Receiving false ‘Overdue Assignment’ warning in My Dundee? (updated 09/07)

CTIL, My Dundee, Service News, Turnitin Hamish Loveday

We have received a number of report of students receiving false notifications about overdue assignments from their modules in My Dundee. This is only affecting a small number of students but we are looking into this issue as a matter of urgency.

-Update 09/07/2019-

This continues to be an issue and we apologise for the disruption this is causing. The problem is occurring in the interaction between Turnitin and Blackboard work with each other and both vendors are working on it. We have tried looking at disabling the notifications all together, but this isn’t possible. We are continuing to try and resolve this and will continue to update this post as we learn more.

-Update 14/06/2019-

We have investigated this problem and have identified some complex issues around practices around the use of adaptive releases, how Turnitin assignments are setup and how notifications now work with the new Ultra interface.

-Original Message-

Adaptive Release and Turnitin (staff)

Blackboard have identified an issue with the way Turnitin Assignments setup inside of an Adaptive Release (a tool that allows My Dundee content to be released under circumstances, including to limited set of users) work. This issue means that even when a Turnitin Assignment in an adaptive release is set to limit itself to certain students (in this case, resit assignments), all students are still getting the notification. The correct behaviour is that only the students who are named in the adaptive release rules should receive a notification.

This is being investigated by Blackboard and Turnitin and we will update you as information emerges.
We have also identified a possible alternative way to selectively release Turnitin Assignments that we are working on and will publish a guide early next week.

How Notifications now work (staff & students)

As most of you will have noticed, My Dundee now defaults to sending email notifications to users. You can customise this to suit your own needs (see this Blackboard help page). This new functionality has obviously had a negative affect when paired with the Turnitin notification issue even though the extended functionality is intended to benefit users by keeping them up to date.

We will create and issue fresh guidance on how Notifications work, how you can control them and how to interpret what they are saying next week.

One unexpected thing to reflect on with notifications is that to a large extend, the issues that people are seeing in their feed are not in any way new. In fact, users have been receiving notifications for years through My Dundee, it’s just that few people ever noticed them as they were hidden on the old interface.

Advice for Students

If you are a student and receive any notification about an overdue assignment, the first thing to do is check your module to manually verify if the notification is valid. If you are still unsure, contact your course leader or school. You can also contact help4u and we can give you further guidance if needed.

—-Original Message—-

What is happening?

A small number of students have reported receiving notifications from My Dundee relating to overdue assignments, for example: “AB12345 due date 01/01/2019 is overdue”. These messages are appearing in both the Activity Stream and in daily/weekly notification emails.

Why is this happening?

We currently do not know the reason for these false reports and are looking into it as a matter of urgency. The issues seems to be related to Turnitin abut we will update this post as soon as we know any more.

What can I do?

This has the potential to be distressing if you receive these notifications. At present we’d advise concerned students to check their modules directly on My Dundee to verify that any recent assessments have indeed been submitted. You can also confirm with your module leaders if you are still concerned.

We apologise for this issue and any stress this is causing.

What’s Next?

We are looking into this and will update this post and communicate through the My Dundee activity stream with any updates.