****** The advice below has been updated. Please refer to the updated advice ******

The issue of equations not displaying properly in some browsers was resolved by Blackboard on 6 October. We have recently received reports that a small number of users have continued to experience issues with equations they have previously viewed in their browsers. As mentioned in our previous blog post, if an equation is not displaying properly for you, please clear your browser cache and cookies (using, for example, these instructions), then reload the page. This only needs to be done once on the device and browser being used, and can be done at any time (for example, in advance of taking a test which includes equations), after which the issue should not persist or recur.  

This post summarises the current status of the Re/Play service giving details of what is working, what has been fixed and any open issues.

Open issues are listed below and provide details of any workarounds that can be used and when a fix will be applied.

Background on incident which occurred on the 7th February and current status

A problem with access to Re/Play recordings was identified around midday on Monday 7th February. The issue involved students losing access to Re/Play materials accessed via the left-hand menu in Blackboard. This was resolved on the morning of Tuesday 8 February and has been working without incident since that time.

Please note the following features of Re/Play are currently working normally and being used intensively:

• lecture capture and automated recordings of teaching
• creation and upload of new materials
• streaming of live lectures
• student access to video content through channels, the Re/Play course menu item and via URL links to content.

Open issue

• Links to materials copied from old courses not working and students being returned to Homepage after clicking a link to old content

There have been a small number of reports of issues when re-using content from previous years courses.

Work to resolve this issue is substantially complete. A final review was due to take place in the week commencing 21 February 2022 but has been put back due to industrial action. 

Workaround: A simple fix has been used by DEO and school staff to resolve this issue.

Resolved issues

• Staff access to some TB1 2021 materials removed – From Monday 31st January staff may have been unable to access some TB1 21/22 materials housed in Re/Play. No content has been lost or deleted and student access is unaffected. This issue was resolved by the 24th March.
• No access to Re/Play materials added via the “Build Content” menu option – resolved
• Student access to materials embedded using iframes – resolved

Current situation and support

Despite the issues listed above our use of RePlay continues to be very strong, for example between 20 September and 22 November 2021 almost 253,000 hours of materials were watched by our students. This data underline the potential impact of issues and the criticality of the Re/Play service and we sincerely apologies for any stress and disruption to colleagues and our students.

For help and advice please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

Some TurningPoint users may have been aware that PowerPoint Polling has been greyed out and unavailable when opening TurningPoint. This can be resolved by setting a repair in the Microsoft applications. Please complete the following steps. You may need to restart your computer.

1. Click the Windows Icon (the four small squares in the bottom left of your screen)
2. Click Settings Cog
3. Click Apps
4. Scroll down until you reach Microsoft Office 365 Apps for Enterprise – en-us
5. Select this with a single click
6. Click Modify
7. When prompted click Yes
8. When prompted select Online Repair, and then click Repair. You may have to restart your computer after the repair process is complete.

Most staff on laptops should be able to apply this fix. Those on desktops may require admin rights in which case IT Services would need to be notified to assist in running the fix. Please quote Incident# 61639 in your ticket to IT services.

Helpful hint

A helpful hint when using PowerPoint polling in TurningPoint is to set TurningPoint to open when you open PowerPoint. Complete the following steps.

1. Open TurningPoint.
2. Click on the Settings, which is the cog icon in the bottom right of the screen.
3. Select Software.
4. Under application, ensure ‘Add-in always loaded’ is checked.
5. Select Close.

If you have any questions, please contact the Digital Education Office: digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

This problem has now been resolved.

We are aware that in some rooms staff using the Re/Play ‘Record Now’ desktop app to record have received an error message that there was no device found in the room. This issue is being investigated as a matter of urgency, and we are endeavouring to have all Record Now boxes back online as soon as possible. More information will be available as we receive it.

If you rely on Record Now to record your sessions please contact the Digital Education Office so that we can check your set up and manually schedule your session to record automatically, if needed.

Email: digital-education@bristol.ac.uk 

Dear colleagues,

Questionmark Scheduled Maintenance: 16 Oct 2021 09:00-15:00

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.

If you have any questions, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

We are aware that some students are being retuned to the Blackboard home page when they follow a link to view a RePlay video.

If you know that your students are experiencing this issue, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk with the course id, and a location for the videos in the courses in question (eg, whether they are located in week folders, or found via a RePlay link from the course menu).

We appreciate that this is a crucial time of year for you and your students, and thank you for working with us to restore access to video content to affected students as soon as possible.

For more information, contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.