myUSF Blackboard News

Created Thursday, Oct 2nd, 4:00pm
Updated Monday Oct 6th, 6:34pm
Updated Thursday Oct 9th, 9:01am

Blackboard Inc. has performed an upgrade to their SafeAssign service, and this upgrade has not gone well. Beginning Wednesday around 5pm, we received reports that Instructors were sporadically unable to access graded SafeAssignments, and students were unable to submit documents to SafeAssign. As of Thursday, 4pm Blackboard still does not have a workable solution to this problem.

Instructor/TA errors include a message similar to
“You are not authorized to perform this operation”
Blackboard looking deeper into this one and haven’t yet found a trace of this happening.

Any Instructor who encounters this problem should contact the IT Helpdesk as soon as possible at 974-1222, with the following information

• Date and time of the error (best guess)
• Browser and OS
• NetID
• CourseID
• Name of the Assignment

Students may receive a message
Submission error:
AccessRestricted.
or
Submission error:
InstanceNotFound.

Based on some of the information we’ve already collected they were able to find some interesting things while log crawling. The Blackboard developers feel they have a solid lead now. We should see a resolution on this one soon.

Any students who encounters this problem should contact the IT Helpdesk as soon as possible at 974-1222, with the following information

• Date and time of the error (best guess)
• Browser and OS
• NetID
• CourseID
• Name of the Assignment

Gradebook not updating:
This was partially our fault. We had a SafeAssign parameter set to our test environment not my.usf.edu. This wasn’t a problem
in the past, but the recent update calls back to our servers to mark the gradebook with a “!” and relies on this property to find our server.
The gradebook should update correctly now, but unfortunately there isn’t a way to update those that already submitted before the fix today. Instructors who suspect that students submitted a paper should click on the appropriate ‘-’ (hyphen) in the gradebook and look for a SafeAssign Paper Report.

Once we have a working solution, we will update this blog with the time of the fix. If you have additional questions, please contact the IT Helpdesk at 974-1222 or help@usf.edu

Update
As of Thursday, we have word that Blackboard has identified a probable cause for the problems, and is working to roll out a fix. This fix will involve an update to the Blackboard hosted service, as well as an update to the USF managed Blackboard. We do not currently have a final date for the release of this fix, but we expect it soon, within the next day or two. We’ll update once we have a firm date.

Student AccessRestricted / InstanceNotFound exception.
Another problem was identified with Safari 2.0 and 3.0 users, for both OS X and Windows.

The default configuration of Safari is to allow Cookie that I request, but not allow 3rd party cookie. The new version of SafeAssign now requires that it allow a 3rd party cookie to be set. This is a change from previous versions of the block, which managed to work without requiring the 3rd party cookie. To help ensure smooth operation while Blackboard works out this problem, please try the following

That will allow the 3rd party cookies that SafeAssign now requires.

A severe performance problem was identified with one of the modules attached to the default Courses and Organizations tabs supplied by Blackboard. The fix for this was to make the default Tab unavailable and replace it with a new tab that did not include the broken module. By removing this errant module we hope to improve the responsiveness and stability of the system as a whole.

An unfortunate side effect of this fix is that any modules or layout customizations made to your Courses or Organizations tab will need to be recreated. You can re-add any missing modules, such as the excellent My Courses Plus module or the entertaining Asteroids game by clicking the Modify Content button in the upper right.

After way too many years, we finally have a mechanism that allows Blackboard Instructors to view the course as a true student. Simply called “Create Temporary Student”, this tool creates a student account based on your own NetID and password and enrolls them into your Blackboard course.

Use the new temporary student feature in Blackboard to

• See your students’ view of your courses in Blackboard,
• Check that all of your course content is accessible to students and displays as you intend it to,
• Ensure that all assignments and associated points are in the Gradebook,
• Improve your students’ online learning experience by identifying any issues before the course is delivered.

Here’s the how to get started using Temporary Student

1. Log into Blackboard and go into a course in which you are an instructor.

2. In the Control Panel, go to Manage Tools, then click on Manage Building Block Tools.

3. Find the item Create Temporary Student, check it’s box, scroll down and Submit.

4. Go back to your Control Panel. You should now see an item in the Course Tools panel called Create Temporary Student. Click this.

The temporary student is almost ready for use. Follow the onscreen instructors for logging out of Blackboard and back in as your new student account.

Blackboard is offering Blackboard Sync, a Facebook application that delivers course information and updates from Blackboard to you inside Facebook. You can find out if you have a new assignment, grade, new forum posts, etc., without having to leave Facebook. Blackboard Sync also cross-references your courses’ Rosters with Facebook to make it easier to connect with your classmates through Facebook.

Except for Announcements, none of the actual course content is available in Facebook. Facebook users receive notifications about each new or updated piece of information, complete with a direct link to the item in their Blackboard course. Blackboard Sync will notify the student in Facebook that there is a new grade posted, and provide a link to their View My Grades page in the Blackboard coursesite. The student will still need to log into Blackboard to see that grade.

Each student can only see information specific to them for their own courses. They can’t share that information with Facebook Friends or Networks and there is no way for other students to access their information through Blackboard Sync.

Professors have the option to turn individual areas off for the Course site. If the professor does not want the students to see the Roster they can disable the Roster in the Blackboard Course Site and so on.

Students can set their Privacy options in OASIS so their email is not visible in Blackboard or the Blackboard Sync application. If the Roster is turned on and a student has downloaded the Blackboard Blackboard Sync application fellow students will be able to view another students Facebook page as if they were doing a normal search in Facebook. Students will still have the option in Facebook to set up their privacy settings.

The link to Bb Sync is on the myUSF tab. Once logged into myUSF, click on the tab and look for Bb Sync in the tools menu on the left.

Processing began for student enrollments for Fall courses in Blackboard. Students registered for Fall courses in OASIS/Banner should now be enrolled in those courses in Blackboard. The Blackboard course sites are available, and students are now able to view and interact with them.

Happy Fall Semester.

Respondus Inc. has released Respondus 3.5.4e.

The 3.5.4e patch adds support for the importing of MS Word 2007 (.docx) files, support for version 8 of the Blackboard Learning System, enhanced “Save As” functions (including the new StudyMate Class Server XML format), and other enhancements and fixes. An overview of the enhancements is available at http://www.respondus.com/download/respondus35patch.shtml .

If Respondus 3.5 has already been installed, the easiest way to obtain the 3.5.4e update is to use the “Check for Update” feature in Respondus. Follow these steps:

* Start Respondus 3.5
* Select “Help” from the menu bar
* Click “Check for Update” (this requires a live Internet connection)
* Click “Get Update”
* Upon exiting the Respondus software, the update will automatically be applied

If you prefer to manually download and apply the Respondus 3.5.4e patch, go to http://www.respondus.com/download/respondus35patch.shtml and select the appropriate download link. As noted above, this page also provides a list of the items addressed with the patch.

Firefox 3 was released Tuesday June 17th. For the most part, Firefox 3 is compatible with myUSF Blackboard, but we have identified at least one significant area in which Firefox 3 fails.

When trying to upload an attachment to an assignment with Firefox 3, we get an error. A javascript popup displays “please enter a valid file” although the file is valid. This issue is being addressed in a service pack for version 7.3, but that has not been released yet. We will evaluate the service pack once it becomes available.

In the meanwhile, we recommend that you do not upgrade to Firefox 3 if you have need to upload files to Blackboard. Please remain on Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 6 or 7, or Safari 2. These are the only web browsers currently certified and supported by Blackboard.

Take this list for what it’s worth.

1. Should show new announcement for every week
2. The course is very well organized with logical structure of folders
and the contents are clear and clean. There should not be too much
course materials shown as text or graphics on one web page.
3. The students should be able to access the contents from the opening
page with easily followed links.
4. The course contents are engaging and are made up of various different
kinds of activities.
5. Active student/teacher interaction in Discussion Board
6. Gradebook demonstrates plenty of feedback
7. Teacher contact information is clear and obvious

The servers hosting SafeAssign at Blackboard Inc. are currently experiencing unscheduled downtime. During this time, the SafeAssign tool will return an error message and you may experience a delay in the processing time for reports. Our first report of this problem was around 8:00 a.m. EDT.

Please note: this effects only those assignments which utilize the SafeAssign plagiarism service. Regular assignments are working properly.

I’ll update this when I have an ETA on service restoration.

Now through the end of the semester, Academic Computing is hosting walk-in clinics where you can ask any questions you have related to Blackboard at USF.   There will be two sessions each week, starting on November 2:

Clinics will be held in LIB 618, on the 6th floor of the Tampa campus library. No appointments are necessary, just show up and bring your best questions.

For more information, contact Drew Hannah:

Faculty may also contact the Center for 21st Century Teaching Excellence at 974-2576, http://www.c21te.usf.edu for assistance with Blackboard through workshops or individual consultations.