There will be a Blackboard upgrade taking place on 17th – 18th December. This upgrade requires system downtime.
Blackboard and Turnitin will be unavailable to all users
from: 14:30 GMT on Sunday 17th December (22:30 MYT)
to: 12:00 midday GMT on Monday 18th December (20:00 MYT)
NOTE: We aim to make Blackboard available as soon as possible following the upgrade and it may be available before midday.
This update fixes the issue with broken links to Talis Aspire Reading Lists from Blackboard course menus.
If you are responsible for module reading lists, please read the guidance below.
Reading lists for Spring term modules – information for Module Convenors
The Blackboard upgrade at the beginning of August introduced a bug which broke links from Blackboard course menus to Talis Aspire reading lists.
To deal with this issue, these broken links were automatically hidden in course menus to prevent confusion for students.
The Blackboard software update taking place on the 17th – 18th December resolves this issue.
After this time, if Module Convenors want to use the Reading List course menu link you will need to:
- Configure the Reading List link in the Blackboard course to point to your 2017-18 list.
See how to do this at https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/reading-lists/staff/blackboard - Un-hide the Reading List link on the course menu:
- Hover over the link, click the ‘Reading List menu item options’ button that appears.
- Click ‘Show Link’ from the menu. (See screenshot below)
- Make a course menu link visible to students
Module convenors / list owners should not postpone the publication of their Spring Term 2018 reading lists until the Blackboard issue has been fixed.
If setting up links from Blackboard to Talis before 18th December, Tutors will need to continue to embed links in an appropriate Blackboard course content area – as shown in this user guide Setting up links to your Talis reading list.
Academic staff should continue to update reading lists for the 2017/18 session, and remember to publish all lists that are still in draft. Until published, a list can’t be seen by your students. For further information please contact your Liaison Librarian.
Please note that the problem described affects Blackboard courses where there is a single module reading list, with a link from the Blackboard course menu. If a Blackboard course has multiple reading lists, or module convenors have created links from Blackboard to specific sections of a Talis list, these links will be inside a Blackboard content area, and are not affected by the Blackboard bug.