Turnitin unavailable in some Blackboard courses

We are experiencing some problems accessing Turnitin in some of our Blackboard courses following our upgrade yesterday.  If you find that you have lost access to the Turnitin tool in your course please follow these steps:

From the Course Management menu click Customisation > Tool Availability and then put a tick next to the Turnitin options in the page of tools that appears > click submit.  (please leave Turnitin basic tools unticked)

Blackboard has been upgraded and is now available

We have now upgraded Blackboard and changed the visual theme.  Find out more about the new theme through our previous blog post. You can find further information, including guides to creating banners to differentiate between courses on our web pages.

Unfortunately we are experiencing a problem with Turnitin at the moment.  We are working with our suppliers to remedy this as soon as possible and will update this blog with any further information.

One or two courses with customised themes may need to be changed.  Please see the information on this page

 

Blackboard: move to external hosting, software upgrade, Blackboard Collaborate

External Hosting

We are delighted to announce that Blackboard will be moved to an externally-hosted service this summer.  Benefits of external hosting of technical support include:

  • A reliable and resilient infrastructure with less unplanned service unavailability
  • Less planned downtime (eg some essential maintenance will be possible without downtime, upgrades take less time and can be completed overnight or at weekends)
  • A highly scalable technical infrastructure with capacity to respond quickly to new requirements
  • Quicker resolution of technical issues, due to 24x7x365 support, monitoring and problem resolution
  • More rapid deployment of new software versions to resolve issues and respond to new requirements
  • Improved performance, giving a better user experience.

The move to external hosting will take place between 4:30 pm on Friday 21 July and 4:00 pm on Tuesday 25 July. A read-only Blackboard service will be available over that period. All existing data and courses will be migrated to the externally-hosted service.

Software upgrade, course rollover

  • The Blackboard software upgrade will take place between 7:00 pm on Sunday 6 August and 2:00 pm on Monday 7 August.  The upgrade will introduce some new features (including a quicker way to add content to courses). The upgrade will also introduce improvements to the design and layout of Blackboard.
  • Course rollover will take place in early August, after the 2017-18 unit and programme information is available.

New online teaching tool – Blackboard Collaborate

  • From Monday 7 August, all staff will have access a completely new online learning and teaching tool – Blackboard Collaborate. Collaborate is an online classroom environment which can be used for activities such as online classes, office hours and guest lectures (using video, audio, text chat, a shared whiteboard and application sharing). For more information see the Blackboard Collaborate web pages: http://www.blackboard.com/online-collaborative-learning/blackboard-collaborate.aspx  

Please refer to our  external hosting project web page for updated information, where we will add answers to frequently asked questions.

For Blackboard support, training and advice, please contact us: (tel-help@bristol.ac.uk; 0117 33 17605).

 

TurnitinUK are currently experiencing degradation to service provision – Thurs 2nd Feb 2017 12.30 p.m.

We have received some system status reports from our software provider TurnitIn that they are currently experiencing some degradation to the service.  Please be aware that the system may be slower than usual if you are trying to access it.  We will keep this blog updated with any further information

TEL and Ed Dev Team

Blackboard downtime, 7 am – 2 pm, Friday 24 February 2017

Following the recent incidents affecting the availability of Blackboard and other University services, IT Services have identified some essential maintenance work which will improve the resilience of these services, reducing both the likelihood and the impact of any incidents in the future. In order to undertake this essential and urgent work, we are planning to make Blackboard unavailable from 7 am on Friday 24 February; it should be available again by 2 pm that afternoon.

We are, of course, aware that any significant period of Blackboard downtime will be disruptive, and are doing our best to minimise the impact. If you have any concerns or questions about this work, please get in touch with us at tel-help@bristol.ac.uk, and please accept our apologies for the inevitable inconvenience it will cause.