On Tuesday 21st February we will be making some changes to QMplus. This will be taking place during our scheduled at risk period between 9 and 11pm (GMT) and there will be some disruption to QMplus during this time.

The changes are:

• Installing a new plugin for generating PDFs in the assignment grading interface
• Removing the Blackboard Collaborate plugin

Installing a new plugin for generating PDFs in the assignment grading interface

We have had an increasing number of reports of the failure of the PDF generator in the assignment grading interface. As shown in the screenshot above, this is the feature which provides a view of student submissions in QMplus which staff can then annotate using the online marking tools. The student’s work appears in the left pane with the annotation tools available above.

In order to deal with the current issues we are installing a new, more robust plugin to deal with converting the submissions to PDF.

See the Annotating submissions information on the MoodleDocs website for more information about this feature.

Removing the Blackboard Collaborate plugin

Towards the end of the 2021/22 academic year we decommissioned Blackboard Collaborate, a virtual classroom tool, in favour of concentrating on the use of Zoom or Microsoft Teams for online classes. We are now removing the Blackboard Collaborate plugin from QMplus.

Currently, if they have not been deleted by staff, icons for Blackboard Collaborate activities are still visible in module areas where the tool was used in previous years. Clicking on these links, however, simply gives an error message. After the removal of the plugin, these icons will no longer be visible.

Since the summer of 2022, recordings of Blackboard Collaborate sessions have been accessible through the course media gallery in the module area where the session was created. The removal of the plugin has no effect on these recordings and they remain accessible in the same way.

Please note also that we are not removing the plugin from the QMplus archive sites. The icons and links will still appear there but will not work. Recordings are accessible via the course media gallery.

If you have issues accessing a Blackboard Collaborate recording, please contact the ServiceDesk.