For every assignment being handed in during January 2012 – every student now has an extra 4 working days to complete their work.
From 3rd-6th January, the University has to shut down the majority of its IT services in order to carry out vital upgrades, meaning that for the 4 days, you will not have access to vital systems such as Blackboard, SUSSED or printing – and won’t even be able to log in to the computers on campus.
As a result of discussions I have held with the University, they have now agreed that it is only fair for you to have the 4 working days that the downtime is affecting, given back to you so that you can complete your work to the same standard as normal.
So for example – if you have a deadline on Friday 13th January, you will now have until Thursday 19th to hand it in.
Thanks to the work carried out by your student representatives as well – Course Reps, Academic Presidents, and Faculty Officers – Faculties are also looking into what else they can provide students to ensure that the impact on your work from the downtime is minimalised as much as possible.
This extension does not apply to exams, however, and because of the lack of access to resources like Blackboard, TDnet or other journal sites – it is vital that you download or print any required documents for this period, should you wish to revise then.
The work is vital – without the upgrades planned, it was predicted that by mid-March, some IT services would need to be monitored and potentially switched off from time to time, because of the growing reliance on power to run them and the limited capabilities of the current system.
Safe to say, the timing, from a student perspective could hardly have been worse – as most of you will have properly started to dig your teeth into assignments and exam revision – but hopefully this extension will go some way to making sure you can still complete all your work to the best level possible.
For a full list of the services that are being affected, click here.
