Changes to Blackboard Submission Receipts

Blackboard is deprecating support for the Receipting Building Block, which we use to customise the receipt students receive when submitting work to a Blackboard Assignment, at the end of 2023. This will lead to two changes in the submission receipts that are important to note.

For students

  • Currently, the email receipt includes a link that students can use to download a copy of their submitted document(s).
  • From 2024, this link will not exist, and students will only be able to download a copy of their submitted document(s) if the submission point is available to them.

For administration staff

  • Currently, submission receipts are stored for review within the content system of a given course.
  • From 2024, submission receipts will be stored within the Grade Centre’s “Reports” function.

The default wording from 2024 will be:

Your submission has been received and we have recorded the following details.
[These include Confirmation ID, Course Title, Course ID, Assignment Name, Date and Time of Submission, File name(s) and size(s).]
Please retain this receipt. If you have any queries about your submission, please contact your school.

Questionmark OnDemand Scheduled Maintenance, Saturday 16 December 2023 09.00-15.00

Questionmark will be carrying out scheduled maintenance on Saturday 16 December 2023 between 09:00 and 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 users may experience service disruption. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

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

Eesysoft/Impact course reports updated

We are pleased to announce that the Eesysoft/Impact course reports have now been updated and are available to use.

You can access course reports for a Blackboard course by going to the ‘Course Tools’ menu within the course and selecting ‘Impact course reports 1.3’.

 

 

 

Further details on course reports can be found in our guide to ‘Checking and improving student engagement‘.

[Resolved] Turnitin Service Incident: Feedback Studio not allowing download of Similarity Reports

We have been notified by Turnitin that Similarity Reports are not downloading correctly at this time. Attempts to download Similarity Reports are producing an error that reads, “Could not process your request”. This occurs in both the Feedback studio accessible through Blackboard and on the Turnitin website interface. Unfortunately, this means there is no way to download Similarity Reports at this time.

This incident was resolved by Turnitin on 23/11/23, returning normal functionality to the downloading of Similarity Reports.

Submit your teaching software requests for Teaching Block 2 (TB2) to IT Services by Tomorrow (Friday 24th November)

The final opportunity to submit your teaching software requests to IT Services for TB2 is this Friday, 24 November. If you have already been using specific software in Teaching Block 1 and wish to continue using it in Teaching Block 2, there is no need to resubmit a request for those software applications.  

See more information and access the app on the IT Services Teaching and Student Software SharePoint page. Please also complete the feedback form to help IT Services improve the Teaching Software Request App for the 2024/25 academic year. Any additional inquiries should be directed toward IT Services.

Upcoming Eesysoft/Impact update

On Monday 27 November there will be an update coming to the way that we access ‘EesySoft course reports’.  This is due to changes made by the supplier that have temporarily caused loss of the function.

Once the update occurs, you will be able to access course reports for a Blackboard course by going to the ‘Course Tools’ menu within the course and selecting ‘Impact course reports 1.3’.

 

 

 

Further details on course reports can be found in our guide to ‘Checking and improving student engagement‘.

We apologise for any inconvenience that you are currently experiencing.

 

New feature in Turnitin: Assignment Copy

Turnitin has introduced a new feature called Assignment Copy, which allows instructors to copy assignment setups for re-use.

This feature streamlines the workflow for staff in several ways; for instance, you can:

  • Copy assignment setups from previous years’ courses into brand new courses for the upcoming academic year, with updated dates
  • Create a new set of assignments and then copy those assignment setups into multiple different courses, using the same assignment dates
  • Create one assignment setup as a template and then copy that assignment setup multiple times within a course.

This feature is not limited to instructors who created the original assignment. Any instructors who were associated with the assignment will be able to use it for copying. Please note that staff enrolled in a very large number of courses (over 1200) might experience a slight delay when accessing assignments to copy.

Instructions on how to use Assignment Copy can be found on Turnitin’s website. If you have any queries about using this feature, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

New feature: Blackboard Assignments can use SafeAssign similarity tool

We are pleased to announce that SafeAssign, Blackboard’s originality checking tool, is now available for use in all courses using Blackboard Assignments.

The Digital Education Office has provided guidance on enabling this tool within Blackboard Assignments, which can be accessed as part of our supplementary resources for staff.

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

[Open] Re/Play issues with student access to embedded content

Some students are experiencing issues when trying to view Re/Play videos embedded in Blackboard, receiving an error message stating that there is a problem with the LTI launch due to not being authorised to view the content. Playback via the link in the left-hand menu of courses is not being affected.

The supplier is aware of this issue and is working to bring the service back to normal functioning. We will update this blog with any further developments.

You can add content via the ‘Build Content’ menu in your Blackboard course to mitigate the issue:

  1. In your Blackboard course, click on Build Content and Item
  2. Select RePlay Content
  3. Locate the presentation you wish to add and select Link Video.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us by emailing digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.