As usual, we’ll be making some improvements to the Blackboard website this summer.

We are going to be working on a number of things:

• Functionality Improvements. In particular around offline marking, creating feedback by annotating student submissions and the Course Calendar. These improvements will be additions to the existing website, i.e. there won’t be any changes to the existing functionality you have worked with this year.
• Bug fixes. A large number of software fixes for various issues. Some of these may be visible to users (for example, the Video Everywhere tool for creating and then uploading videos to YouTube), some not (for example, improving resilience when Blackboard is used by a very large number of students at the same time).
• Annual Maintenance. In order to keep Blackboard working efficiently, there are a number of software and data management tasks we need to carry out every year. The downtime gives us the opportunity to do this.

The user interface was re-styled last summer, so there will be no major changes to colour or layout this year.

In order to implement these improvements, there will need to be some unavoidable Blackboard downtime over the summer.

We fully appreciate that whatever time we choose, it won’t be ideal for everyone. After considering all the factors we know about (such as exam boards, re-sits and staff availability), we’ve tried to pick the least inconvenient times possible. So,

Blackboard will be unavailable between these times:

• Friday 24th July at 6pm until Tuesday 28th July at 10pm

The Blackboard website will be available as normal from Tuesday night onwards.

However, we will not be updating Blackboard with new information from SITS (e.g. new student module enrolments) until:

• Thursday 30th July at 6pm

Questions?

If you have any questions – please contact elearning@tees.ac.uk.