Recently the University has agreed a new set of minimum expectations for delivering e-learning: every module should be supported by a Blackboard site with certain minimum information in it. The Administration undertaken by academics project has also highlighted some administrative activities in Blackboard that could be done differently to reduce academic staff workload. In response to these two developments,…
Just a note to say that Blackboard Collaborate will not be available between 23:00 on 5 Jan and 11:00 on 6 Jan due to an extended maintenance window. We don’t predict this will have an impact on our provision however.
Do you have external users (non-SHU staff) who need access to Blackboard? Then you might be interested in a consultation paper we have written about redesigning the way we handle external user accounts. Currently we handle all external user accounts through a manual request and creation process which can be time consuming and makes managing the accounts difficult. We would…
In the past week you have probably noticed there have been serious issues with Blackboard and shuspace being down for lengthy periods. We have assurances from the technical team that fixing this is their number one priority and this problem has been escalated to the highest levels at Blackboard, Inc and Oracle (our database provider) to get a prompt…
This semester there’s a couple of small but significant changes that have happened to shuspace. The top bar on every tab used to just contain the search tool, but following student input, we’ve added other things to improve navigation and access to information… Firstly there’s a link to the directory of practical information. This means…
Have you ever copied and pasted text from a Word document into Blackboard? If so you may have encountered problems with formatting, as Word tends to add a lot of extra hidden formatting in their documents that causes issues for Blackboard’s text editor and may mean that changing the font size, colour, etc. has no…
If you are using Blackboard assignments for online submission of student work, please be aware that there is a bug which may affect you and your students. Once feedback files have been loaded into Grade Centre, students can access that feedback by revisiting the assignment hand-in point if that hand-in link is still set available…
At the time of the upgrade we applied a slight change in the terminology used to help clarify the available tools for staff. Blackboard provides two types of blog tools with different functionality. Please see the new names for these below, along with an explanation of what each does: Shared blogs (formerly called blogs) allow…
During the upcoming Blackboard upgrade, we will be transitioning away from SHU Assignments to the default Blackboard Assignment (see previous message about this transition). As part of this process, we have to release all of the feedback and grades available in existing SHU Assignments at the time of the upgrade (July 20-21). Students will not…
During the testing of the upgrade process, we determined that we could minimise downtime for staff and students by beginning the upgrade on Friday, 20 July at 17.00 UK time instead of Saturday morning as originally advertised. This should mean the upgrade will be complete by lunchtime on Saturday. However the system should be considered at risk on…