Blogboard @ SHSU

One Down, and Another One Down!

2008-10-09T16:22:00.002-05:00

The issue that prevents students/instructors from attaching Office 2007 documents in the Assignment Manager has (finally) been solved! If you are on campus and still receiving the error, log off and log back on and it should work.

Thanks for your patience.

One down one to Go!

2008-10-08T13:48:00.002-05:00

Collaboration(virtual classroom)is back up and running. We are still working on the office 2007 file upload issue in assignments. Our ticket is being looked at by Blackboard support engineers as this blog entry is being typed.

Virtual Classroom/Chat Issues

2008-10-06T11:47:00.001-05:00

We are aware of Java Applet Load failing when trying to access either the Virtual Classroom or the Chat functions. We have put in a support ticket with Blackboard, and will be working hard to rectify the issue.

Blackboard Downtime 10/3 @ 8pm

2008-10-03T09:31:00.002-05:00

Blackboard will be taken down 10/3 @ 8pm in order to update the software. The update will clear up the security certificate issues student and faculty see when in assessments, discussion boards and other content areas. Downtime estimate: 1 hour.

Having trouble uploading to the Grade Center?

2008-10-01T10:11:00.000-05:00

If you are getting an error when uploading a Grade Center file (from Excel) that says "incorrect file format," here's why:

Blackboard downloads the file in what is called Unicode format, but sticks a different file extension at the end (the period and three letters that represent the file format). So when you go to upload it again, even if you didn't change anything, it gives the error!

For the time being, here is an easy way to get around the bug.

When you download the file, choose "Tab Delimited" out of the three formats that are available to download.
The box comes up asking if you'd like to Open or Save. Instead of Saving (like you normally should) choose Open, you'll save it after.
The file will open in Excel. Go to the Office Button, and choose Save As, Other Formats.
From the pull-down menu under where you enter the file name, choose "Text (Tab Delimited)" and save the file.

Voila! Now it is in the correct format, and you can make changes then upload it back to Blackboard without a problem.

BB Faculty: Finding more Real Estate in Your Grade Center

2008-08-21T12:10:00.006-05:00

Blackboard 8's Grade Center is a powerful application that gives the person in charge of leading the Blackboard course many tools and options that increase the effectiveness of assessment in the course. That being said, there a few bugs that still need to be worked out.

The bug that seems to be the cause of most Bb faculty members' frustration, is the limit on how many students show up in the grade center without scrolling. Many Blackboard admins and faculty have brought this to Blackboard's attention, but in the meantime there are few things you can do to increase the amount of real estate in your grade center.

Cut Down on Toolbars
Go to Full-Screen View
Increase your Monitor's resolution

Cut Down on Toolbars

Over time, you may have noticed that you have acquired few extra friends on your Internet browser window. Places like Yahoo and Google love for you to have their toolbars on your browser so that you will use their product when searching the web. This may seem convenient for you in terms of at-your-fingertips searching, but it reduces the amount of viewing real estate you have available. (learn now to hide the toolbars)

Go to Full-Screen View

One of the least used tricks-of-the-trade in online browsing is the Full-Screen View. The full-screen view lets the user interact with the web page without seeing any of the browser buttons, pull-down menus, or toolbars. One tap on a function key (F11), and you can turn it on or off. (learn how to go to full-screen view)

Increasing your Monitor's Resolution

The last way you can increase the real estate in your grade center is by changing your monitor's resolution. This may be unfamiliar to some, but in reality it is a 3 step process. Changing your monitors resolution can shrink or grow your desktop (icons, fonts and buttons will change) depending on which way you push the slider. For instance your monitor might be set to 1024 X 768. By pushing your slider to the right you would then hit 1280 X 1024 or by pushing it to the left you would come to 800 X 600. (learn how to increase your monitor's resolution)

Hopefully, one or all of the workarounds will help you increase the amount of real estate in your Blackboard 8 grade center.

Blackboard Day 2008

2008-08-14T16:14:00.002-05:00

Greetings!

Don't forget that tomorrow is our annual Blackboard Day event, taking place in the CJ Courtroom from 9 am to 4:30 pm.

Guest speakers include Director of Academic Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, James Vanroekel who will be speaking briefly during lunch, and Director of Library Services Ann Holder will be speaking about copyright issues.

Lunch will be provided for those who registered for it, and coffee/ice cream will be provided for everyone. Door prizes will be given away and those registered within the first 100 will receive a gift.

If you have not registered, you can still attend. Make sure to let us know at the sign-in table so we can prepare materials for you.

The event will be streamed on the website at http://www.shsu.edu/blackboardday.html if you would like to watch.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!

NOTE: This event is for Faculty and Staff only.

Blackboard and Firefox 3 - The Assignment Workaround

2008-07-28T13:13:00.005-05:00

In a previous blog post, we stated that Firefox 3 and Blackboard were incompatible due to an issue with uploading assignments via the assignment manager. Now there is a workaround!

You will need to install an add-on for Firefox in order to make it work. Go to the following Firefox add-on page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59.

The name of the add-on is User Agent Switcher 0.6.11.

Once you have the add-on installed, go ahead and take a look in your Tools menu. You will see a new entry, "User Agent Switcher." Select Tools->User Agent Switcher->Options->Options... Now choose User Agents then Add.

Make the description "Blackboard" and the user agent "mac."

Blackboard Downtime 7/25 @ 2am

2008-07-25T19:08:00.002-05:00

Blackboard will be restarted at 2am this evening for system maintenance. Expected downtime is 20 minutes.

If you have any questions, please contact us at blackboard@shsu.edu.

How do I move materials from Old Blackboard to New Blackboard?

2008-07-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

To move your needed course materials from the old Blackboard system to the current on is a 2-pronged process. You will export your course from the old Blackboard and then import your course into the new one.

Exporting Your Course from "Old Blackboard"

1. Log into the old Blackboard server (use the OLD Blackboard course link on our Blackboard splash page).
2. Navigate to the appropriate course.
3. In the Course Options section of the Control Panel, select the Export Course link.
4. Choose the sections of your course you would like to to bring into New Blackboard.
5. Click the Submit button.

Importing Your Course into New Blackboard

1. Log into the New Blackboard server (use the Fall Bb course link on our Blackboard splash page)
2. Navigate to the course where this material need to be imported.
3. In the Course Options section of the Control Panel, select the Import Package link.
4. Use the check boxes to select the data you wish to import.
5. Click the Submit button.

Give your course materials about 5 minutes to arrive. Keep in mind that depending on the time of day it make take more/less time for the items to show up.

ATTN: Blackboard Faculty

2008-06-27T08:37:00.003-05:00

On Monday July 14th, the OLD Blackboard server will be taken down for good.

What's the OLD Blackboard server, you may ask?
The server which currently houses courses from semesters previous to Fall '07:

Spring 2006
Minimester 2006
Summer I & II 2006
Fall 2006
Spring 2007
Minimester 2007
Summer I & II 2007

From the Blackboard Login page (linked from the main SHSU page), click on OLD Blackboard Course Login. Log in with your current username and password to access these courses.

It is imperative that you download any information you may need, copy/archive courses that you will need in the future, and save anything that you need from this server before 5 p.m. on July 14th. At that time the server will be taken down permanently and there will be no recovering data from it after that time.

If you have any questions about this matter or would like assistance in migrating data to the new server from the old, please contact the Blackboard Team at (936) 294-4495 or e-mail blackboard@shsu.edu.

Grade Center Patch applied

2008-06-20T18:00:00.002-05:00

We have applied the Grade Center patch without issue. In one of the courses that was experiencing the issue, the Grade Center is now visible. Thanks to the systems team for their hard work and for the Blackboard user community being patient as we endeavored to isolate and fix the issue.

The Blackboard Team

Scheduled Downtime

2008-06-20T12:52:00.001-05:00

Blackboard will be experiencing downtime this evening (6/20/08) at 6:00 p.m. so that a patch can be applied to fix a few errors that users are experiencing.

We appreciate your patience.

Blackboard & Firefox 3

2008-06-18T15:33:00.005-05:00

Blackboard does NOT fully support Mozilla's new release of Firefox, version 3. Use it at your own risk - you may encounter some problems, specifically with uploading Assignments.

For more information on which browsers ARE supported by Blackboard, refer to the Browser Compatibility Matrix located on our Technology Tutorials here: Browser Compatibility Matrix for Blackboard 8.0

Blackboard Patch Applied

2008-06-11T16:53:00.002-05:00

We have successfully applied the patch to fix an issue that some students were seeing in the Grade Center(student grades not showing up or reporting back random code). Blackboard was down for a total of 5 minutes and 16 seconds. Thanks to everyone involved for making this work and for being patient while we worked to correct this issue!

Scheduled Downtime for Grade Center Patch 6/11/2008 @ 4:45pm

2008-06-11T08:44:00.010-05:00

Some students are having issues viewing their grades within Blackboard courses. We will be applying a patch to fix this issue today(6/11/2008) at 4:45pm. Blackboard should only be down long enough to apply the patch and restart.

If you have any questions about this or anything else, feel free to contact the Blackboard Team.

In the meantime..

2008-06-06T16:15:00.001-05:00

If you are experiencing the previously blogged problem deleting content from Blackboard, simply make the content item "unavailable" (via the Modify button) for the time being.

We are still working with Blackboard Support to fix the issue.

As always, thanks for your patience.

The Blackboard Team

Blackboard 8 issues? Hang in there!

2008-06-06T10:40:00.004-05:00

As you may have noticed, right now, there are a few issues going on with Blackboard:

content items become unavailable/can't be accessed or deleted
Grade Center access denied/errors

If you are experiencing those errors or other errors, please let us know (especially if they aren't covered here - we can add them to the support ticket).

Our techs are currently back-and-forth on the phone with Blackboard Support, trying to get the issues resolved as quickly as possible.

We appreciate your patience on the matter. Hang in there!

Thanks,
The Blackboard Team

Blackboard 8.0 Upgrade Complete

2008-05-28T08:34:00.007-05:00

SHSU is now running Blackboard 8.0.260.7. We have successfully upgraded from version 7.3.159. Blackboard 8 provides us with a completely new assessment area called the Grade Center as well as new critical thinking tools and the long-awaited return of an old friend, the Bb Search tool. Use the following links to get an in-depth description of what you get with the new Grade Center and an overview of the new critical thinking tools.

Our current hardware set up is listed below:

Three application servers (the machines that run the Blackboard software)
One collaboration server (a machine dedicated to the virtual classroom)
Two database servers
One file server
One SAN (Storage Area Network) where all the data is stored
Two load balancers (these machines spread the load of users accessing blackboard between the three application servers)

Blackboard - Continue on to web site

2008-05-28T06:17:00.001-05:00

Blackboard 8.0 is up and available. When logging in, users will be directed to a page that tells them to do one of two things:

Click here to close this webpage
Continue to Website

Be sure to choose the second option(hint: continue to website). Our certificate isn't being recognized currently, but your data is still encrypted and safe, so you can log into Blackboard with confidence.

Thank you for your patience, we will continue to work on making it so you don't have to see the certificate error in the future.

The Blackboard Team
blackboard@shsu.edu

Blackboard Downtime 5/20-5/27 What we are doing

2008-05-19T18:47:00.005-05:00

We wanted to give you some specifics of what we will be doing during our downtime. By now, you know that we plan to move from Blackboard 7.3 to Blackboard 8.0. You also know that we will be performing some other systems changes. Here are just a few:

a series of bug patch, security, and general feature set enhancement upgrades on the Blackboard hosting servers
Application servers will be finalized in order to provide their complete functionality for all Blackboard Application feature sets as per specification for the planned Blackboard implementation.
we will be implementing the Conga Clustering technology through the Red Hat Cluster Suite in order to allow high availability for the BlackBoard cluster such that in the event and one node were to experience potential problems the Cluster Suite would be able to detect the issue, take the problematic node out of the active cluster, retask it as passive or if need be decommission the node and alert the administrator on duty or on call.
we will be placing all the BlackBoard Cluster nodes symbolically behind a load balancing configuration for transparent pass through of the F5 devices that will be able to offload newly created concurrent sessions to the BlackBoard node that is momentarily under the lesser load of all those in which are members of the cluster.

We will keep you informed along the way!

Thanks,
Jacob Spradlin
Technology Support Coordinator II
ucs_jws@shsu.edu

Blackboard Downtime May 20-27 - DATE CHANGE

2008-05-05T08:06:00.001-05:00

From May 20-27, our systems administrators will perform server maintenance and upgrade Bb to version 8. Bb will be unavailable during this time. If you are teaching a mini-mester course that meets during this time, please ensure you visit with the Blackboard team. They will work to accommodate your class if at all possible.

University of Houston study reveals that students in 'Hybrid' courses get better grades

2008-04-10T08:30:00.008-05:00

Students who took the hybrid class earned, on average, a letter grade higher than students in the traditional class. A report of Mr. McFarlin's findings, collected over the course of six semesters, was published in Advances in Physiology Education.

Read the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. More information can be found at University Of Houston's website.

Coming Soon - Blackboard 8.0!

2008-04-01T08:30:00.003-05:00

On May 18, 2008 we will begin our upgrade to Blackboard Version 8. Blackboard 8 comes with some much sought after enhancements. To find out a little about each area affected check out Blackboard's quick tutorials on what's new in Version 8:

KISS the Assignment Manager

2008-03-24T15:47:00.001-05:00

KISS the Assignment Manager

Keep It Simple, Silly!

The Assignment Manager, used in lieu of the Digital Dropbox, is a great tool for posting and collecting assignments from your students.

While the ability to collect and download submitted assignments is useful, there's one thing you MUST remember - KISS!

When naming your assignment, keep the assignment name as simple as possible - NO spaces, NO punctuation marks such as ampersands (&), number signs (#), parenthesis, and a "short n' sweet" title.

Why?!

When you collect and download the submitted assignments, a .zip file is created for you to download, and it is named according to the assignment's title that is given when it is created. The "Download assignments now" link points to that .zip file just the same as any file on the web, and so the .zip file's name is part of the URL. If the file's name has any symbols such as the ones mentioned above, it will truncate the link and any attempt to download the file will result in an error.

Not that the file doesn't exist -- your browser just cannot read it correctly. If you are having that problem now, check the assignment names. All you have to do to fix it, is shorten the name and take out spaces and symbols, then download the assignments to your heart's content!