WebCT Good News/Bad News #3: Announcements & Media Library

These daily “Good News/Bad News” messages after meant to inform you of what works and what doesn’t in CE 6.1.1. Even though you may not have time to test, this should give you a sense of what the upgrade will “do to your course.” If you have comments, you’re invited to email me directly (jbacon@jccc.edu) or share on the dlfaculty@jccc.edu list.

CE 6.1.1 Good News: Announcements

1. You can now change pages when viewing lists of announcements that span multiple pages. However, if you change the Paging Preferences (accessed by clicking the three dog-eared sheets icon in the bottom right corner of the WebCT Announcements window) to increase the “Number of records per page” setting (10 is the default) the increase in visible announcements may not display immediately. You may need to jump to another tool or tab and then return to the Announcements tool for it to take effect.
2. Images in announcements now correctly display.
3. The Delete button now deletes Announcements (but only if you were the instructor who created the announcement)

CE 6.1.1 Bad News: Announcements & Media Library

1. When you create an announcement by default it goes to all students, instructors, auditors and teaching assistants. There’s a bug that prevents you from sending an announcement to just one of these groups of course participants.
2. Media Library collections (such as the Glossary) are broken if the imported collection includes an attached JPEG, GIF or TIF file. Further if a new JPEG, GIF or TIF image is added to a new or existing Media Library collection, the tool is broken. The only work-around is to not use JPEG, GIF and TIF images in the Media Library. Blackboard is working on a solution; they’ve replicated the problem, and are trying to provide a late January hot fix to address the issue.