Blackboard News

On Saturday May 11, 2013 the SafeAssign system will be down for midnight from 12am-3am US PDT. During this time students will not be able to submit papers. The rest of the Blackboard system will be available during this time.

The advisory bulletin from Blackboard follows:

Bulletin/Advisory Information: The SafeAssign service will be unavailable on Saturday May 11, 2013 from 3:00 AM to 6:00 AM US Eastern (GMT-4). SafeAssign is being taken offline to improve disk space and hardware.

During this outage end-users will not be able to submit papers through SafeAssign during the planned downtime and will receive an error message if they attempt to do so. SafeAssign Originality Reports will not be available to instructors or students during the planned downtime, nor will Instructors be able to access SafeAssign DirectSubmit. Please make end-users aware of these limitations. Use of SafeAssign can continue as normal after the planned downtime is complete.

A recent Blackboard bug adds an “s” to links. Instead of going to http://…, https://… is used for web address when saved. The workaround for a student is to copy and paste the URL into the browser and remove the s from http(s):// then press enter and the page will load.

For professors in the meantime please recreate the content by going to “Build Content”, then use the “Web Link” content builder. This option still allows for the web links to function properly.

Our Administrator has gotten this problem escalated with the Blackboard developers and a fix will be available by the end of May!

We will contact professors who have submitted tickets to blackboard@ithelp.uoregon.edu once the issue has been fixed. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

On Friday April 12 starting at 7:00pm Pacific Daylight Saving Time Information Services will be upgrading the Duck ID website (duckid.uoregon.edu). During this time the “Forgot Your Password?”  link on the login page will not work and you will not be able to change your password. The upgrade will be completed sometime on Sunday April 14.

You will still be able to log into Blackboard and other UO services during this time.

For more information please see: https://it.uoregon.edu/duckid-upgrade

Until we get a permanent fix to the large file upload problems we have set a file upload limit of 500MB to Blackboard. We have also turned off the ability to export and import course archive files.

You can still use course copy to move files between courses. If you need to create a course export file to move content to another institution or need to import an export file from another institution you can send a request for assistance to blackboard@ithelp.uoregon.edu.

If you have files that are larger than 500MB you can contact CMET Consulting for assistance in finding a way to make your file available to students. They can assist you with compressing video files or making your files available on a streaming server.

Dear faculty the brief issue with the bouncing back/failed message (not the email delivery itself) that was problematic and has been fixed since Monday. As long as you have received a copy of the email in your inbox from the email you sent to your class then your class has received the email as well. The only exceptions to this, of course, would be the few students who might have full email inboxes or not check their email. Otherwise, they have received the messages that faculty have sent. To be certain your students have equal access to messages that are sent, we recommend using the “Announcements” feature in Blackboard, which will both email your students and post an announcement to the Blackboard page that they will see when they log into Blackboard. The caveat with the Announcement feature is that your course must be already set to “Available” prior to sending an announcement or the email portion won’t go through. In any case, the issue has been resolved!

And you shouldn’t be receiving inaccurate bounce back messages in the future. We do apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this has caused.

Blackboard has been stable since Tuesday, 3/19/2013, 1 am.

• Students affected by lack of availability of Blackboard resources should contact their instructors to discuss accommodations if needed.
• GTFs affected should work with their lead faculty.
• Faculty should take into account the impact this inconvenience might have had on their students. I encourage faculty to work with their department heads or deans to work out fair, equitable, and quick accommodations.
• Multiple sections of the same course should be handled in a consistent manner.
• Deans and department heads are encouraged to call me if they want to discuss options and approaches. My phone number in Academic Affairs is 6-2172 and my e-mail is baltmann@uoregon.edu. I’m happy to consult as we work through any necessary adjustments.
• No change has been made to the due date for grades in schools and colleges just ending winter quarter – it remains 12 noon next Monday, March 25^th.

Bb has been intermittently unavailable beginning Monday, 3/18/13, 3:22pm PST.

Blackboard, UO Libraries & UO Information Services are aware and are working on the issue.

We do not currently have an estimated up-time.

Updates will be provided as information becomes available.

Blackboard has started a weekly series of free hour long webinars for instructors called the “Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series”. To see the list of topics and to register, go to:

http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Resources/Webinars/Events.aspx?categoryType=BITS

Hello Faculty,

This occurs usually right after each upgrade and eventually works itself out. But this error does not happen for everyone, which means Blackboard can not really fix it at this time. There is an easy workaround in the meantime to fix it though. We recommend that you don’t use the Safari browser.

If you follow these instructions, the error will clear up and you should be able to access your grade center as usual:

• Go into your Full Grade Center
• Click on Manage button (at the top) and select Column Organization
• On the resulting window, find and click the submit button without making any changes (you can change things if you’d like). And that should take you back to your full grade center. Occasionally you will have to do that twice or actually move something around in that window, but usually that should clear the error.

The Blackboard upgrade to version 9.1, Service Pack (SP) 10 was complete and fully operational since December 20.

New features that are now available include:

• Recording from a webcam directly to YouTube
• New “My Blackboard” navigation menu
• New question analysis reports for tests and quizzes
• New Calendar feature
• Social Learning Tools

Video Everywhere allows the user to record video to YouTube and embed it in a text editor. This can be used by both students and instructors. One use would be for students to record videos that they can embed in the discussion board.