The Blackboard Blog

Blackboard, Inc. has identified a critical bug in the testing and survey tool in Blackboard Learn. Students may be given an “access denied” message when trying to save an answer or submit a test. A patch has been made available and Instructional Technology will be applying the patch on September 14, 2011 between 5:30 AM and 6:00 AM. The patch application requires Blackboard to be offline.

Below is the CTX Blackboard usage report through August 2011. Usage continues to increase significantly. Despite the increase, Blackboard is still utililized in less than 50% of courses offered at Concordia.

ALERT:  There is a significant problem with the Blackboard testing feature. Blackboard Support reports a software problem that causes students who are taking tests in Blackboard to be “kicked out” before the test is complete. When this happens, faculty must reset the test and students must start the test over. Blackboard Support is currently creating a patch to resolve the issue. While I expect a patch to be delivered within a week, a specific date has not been given by Blackboard Support.

The problem is currently isolated to students using the Firefox browser and with tests that have Force Completion enabled and Auto-Submit set to “On.” Tests in Blackboard can still be used. However, as illustrated below, instructors are advised to uncheck Force Completion and set Auto-Submit to “Off” in the Test Options until the patch is installed.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at any time. I’ll let you know when the patch is installed and the issue is resolved.

Blessings on your work developing Christian Leaders!

Stan

Instructional Technology will be taking Blackboard offline on Thusday, July 21 at 10 PM. Blackboard will remain offline until approximately 8 AM on the morning of Friday, July 22. During this time, improvements will be made to the virtual environment along with the installation of Service Pack 6.

Blackboard release Service Pack 6 on June 29, 2011. The service pack includes several bug fixes and patches. However, there are significant improvements to functionality along with feature enhancments that provide a more robust teaching and learning environment.The most significant improvements and enhancements are given below.

• Interactive Rubrics are now included as an option in assessments. The rubrics allow instructors to provide students with assessment expectations and evaluation criteria. The rubrics can be used dynamically for grading and student feedback within the grade book. Instructors can choose four types (percentage, point, point range, and no-point), as well as assign weights to categories. The same rubric can be used for multiple assessments and can be exported and imported from course to course.
• Needs Grading has been significantly enhanced to allow instructors easier access to items that need grading. Gradeable discussion boards can now be set to appear in the Needs Grading module after a specific number of posts by a student.
• Timed Assessments now have the ability to auto-submit when time expires. Previously, students could still complete the assessment after time had expired. While instructors would be able to determine what part of the assessment was done after time expired, the grading had to be manually adjusted. Instructors can now set timed assessments to auto-submit when time expires. Students will not be able to complete any part of the assessment when time expires.
• Chrome Browser Certification is introduced for the first time with service pack 6, and this administrator is delighted! For those of you who have never had the pleasure of using the Chrome browser, download and install it by going here.

There are other excellent enhancements on the administrative side that will greatly enhance Concordia's Blackboard experience. More information about those will be included in the Blackboard Blog as they are implemented.

Service Pack 6 for Blackboard was released on June 29. This will be a very nice update for those instructors who like to use rubics for grading. Blackboard introduced rubrics into the Blackboard Learn system about a year ago. However, the implementation was so poor that I decided to turn the feature off. Quite frankly, the rubrics were fairly useless. They could not be tied to an assignment easily and you could not use them for grading (the primary purpose for using a rubric). While CTX will not install service pack 6 on its test server until July, several universities across the country began testing right away. Early reports on the improvements to the rubrics is positive. I'm anxious to give them a try. More to come as we begin testing on July 5.

Stan Kruse

Director, Instructional Technology

Summer activities at Concordia have changed significantly in the six years that I’ve been here. In the past, summertime brought with it the opportunity to take down systems for upgrades, maintenance, and general housekeeping. That’s no longer true. With additional programs, cohorts, classes and activities, there is no “good” time to take a system such as Blackboard down for maintenance or upgrades. Yet the need to do these essential procedures remains.  We still anticipate that Blackboard will need to be offline twice during the upcoming weeks for approximately 12-16 hours at a time. We’ll keep everyone informed and make sure that all interested parties are aware of the downtime.

The next scheduled maintenance date is Friday, June 17. Blackboard will be offline starting at 1:00 am and will be offline all day to accommodate changes to the virtual server environment. If you have any questions, please contact the helpdesk at 512-313-4357.

Below is a list of the top 25 faculty users of Blackboard by click-count for the Spring 2011 semester at CTX.

1. Kenneth Holley
2. James Stevenson
3. Curtis Giese
4. Melissa Brown
5. James Rank
6. Tom Pate
7. Philip Hohle
8. Marilynn Leathart
9. Matthew Bloom
10. Marchelle Scarnier
11. Shane Sokoll
12. Maureen Davis
13. Glenn Birdwell
14. Sarah Baker
15. Brian Malechuk
16. Laurence Meissner
17. Betty Jensen
18. Laura Mallonee
19. Kenneth Tierce
20. Ann Klingner
21. Cari Chittick
22. Llannis Cheatheam
23. Connie Beran
24. Dennis Bragdon
25. Philippe West