Update @ 6:37 PM: After a rolling restart was performed, course menus appear to be consistently stable and content is available. Users also report the error messages are no longer appearing. 

At approximately 10:00am on October 29th, UMBC users began reporting error messages upon attempting to access Blackboard courses. Instructional Technology staff opened a ticket with Blackboard Support and are continuing to monitor the service disruption.

As of 11:15am, this issue remains under investigation with Blackboard support.

Users may observe missing items from course menus including attendance, announcements, groups, and messages. Users who are able to log in courses may experience degraded performance and difficulty accessing course content and assessments. Most users are able to log into Blackboard itself and the issue is not system wide at this time.

Clearing the browser cache may offer temporary relief for the issue. 

If you encounter an issue when accessing a Blackboard course, please open an RT ticket and provide the session debug code, if available. The unique error id can be shared with Blackboard support to help clarify the errors observed in your course(s). Screenshots are also helpful.

This post will be updated with additional information as we receive it.

• Check our extensive FAQ collection 
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff
• PIVOT | Academic Continuity | Keep On Teaching | Student Technology Resources

At 6:40 PM on September 22nd, Blackboard reported a system performance issue affecting clients in the US East region. This disruption may prevent users from accessing the Blackboard platform. Users who are able to log in may experience degraded performance and difficulty accessing course content and assessments. 

As of 11:00 PM, system performance issues remain unresolved.

Blackboard engineers are working to address the issue as quickly as possible. Instructional Technology staff opened a ticket with Blackboard Support and are continuing to monitor the service disruption.

Update: 

As of 3:15 am on September 23, Blackboard reports that this incident has been resolved. Please open an RT request for any continuing concerns related to system performance.

This post will be updated with additional information as we receive it.

• Check our extensive FAQ collection 
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff
• PIVOT | Academic Continuity | Keep On Teaching | Student Technology Resources

At approximately 3:42pm, DoIT staff became aware of a potential outage with third-party tools on our instance Blackboard Learn. System admins confirmed reports that an AWS outage in US-East is impacting Blackboard and many third-party tools in Blackboard including, but not limited to:

• Class Collaborate
• VoiceThread
• Cengage
• Pearson
• CourseArc
• WileyPLUS

The service disruption prevents users from authenticating into an application, whether through Blackboard or directly via the vendor's website. Active sessions may also be disrupted. Inline grading and viewing student submissions is also affected by this outage.

AWS is responding to the incident and will provide further updates to vendors about the service disruption. Instructional Technology staff opened a ticket with Blackboard support and continue to monitoring the outage.

This post will be updated with additional information as we receive it.

Update 5:15 PM - Many AWS cloud services have been restored. Amazon continues to work on the issue. Blackboard appears to be functioning normally, but Instructional Technology staff will continue to monitor server performance for the next 24 hours.