Please note that the support team for the VLE will not be available between Wed 21/12/11 and Tue 03/01/12.

Thank you and we hope you have a great break.

E-Learning Admin

Due to essential maintenance, the Q-Review service will not be available on Thursday 8th December 2011 between the hours of 7:00pm to 8:00pm.

We will be applying a number of software updates to ensure the continued reliability of the service.

Recordings will still run as normal but the upload of these to the server will run one hour behind.

Viewing and playback will also be offline in this period.

If you have any questions about this downtime please email elu-support@qmul.ac.uk

Regards,

VLE Admin

For a trial period of three weeks, the maximum size of an individual file you can upload into the VLE has been lowered to 150Mb. This is to try to regulate the growth of the system. If you need to store files larger than this please contact elu-support@qmul.ac.uk

We can offer alternatives (for example Q-Review) for streaming media files, podcasts and vodcasts. See here (http://www.learninginstitute.qmul.ac.uk/elearning/services/q-review-lecture-capture/) for more information on Q-Review.

Regards,

E-Learning Administration

Q-Review, the lecture capture and podcasting service at QM, will be offline for emergency maintenance tomorrow evening (18/10/11).

The system will go offline from 17:30 to 19:00.

It will come back online for testing at 19:00 but will remain unstable until approximately 21:30.

This means that from 17:30 to 19:00 – no recordings will be available to download or view.

From 19:00 to 21:30 you should expect to experience glitches in playback.

We realise this is very short notice and can only apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Regards,

E-Learning Admin

Blackboard will be unavailable for the entire day of Tuesday the 8th of November for a planned upgrade. Work will begin at 7am and is likely to continue well past 5pm that day.

We had previously announced a plan to carry out this work on the Thursday of the previous week. Users from several departments requested that we delay this work until the following week. We appreciate users taking the time to read the announcements and keep us aware of any issues.

The 8th of November has been identified as a a period of low activity but we do apologise for the inconvenience we realise this will cause.

If you have any questions about this downtime please email elu-support@qmul.ac.uk

Regards,

VLE Admin

Blackboard will be unavailable for the entire day of Thursday the 3rd of November for a planned upgrade. Work will begin at 7am and is likely to continue well past 5pm that day.

We have tried to time this for a period of low activity but we do apologise for the inconvenience we realise this will cause.

If you are aware of any critical activity happening on that day please let us know immediately at elu-support@qmul.ac.uk

Regards,

VLE Admin

Many of you may have noticed systems failures on several key IT services early this morning. While the VLE was not directly effected, some systems that interface into it were.

Online module registration, which controls your access to course areas in Blackboard runs each night, did not run last night. Colleagues in IT Services alerted us to this issue and run the service again later this morning.

What this means for you as a student- if you registered online in MySIS yesterday and expected access to a Blackboard course area this morning, you would not have had access immediately. Access was completed at 10:35am.

IT Services have issued this statement: “There was an IT Systems failure this morning between 07:55 to 10:30 which will have prevented you from accessing services such as your course information and other web pages. Thankfully these incidents don’t happen too frequently and apologies for any inconvenience this cause you”.

If you have any questions at all please contact us by raising a ticket in the ‘Blackboard’ category on our HelpDesk - https://helpdesk.its.qmul.ac.uk/

Regards,

VLE Admin

In the evaluation survey for the pilot service, 95% of students said it was useful for their studies, and 100% of lecturers who had used it said they would recommend it to others. Students said that:

“<This service> is invaluable to my current high grades”

“Recordings allow students the opportunity to go over vital material and compare <the recordings> with notes to ensure all relevant <topics> are covered”.

“The viewpoint of a tutor or lecturer is essentially what a university student pays for, if we were able to review the thoughts and words of our lecturers we would not only feel more comfortable
but more satisfied”.

“This was really useful during my revision period where I was able to make sure I had written down important points from the… lectures.

I think it was one of the reasons why I obtained a first for that module”.

Q-Review offers staff the option to have their lectures recorded and distributed to their students with no additional work for the staff member. The room records automatically and the recordings are distributed to students via Blackboard or by email. You retain full control of your recordings and can edit or delete them as you wish.

It will record video, audio, and the presenters screen (e.g. PowerPoint, notations or webpages) and combine these into a user-friendly format. If you would prefer not to appear on video, it can also be set to record just audio or just audio plus screen.

Here is a sample image taken from a training session that one of the ELU recorded in the E-Learning Studio. (Click on image to enlarge).

The facility is now in the following rooms:

• The E-Learning Studio, Learning Institute, Francis Bancroft Building, Mile End
• David Sizer LT, Mile End
• Draper’s LT, Mile End
• Mason’s LT, Mile End
• Math’s LT, Mile End
• G O Jones LT, Mile End
• Arts 1 LT, Mile End
• Arts 2 LT, Mile End
• Laws 2.10, Mile End
• Geography 1.26, Mile End
• Skeel LT, Mile End
• Room 209, Mile End
• Perrin LT, Whitechapel
• Milton LT, Whitechapel
• Morris LT, Charterhouse Square
• Willoughby LT, Charterhouse Square
• Clark Kennedy, Innovation Centre

If you would like to use it this coming year, please let us know so that Room Bookings can try to schedule your lectures in Q-Review ready rooms.

If you cannot gain access to an equipped room or you would like to record off-site or at home we can also give you a mobile version on a laptop or install it on yours. Angie Raymond, from the School of Law, talks about her use of this version, called Personal Capture, here: http://www.learninginstitute.qmul.ac.uk/elearning/reviews/angie-raymond/

If you, or your colleagues, would like us to prioritise the new installations into rooms that you make frequent use of – please let us know.

You can find out what students said here and what staff thought of the system here. Also see our series of interviews with staff who have used the system in our Case Studies series here.

You can find out more about the service and see some examples here: http://www.learninginstitute.qmul.ac.uk/elearning/services/q-review-lecture-capture/

The project team are happy to talk to any member of QM about this service in any context. If you are interested email elearning@qmul.ac.uk

As a part of planned maintenance of the services hosted by IT Services
Platform Services ITS will need to bring College services offline for a planned period of time on the morning of Monday 25/7/11.

Both Blackboard and Q-Review will not be available from 04:00am to 05:00am.

Both applications will be at risk from 05:00am to 08:00am.

This upgrade is essential to the continued efficient and safe running of the enterprise.

If this will impact on any critical activity in College please let us know by submitting a ticket via our HelpDesk Service under the category “Blackboard – VLE” at this address: https://helpdesk.its.qmul.ac.uk

Regards,

VLE Admin

Please note that the Helpdesk will be offline on Tuesday 12/July/11 from 17:30 to 18:00

Work is being carried out by IT Services to upgrade the system.

Regards,

VLE Admin