This year the annual upgrade of Blackboard will take place on 20 or 21 July. Depending on the length of time needed for the upgrade, Blackboard will be unavailable either Friday evening or Saturday morning/afternoon. Students will not be able to access shuspace and Blackboard sites during the upgrade period.

In the unexpected and unlikely event that the upgrade cannot be completed on Friday/Saturday, the system would be unavailable on the following day as well. As such, you should not schedule required online activities from 5pm 20 July through 22 July, such as online submission of assessments.

As a reminder, we do not recommend having assessment submission points after 3pm on a Friday or during a weekend.  In the event that something goes wrong, students would have difficulty contacting someone about it, leading to unnecessary stress and a negative student experience.

In the spring we will provide more information about upcoming changes to Blackboard or shuspace as a result of the upgrade, as well as specific details of which day/time the upgrade will take place. We know that there are some teaching programmes which will be affected by the downtime and we apologise for any inconvenience this causes. As always, the upgrade team will strive to minimise any downtime.