During the last 10 days there have been periods where the Turnitin service has been unavailable. As a matter of precaution if you have submissions where students are asked to submit directly to Turnitin please advise them to allow extra time to complete submission. We will update this blog when we are aware that Turnitin is not working and provide subsequent updates.

If you have any questions please email bb-help@bristol.ac.uk.

Posted: May 15th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

On Thursday 17th May between 5.15pm and 7.15pm work is being undertaken on the University storage systems. This work will impact the Blackboard service.

Please note that during this period we cannot guarantee that Blackboard will be available for use, so you should not plan to use Blackboard during this time.

If you have any questions please contact bb-help@bristol.ac.uk

Posted: May 14th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

Turnitin UK are reporting intermittent problems with their service today. They are working on resolving the problem. If your students have submissions which use Turnitin please advise them to allow some extra time in case of problems.

We will update this blog when we get an update.

Posted: May 8th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

If you use a tool in Blackboard that uses a Java plug-in (e.g. Multiple file upload in the content system) you will receive a pop up box asking you to confirm the securitycertificate. Please tick the box that says always trust content from this supplier and click run.

The TEL team are working with our Technical support colleagues to apply a fix to Blackboard to stop this occurring. Once this has been applied and tested we will update this blog.

Posted: April 16th, 2012 under Service announcements, Uncategorized.
Comments: none

This can be done using the Early Warning System, which allows you to set up rules against which you can report.

To set up a late submission rule:

• Log in to Blackboard and click on the relevant course
• Click on Evaluation in the Control Panel
• Click on Early warning system
• Click on Create rule and select Due date rule
• Enter a name and criteria. Make sure you select the relevant assignment under “Select a Grade Centre item“
• Click Submit
• Select the rule by clicking in the tick box and click Refresh, then OK
• Under Number of warnings you will see the number of late submissions
• Select the rule again and click on the drop down next to the rule name , then select Review Rule Status to see a list of students
• Click on Display (in top right) and choose Meets criteria then click Go. This will show only those students who meet the criteria (i.e. submitted after the due date).

Posted: April 4th, 2012 under Staff FAQs.
Comments: none

When an instructor creates an assignment with a due date, the “Create” or “Edit” assignment screen currently tells them, in section 5 “Due dates”,  that “Submissions are not accepted after this date and are marked Missed”. This is not the case. Late assignments will be accepted if the submission point is available, and will be marked as ‘Late Submission’ in the Grade Center.

Posted: April 4th, 2012 under 9.1. known issues, Staff FAQs.
Comments: none

If you have any submissions going to Turnitin on or with a deadline close to the 3rd March – please make your students aware of the following -

TurnitinUK service may be intermittently unavailable during a scheduled maintenance period on Saturday, March 3, from 3 to 7 PM GMT

If you have any questions please contact bb-help@bristol.ac.uk

Posted: February 27th, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

Staff support materials and information on Turnitin  is available on the ESU e-learning website.

Posted: February 27th, 2012 under Staff FAQs.
Comments: none

The update to the building blocks has been completed and the tools are available again for use.

The following has been fixed by the update -

Posted: February 21st, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none

We have received new versions of the Campus Pack tools which fix a number of problems with performance particularly in Internet Explorer. BB-Help are planning to install these new versions today. This will mean the tools will be unavailable from 3.45 until 4.45 this afternoon.

If you are aware of any activity where it is essential that these tools are available between these times please email bb-help@bristol.ac.uk

Posted: February 21st, 2012 under Service announcements.
Comments: none