Note, we have now updated this article to reflect a change to the upgrade date. During upgrade testing, we determined that we could minimise downtime for staff and students by beginning the upgrade on Friday, 20 July at 5pm. This should mean the upgrade will be complete by lunchtime on Saturday.

This is a reminder that the Blackboard upgrade will take place on Friday, 20 July. The upgrade is expected to be completed by Saturday lunchtime.

Students and staff 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 by mid-day Saturday, the system would be unavailable on the following day as well. As such, you should not schedule any required online activities, such as online submission of assessments between 4pm on 20 July and 9am on 23 July.

As a reminder, we do not recommend having assessment submission points after 4pm on a Friday or during a weekend in general.  In the event that something goes wrong, students would have difficulty contacting someone about it, leading to unnecessary stress and a negative student experience.

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.