicking on a notification took you to the main menu of Blackboard.)
If you are able to edit Blackboard courses or organisations you will now be able to add announcements and items to your course using your mobile.
Announcements – Simply click “Add”, give it a subject and description, then click “Post” to submit it to the course.
Items – exactly the same as Announcements but you can also click attach to add files (you have lots of options of where to get things to attach – your phone, dropbox, google drive etc. It copes with most files and will convert unusual things (Google docs etc) into a pdf.
How to add your Blackboard calendar to Google calendar
You can add your Blackboard calendar to Google as follows:
- Click on your name in the top right of Blackboard
- Click on the calendar icon
- In the bottom left of the Calendar you will see a link called “Get External calendar link”. Click on this
- Copy the link (Ctrl + C or Cmd + C for Mac)
- Open your Google calendar
- Under “Other calendars” on the left click the drop down arrow
- Choose “Add by URL” and paste in the link (Ctrl + V or Cmd + V for Mac), then click “Add Calendar”
- Please note the calendar name may appear initially as a long URL (web address) , but this will then change to University of Bristol.
- You may wish to change the Calendar name “University of Bristol” e.g. to Blackboard . To do this click the dropdown to the right of the calendar and select Calendar settings, then edit the name and Save.
Please note that any editing of events has to be done in Blackboard.
Important information on email from Blackboard
In the last week an issue was identified where emails sent from University systems – like Blackboard, or MyBristol – may have been wrongly identified as spam and automatically consigned to individual Gmail account spam folders. This could mean that important information may not have reached all of the intended recipients. The issue has now been resolved but you may wish to check your spam folder, and also advise your students to check theirs. On a more general note, checking spam folders regularly to ensure emails have not been incorrectly identified as spam is recommended.
Quick Tools
Quick Tools, on your Blackboard home page, gives instructors access to two tools –
1) Course Availability – With one click you can manage the visibility of courses to your students. By switching the status from Off to On the course is instantly visible to the students enrolled. This saves you having to go in to the course control panel of each course and updating the availability.
Please note that this controls the settings for visibility to all students not your own view of Blackboard.
2) Post Announcement – Using this tool you can send the same announcement to more than one course. Select the courses you wish to post the announcement, type the message, select email if required and submit. This will then be posted in all of the selected courses. At the current time the tool only allows for text only announcements and there is no ability to attach files.
If you have any feedback about this tool or any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk
Blackboard Notifications – update 8th October
The testing we have been undertaking to ensure the collection and distribution of Notifications and Updates in Blackboard can run without affecting overall performance is nearly complete.
We are happy that the solution we have in place will allow these to work as expected. To test this we will be switching the distribution back on overnight tonight – please note that to start off with you will receive a larger than normal number while the system catches up.
If you have any questions please email TEL-Help@bristol.ac.uk