The Blackboard VLE will be unavailable from 20:00 GMT on Wednesday 17th until around 08:00 GMT on Thursday 18th February while an upgrade takes place.
Turnitin will also be unavailable while this upgrade takes place.
Following the upgrade we will be running the 2015 Q4 release of Blackboard.
This is a fairly minor upgrade, but it does bring some welcome usability enhancements:
- When creating an announcement, “Not Date Restricted” is now selected by default.
This brings announcements in line with other Blackboard content, where date restrictions are only applied if you specifically select them. - Emails sent from Blackboard, including emailed Announcements, show the instructor’s name as the sender.
This change removes a source of confusion for students. - Support for the Microsoft Edge internet browser.
- The Content Editor now supports HTML5 Audio and Video playback in Chrome and Edge browsers.
This means that when you upload audio and video files to your course, you can embed them as HTML5 Audio or HTML5 Video, thus avoiding the issues currently encountered in the Chrome and Edge browsers. - Discussion Board enhancements: users can navigate from thread to thread without having to return to the main Discussions page.
Moreover the release fixes a number of bugs, in particular some which have been causing issues for us, relating to Blackboard Tests and Assignments.
For further details of what this release brings, please see the Release Notes.
Please note that our ability to introduce these improvements in a timely fashion is a direct result of our move to Blackboard Managed Hosting. We have scheduled the upgrade to take place as an overnight process in Enhancement Week so as to minimise disruption. However, apologies for any inconvenience this may still cause.