“Archiving” of 2012-13 courses

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

Now that the resits period is over, we are preparing to undertake the final stage of the Blackboard course roll-over process. This will involve making all SITS-linked 2012-13 courses unavailable to both staff and students – though the courses will remain on our servers, and can be accessed if necessary. To request access to previous years’ courses, please fill out this form and send it to tel-help@bristol.ac.uk (if you have already made such a request, you do not need to resubmit it). We will be making the 2012-13 courses unavailable on the morning of Thursday 19th of September, and then re-enabling any courses for which access has been requested after that.

Critical Dates for 2013_14

Posted on by Tel Team

We are currently collecting information on critical dates for Blackboard availability for this academic year.  Critical dates are those dates on which it is essential that Blackboard is available, for activities such as assignment submission, online assessments, collaborative student report writing or access to materials in preparation for an assessment.

Critical date information is very important to us. We use these dates to schedule downtime for essential maintenance to Blackboard and other systems on which Blackboard depends with the least disruption to you and your students.  The information also helps us and the IT Servicedesk to more effectively support students and staff in the event of an unexpected disruption to Blackboard or related services (such as MyBristol).

Please could you send the following information about any critical dates to tel-help@bristol.ac.uk
* date and time of activity (e.g. online submission deadline)
* summary of activity (e.g. assignment submission, peer assessment activity,  online quiz or exam, departmental Blackboard demonstration, etc)
* approximate number of students involved
* course names or IDs
* staff contact details

Many thanks
TEL team
tel-help@bristol.ac.uk

Urgent Blackboard Downtime – Tuesday 3rd September 2013 – 7 – 11am

Posted on by Tel Team

As part of our program of work to improve the Blackboard service for our users our colleagues in IT Services will be carrying out work on the servers that support Blackboard.

This work will take place on Tuesday 3rd September between 7 and 11am the service will not be available during this time.

We are hopeful that Blackboard will be available before 11am and will post an announcement via this blog.

Please note this work is in addition to our scheduled maintenance windows – more information here

Apologies for the short notice – if you have any questions please email TEL-Help@bristol.ac.uk

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

An issue has been identified that can affect assessments taken in Questionmark Perception using Internet Explorer 9. If the “Use graphic” option is selected when creating a Matching or Ranking question, images in the assessment may not be displayed. This issue has been reported to Questionmark and they are investigating.

Currently, we are recommending that, if a QMP assessment might be taken using the Internet Explorer 9 browser, you do not use the “Use graphic” option in Matching and Ranking questions. Please contact us if you have any questions about this, or for further advice.

Blackboard Maintenance Windows – system unavailable

Posted on by Tel Team

For five weeks prior to the start of the new academic year we will be scheduling a maintenance window from 8-9am on the following Thursday mornings –

29th August

5th September

12th September

19th September

26th September

These windows will allow us and our colleagues in IS to ensure the system is in the best shape for the coming academic year.

If you have any questions please email Tel-Help@bristol.ac.uk