Blackboard has successfully moved to a cloud hosted (SaaS) delivery

Author: Jan Thomson (TELT)

We are pleased to announce that Blackboard is now running as a cloud hosted (SaaS) service.  All existing courses and data, as of the morning of the 11^th July 2019, have now been fully migrated to the new service.

Benefits of managed hosting (SaaS) include:

• A reliable, scalable and robust infrastructure
• Improved performance, giving a better user experience.
• Greater enhancement for the provision of online exams
• Zero or minimal downtime including scheduled maintenance and annual upgrades
• Ability to deliver continuous updates including new features or enhancements
• Quicker resolution of any technical issues, bug fixes, etc.
• Access to facilitate new integrations

Launch of Ally

Ally is a new feature that automatically converts course resources into a variety of formats, from HTML and e-book for reading on mobile devices, to Electronic Braille for the visually impaired, and audio for learning on the go.

Ally will be available from August 2019.  Check our ‘Accessible content is better content‘ blog post to find out more. 

Staff workshops will be scheduled via the E3 Hub

Summer Updates

THIS SHOULD NOT INVOLVE ANY SYSTEM DOWNTIME

The Blackboard Support Team will be working over the summer to install the latest updates for Learn SaaS in readiness for the new academic year.   These updates will ensure that we maintain technical currency, remain compatible with other software developments, compliant with current browser technology and secure against known vulnerabilities and exploits.  The updates will also bring some new features/enhancements including the implementation of Blackboard’s responsive (mobile compatible) design.

Check our Responsive Design blog post to find out more:-

Troubleshooting:

Login Page

The procedure for logging in for users on Blackboard has now been updated.  The Blackboard Login page will now simply display a Sign-in button that will automatically authenticate users with a UCLan network account to login.  

If users are off-campus or not logged into a networked machine, they will get a pop-up box requesting their username and password credentials.

Modules and Programmes Tabs

If you are initially unable move between the academic year tabs to view your modules, simply refresh your page.  This should resolve the issue.

Access to Tools and Integrations

Over the next couple of weeks will be working to ensure that all existing tools and integrations such as Turnitin, Class Notebook, Respondus Lock Down browser etc are all reviewed and set up ready for use.  If you experience any issues with these, please let us know.

Browser stored Bookmarks and Favourites

If you have previously saved Blackboard/The Student Portal as a Bookmark or Favourite, it is likely that the link will no longer work.  We recommend removing or updating these and accessing Blackboard via the link within the Staff Intranet or the Student Support Pages.

You can also try to refresh your browser cache, guide here: http://www.refreshyourcache.com/en/home/

Then completely close your browser and restart or reboot your machine.