Following on from the brief issue with JANET yesterday affecting Panopto (JANET is the Higher Education internet provider that services Europe and North America) we at the TEL team decided it might be useful to write a short post looking at how the Learning Technologies we use at LJMU are affected. To staff and students the locations of the systems they are using is largely irrelevant as they integrate well and moving from using one system to another is a relatively seamless experience. This is because many of the technologies are used in browser and so changing between them is merely a click, or typing a new URL
The first distinction to make is whether the technology we use is located on or off site. On site technologies (ie those which are hosted on servers owned and managed by LJMU) are generally the core systems and include Blackboard, The Outlook email servers, and all wired networked PCs.
Next are the third party, hosted technologies that you might use as part of your teaching an learning. These include the likes of Turnitin, The Educational Video and Audio powered by Panopto, and Crocodoc, Blackboards inline grading tool. These integrate with on site systems, but are hosted on servers that are located elsewhere. For the purpose of describing how the technologies work together we can expand this selection to include attempts to access LJMU systems using non networked devices. This includes, laptops, non-networked PCs and mobile devices. This also includes the mobile ecosystem (Mobile Learn and Bb Student for example)
So what does this mean?
To staff and students using LJMU Learning technologies it means that in the event of problems with internet connectivity, such as the Denial of Service attack on JANET last December, some technologies may be disrupted whilst others remain available. In the case of Decembers Denial of Service, anything that required an internet connection was impacted, whilst those working on machines within the LJMU network, as long as they did not connect to external systems were largely unaffected. This meant that whilst Turnitin was affected (because Turnitin is an “off site” technology) those working on Blackboard from within the network could continue relatively unimpeded.
It’s not easy to provide advice that would be applicable to all situations, but the following tips might be useful if you find yourself unable to access one or more of these LJMU learning technologies
- Twitter and social media LJMU Have a number of social media feeds and these are good to follow for updates if you are encountering difficulties. Some useful feeds are @LJMU @LJMUVLE @LJMU_ITS and @LJMULIBRARY.
- If you’re a student and would like to report an issue with Blackboard or another learning technology call into your nearest library and speak to a member of staff.
- Change your browser or device. Some issues that arise might be repeated to a specific browser or machine. If you’re working in Internet Explorer try using Chrome and vice versa. Also if you’re encountering problems accessing services from off campus, you might have more success on a networked machine so head to a Library or IT room and try working there.
- When submitting assessed work, always give yourself plenty of time. This cannot be stressed enough. Discovering an issue two minutes before your assignment is due is undoubtedly a stressful process and largely an unnecessary one. Whilst staff are likely to be sympathetic if you are having problems with technology, the earlier you report the issue the better, so always give yourself plenty of time to attempt a submission in order to minimise the risk of missing a deadline due to unforeseen problems
- Staff, when designing assessments consider the timing of deadlines. Deadlines late at night may benefit the student by allowing the whole of deadline day in which to work, but if there are any problems with submission there may be few avenues of support available until the following day or, if the deadline is late on a Friday, the following Monday. Having submission times within business hours means that there is increased support available
If problems arise with JANET internal LJMU systems are less likely to be impacted upon, but as previously mentioned associated technologies located off-site that closely integrate with Blackboard might not work correctly. Some of the technologies that could potentially be affected are listed below:
- Blackboard Whilst access to Blackboard from a local machine should not be impacted by any problems with JANET accessing Blackboard over the internet (ie using machines not located on LJMU premises) could be affected. Also note that any pages containing external content (Embedded Youtube video or Twitter feeds, for example) might impact loading time and the affected content might need to be temporarily disabled
- Panopto. It is possible to record offline and upload at a later point in time if Panopto servers are ever unavailable. Video can be recorded offline using any device and means of capture (mobile for example) once the footage has been recorded, it can then be uploaded to panopto servers once the connection has been re-established
- Crocodoc If marking online, though the submitted work is hosted locally, the Inline grading tool suite (powered by Crocodoc) is hosted off-site and so might become unavailable if the JANET network is affected. If this becomes a problem, get in touch with the TEL team.
- Turnitin can become slow at times of high use. This is usually around assignment submission when load on the Turnitin servers increases due to the volume of users attempting to submit. These periods do not usually persist for a long time, but in order to ensure any disruption is kept to a minimum we advise that students attempt submission with plenty of time to spare.
It is important to note that periods in which the LJMU learning technology ecosystem is affected are rare. Both the learning technology team and IT Services work very hard to ensure system availability runs at close to 100% as possible. We hope these tips are of value but they are by no means exhaustive and every situation is unique. If you encounter difficulties of any kind please raise a ticket through Helpdesk (or contact Libraries if you are a student) and we will do whatever we can to resolve your issue in a timely and professional manner.
Kind regards
TEL Team