Users running Mac OS 10.15 Catalina may experience issues starting appshare while using Ultra. Visit Ultra Experience page for more information.

Resolution/Workaround:
1. Select the Apple in the upper left hand corner of the screen
2. Select System Preference
3. Select Security & Privacy
4. Note: You will need to unlock this window to make changes by clicking on the lock in the bottom left corner of this windo
5. Select the Privacy tab at the top of the dialog box
6. Scroll down on the left hand side of the screen to Screen Recording
7. Check the box next to Google Chrome or whichever browser you are running
8. You will then be prompted to restart your browser
9. Launch your Ultra session again and start appshare

Please check your browser’s “Third Party Cookie” settings. Please disable this setting to allow “Third Party Cookies”. To open cookies setting page in Chrome, please copy and paste “chrome://settings/content/cookies” in your chrome address bar and press enter.

If you are using Microsoft Edge browser and can’t hear the moderator or presenter. Please try to leave the session and join again. If that does’t work, please use Chrome browser instead.

For platform stability during this time of unprecedented demand, the following Collaborate features have been temporarily disabled by Blackboard:

• Timer
• Chat typing indicator
• Netstats bandwidth indicator (tells you how strong someone’s internet connection is)
• Maximum number of video thumbnails visible is 2, down from 4.
• All administrator-level institutional reports.

“Some users are experiencing a busy or unavailable signal when trying to join a session via telephone. We are aware of this issue and are working to increase our dial-in capacity for sessions as we know this is an important feature. In the short-term, users who wish to join their session via a mobile device should use their mobile browser.

Collaborate is optimized for the Safari browser on iOS devices and the Chrome browser on Android devices.

For additional best practices on how to use Collaborate, please see these best practices for Moderators and these best practices for Participants.”

If joining a Collaborate session on an iPhone, you may not be able to see edits made to the whiteboard.
There is no workaround currently.  If you experience this issue using an iOS device, please switch to a PC or Mac if possible.  You can also try a different iOS device, if you have one available.

We recommend that you do NOT tick the Auto-Submit box when deploying a Test as there is a known issue where, if students have an unreliable internet connection, this setting could lead to their attempts being submitted prematurely.
Blackboard also recommend turning off the “force completion” option, so that if a student experiences technical issues and is logged out of the test, they can resume and complete the test.For further advice on settings to use with timed tests, see Blackboard Tests: Timer, Autosubmit and Force Completion settings

Audio feedback player in Turnitin feedback studio does not playback full feedback when using Safari browser. Please use Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Firefox as a workaround.

After setting up your microphone or camera, you MUST close the Recording window, then reopen it again to make your recording. If you try to record immediately after setting up your microphone, without closing and reopening the window, your recording will be silent.

Further details

When marking a Blackboard Assignment in Chrome, after using the Draw tool, it becomes impossible to select text in order to highlight or comment on it.

The workaround is to refresh the page or use Firefox – there are no issues when using this browser.

We advise users to use the floating comments on student work regardless as they are clearer for the students to view.

Blackboard are developing an improved inline marking tool to replace Box for the 2020/21 academic year.

In a course Content area if you choose:
Build Content -> Image -> Preview

Do not click Submit on the Preview screen.

If you do, an error will be displayed.

To attach the image successfully, from the Preview screen choose Back and Submit from the Image properties screen, or alternatively do not go into the Preview mode and simply Submit.

When trying to download multiple Grading papers (papers with markup and similarity layers visible) from the Turnitin Assignment inbox or Feedback Studio, you may encounter issues with some files not downloading. This happens when a file has a very large number of small similarity report matches, making the file large in size, taking a long time to render and become ready to download.

If you download multiple files, you may have some of them missing from the zip file generated.

Turnitin are aware of the issue and are working on resolving this.

If you have any questions please contact us at it@reading.ac.uk.

If you mark work using a Blackboard scoring rubric which is set up as a Percentage Range rubric, students will see their overall mark, and will see which cells of the rubric have been highlighted. However they will not see the actual score you have assigned for each cell.

 

If you’ve used a qualitative rubric with your Blackboard Assignment, once you give the attempt you’re making a grade, making any further changes to the rubric will automatically reset the grade to 0. If you need to edit your rubric after the fact, please make a note of the grade you’ve previously assigned as you will have to re-enter it. If you’re using a scoring rubric, the issue does not exist as the new grade will automatically be assigned by the rubric itself.

It is not currently possible to send an email from within a SignUp List – an error message is generated.

However, if you set the SignUp tool to create a Blackboard Course Group for each list, then you can use the normal Blackboard functionality to email the required Group(s):
Control Panel > Course Tools > Send Email > Single / Select Groups.