LearnTech are archiving some of the older NILE sites which are no longer being actively used. This keeps our server storage low, so the University remains under quota and avoids unnecessary subscription charges. This year, all of the sites from the academic year 2012/2013 have been selected for archiving. These sites have been disabled on the system and are no longer available for general use.

The full list of affected NILE sites can be found here: 12/13 NILE sites for archive. The file should open with Acrobat reader, which is installed on all PCs. You should should use ‘Ctrl-F’ and search for the sites that interest you by module code, or module name.

If you do wish for a 12/13 site to be re-enabled, please contact LearnTech via email (learntech@northampton.ac.uk) before 14th October with the module codes and titles of any sites you need to remain live and exclude from the archive process.

We would like to emphasize that we are archiving, not deleting, so sites and files can be recovered at a later date if necessary.

There will be some minor updates to Blackboard Learn on the 18th of July 2016. These security updates will involve a slight change to the Turnitin interface. Under Site Tools>Turnitin Assignments, each assignment will be listed with a Delete Assignment link beside it (please see fig1 below).

Clicking this link will delete the entire submission point, all submitted papers and all grading. Please do not use this delete link unless you are absolutely sure you wish to remove the submission point. If you do click this link by mistake, a confirmation box will appear. Click on cancel to retract the request.

Fig1 - Turnitin delete link

NILE will be upgraded between 6:00pm BST, Saturday 13th August and 6:00am BST, Sunday 14th August.

Northampton University is currently using the Blackboard 9.1 October 2014 release which will be upgraded to the 2015 Q4 release. The new features of this release can be viewed on the Blackboard Website. Please ensure that your browsers are sufficiently updated to keep within the supported levels of this new release.

While security fixes are applied to NILE throughout the academic year, the annual update ensures that we are providing the most stable release and latest features for both our staff and student users. The University’s hosting provider requires us to keep our version of Blackboard up to date in order to meet the 99.9% availability agreement over the rest of the year.

If you have any questions about the upgrade process, please contact Vicky.Brown@northampton.ac.uk