Resetting an Assessment for a Student

If you need to reset an assessment for a student (for whatever reason), here are the steps to follow:

1. Open the course, go to the Teach tab and select the Assessment Manager tool.
2. Select the Not Submitted tab or All tab (not the Graded or Not Graded tab).
3. Select the assessment link you want to reset.
4. Scroll down to find the student’s name.
5. Click the ActionLink that follows the name and from the pop-up menu select the Reset Entire Submission option.
6. When prompted to “Reset this submission?” click OK. Your student can now re-take the assessment (so long as it is still during the time period when students have access to the assessment—based on settings you established for the test).

Copyright Notices

Just a reminder that you should include a copyright notice in your online course somewhere if you are using any copyright materials. The following language may be used. It is borrowed from the University of North Carolina site on the TEACH Act at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scc/legislative/teachkit/notice.html.

“The materials on this course web site are only for the use of students enrolled in this course for purposes associated with this course and may not be retained or further disseminated.”

Michael Robertson (JCCC's DL Mentor) suggested an easy way to add the statement to your Course Content Home page as a footer. If you wish to do this:

1. Open up the course and click on the Build tab.
2. Select the Page Options button in the upper-right of the course content area.
3. Click the pull-down menu and select Edit Footer.
4. In the html edit box paste the following:
   

   “The materials on this course web site are only for the use of students enrolled in this course for purposes associated with this course and may not be retained or further disseminated.”

5. Then click the Save button.

Further, anytime you use a copyright work (after seeking permission, based on fair use or the TEACH Act), be sure to include a copyright notice following the format:

Copyright © 2007 by Harry Potter Rowling. Used by permission, all rights reserved.

Media Files and SSL

In an earlier posting, we mentioned that for security reasons, we have turned on the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) which prevents Windows Media Player from playing some types of media files (MPEG primarily) that are embedded in Blackboard. This problem was discovered after our initial switch to Blackboard CE 6 over 2 years ago. We reported the problem to Blackboard but it’s really an issue that Microsoft must address and we doubt there’ll be a solution anytime soon.

The only work around techniques available at present include:

• Have your students download, install and use Apple’s QuickTime rather than Windows Media Player for playback or
• Include instructions for the student to right-mouse click and download the video to their desktop and then play it from there.

Some Work Around Techniques You Should Know

Hiding Courses
You can hide courses you do not want shown on your My Blackboard screen. To do so:

1. Log into Blackboard and on the My Blackboard screen select the Edit Course List icon (looks like a pencil in the upper right corner of the Course List panel).
2. Find the course name (see note below) and click the Hide Link button that follows the name. If you want to hide several courses at once, select the checkbox that precedes each course name, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click the Hide button.
3. When finished, click the My Blackboard tab to refresh back to your My Blackboard screen.

Note: as you search for the course(s) you want to hide, you’ll see that the course names are truncated at about 30 characters. Move your mouse pointer over a title, let it rest there and you’ll see the entire course name displayed. For some additional notes about why your course listing may not be in alphabetical order, check out http://ce-annotations.blogspot.com/2007/05/when-my-blackboard-courses-are-not-in.html.

Grade Book Columns
By default every Grade Book in Blackboard includes two columns that cannot be deleted: Midterm and Final. So don’t waste energy trying to remove them.

Calendar Entries
You can create three types of calendar entries: Personal, Private and Public. Private calendar entries cannot be copied from one course to another. Personal and Public entries can be copied. If you want to make notes to yourself about activities you need to perform at specific times during each semester and you want to copy them to a new semester, make the entries Personal and not Private.

Once you copy content to a new course shell (including calendar entries) you can use the Manage Course --> Date Rollover feature to adjust calendar entries from the old dates (probably last semester’s dates if you’re copying content from the previous semester) to dates appropriate for this semester’s course. However, this feature only adjusts dates that are linked to assessments and assignments. It does not adjust dates that are used in selective release or stand alone dates in your Calendar.

By the way, the Date Rollover really works best if you first CLEAR all calendar entries except one semester’s worth, e.g. you only have last semester’s dates in the course shell when you rollover dates to the new semester. You do have an option to clear a range of dates from your Calendar (go to the Calendar tool, select the Delete a Range button and set the range you want to delete).

You can adjust those dates manually using the Adjust Individual Dates button, which is available once you select the Manage Course --> Date Rollover feature.

For additional “strange calendar behaviors” check out http://ce-annotations.blogspot.com/2007/08/strange-calendar-behaviors.html.

Learning Modules, Folders, and Course Design

The heart of any online course is the content and the interaction between students and their instructor. We’ve frequently found cases where the layout and design of the course make it more difficult for the student to learn and the instructor to manage, so here are a few suggestions.

1. The Learning Module tool is the most efficient way to deliver most content. If you create folders on the Course Content Home page (rather than using the Learning Module tool) you may encounter more potential problems (bugs) while managing the course and your students don’t have the benefit of the built-in navigation available when you use a Learning Module.
2. Never have more than 6-8 icons on your Course Content Home Page, it adds confusion for the student (they will be overwhelmed by choices) plus it will require the student to scroll to see all the icons. Using folders rather than Learning Modules probably will force you to exceed this limit, so try use the Learning Module tool instead.
3. Whether you choose to use folders on the Course Content Home page or Learning Modules, you REALLY should set up a folder structure (under Class Files) where all files associated each learning Module (or home page folder) are in a separate file folder. Organizing content by module, chapter or week into separate folders means you’ll be able to find and update files easier. You should never leave all files for the entire course in a single folder.

Strange Calendar Behaviors

Please be aware of the following changes in behavior in the Calendar tool subsequent to the upgrade to CE 6.2.1 (App Pak 2 with Hotfix 1 applied):

1. It’s common to copy a course from a previous course shell and then want to move the calendar entries to new dates in the new course. When you change the date for a Calendar entry (by simply modifying the date), the screen refreshes and brings you back to "today's date" (such as the 14th if today's the 14th of August) but in the month from which you came (e.g. the original month in which the date occurred before you edited it), but not on the specific date of the original entry you edited. So, if you’ve got three items on January 18th and you want to move them to August 16th (and today is August 14th), each time you change the date of an item on January 18th Blackboard “leaves“ you back on January 14, rather than on the 18th. If you’re moving an item from February 20 to September 25th, after the change you’ll end up on February 14th.
2. Some faculty have reported not being able to edit calendar entries after a course copy. No underlying cause has been found yet.
3. New Calendar entries default to today’s date no matter what you do. If you move to a date in November and try to add a Calendar entry on November 2nd, the default date will be today’s date, not the date you selected in November. You can change it each time, but there’s no sense in navigating to the new month and date, since you’ll need to set the date each time you add an entry.
4. If you try to set a time for an event (entry in calendar or assignment or assessment due date) after 10:59 PM on November 4, Blackboard changes the time to an hour earlier. This is the date that Daylight Savings time ends in the Fall of 2007. If you type in a time (like 11:00 PM) or use the drop down menu to choose a time, it may appear correct until you save it, then the time is set back without warning to 10:00 PM. This anomaly only occurs on November 4. If you don’t expect this, you can be frustrated and waste a lot of time trying to figure it out.
5. If you create calendar entries (not linked to anything like an assessment or assignment) and copy the course to a new course shell, Public entries and Personal entries will copy to the new course shell. Private entries do not copy over. They are not visible even if the “This Course + Personal” view is selected.

Blackboard CE 6.2 Bug Report

(Updated 8/12/2007) In an effort to alert faculty to potential problems as they prepare for the Fall 2007 semester, here’s a list of bugs we’ve encountered with Blackboard after the upgrade to CE 6.2:

1. When using the “&” character as a folder description or in the description of an icon (e.g. using the Edit Properties option from the icon’s ActionLinks) the “&” disappears and (sometimes) all characters following the “&.” Blackboard is aware of this problem. A similar problem occurs when including the “#” sign, semi-colon and colon. This “bug” can cause items to disappear, such as a folder or icon description, an icon. a Learning Modules or pages within a Learning Module.
2. At least one faculty member has reported problems with double quotes so that “quoted materials” appears as “quoted materialsâ€?
3. Faculty members are reporting “Unexpected system exception errors” whenever they try to access the Student View tab. We now believe this is related to courses being set as inaccessible to students until the first day of classes (August 16). When the release date has not yet arrived, the Student View generates an unexpected system exception error. When the release date has passed, no error is generated. This situation did not occur with earlier versions of Blackboard CE 6.
4. For JCCC faculty, if you need to see the student view for your classes (using the Student View tab) prior to Blackboard fixing the System Exception Error problem, here’s the only work-around that comes to mind. Go into your course and hide all menu items (Build tab, Manage Course and then select Course Menu). Next hide all icons (use the Hide option on the ActionLinks icon) on your course ‘s Home Page. When finished, email the Help Desk and ask them to open your course to student access. This way you can use the Student View tab, your student cannot see the hidden materials, and you can also add a page header to the course’s Home Page with a message to your students (to do so go to Build Tab, select Page Options and then Edit Header).
5. We have three instances where course content will not copy. Cause still unknown.
6. For security reasons, we needed to turn on the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) which after initial testing appears to prevent the Windows Media Player from playing MPEG files (and some other media files) embedded in Blackboard. This problem was discovered after our initial switch to Bb CE 6 over 2 years ago, so at that time we turned SSL off. However, for security and copyright (Fair Use) reasons, SSL must be turned “on.” We’re working on a work-around.
7. On the Build Tab you may find that icon or folder descriptions are displayed one word per line. The text displays properly on the Teach tab. This is a new bug with CE 6.2 that was not present in CE 6.1.1. We have reported it to Blackboard (Bb) support. Our testing seems to confirm that the student will see the description with proper formatting.
8. JCCC staff in the Academic Technology Support (ATS) group had set student access dates for each course section-by-section prior to the upgrade to CE 6.2. However, with the upgrade, Blackboard retained the section-by-section settings and then added a new “term” related setting that superseded them. The new CE 6.2 “term feature” establishes dates for each term and those dates (by default) over-ride the section start and end dates. While Bb announced the “support” for terms (which still does not display on the My Blackboard screen, where it’s needed), only upon careful reading of the admin manual did ATS discover that "term support" means the start and end dates for the term effects all sections of all courses in that term. ATS has since set the system to default back to access dates based on each section rather than the term settings. This correction (at JCCC) was made at 6:41 PM on Friday, August 3, so you may have students who accessed your course between the upgrade on August 1st and the correction on the 3rd. If you reset your course materials (assessments or assignments) and eliminate student activity, be sure to advise your students, otherwise you may have students who completed work between August 1-3, 2007 and now wonder why that work has disappeared and doesn’t count.
9. After the upgrade to CE 6.2 hotfix 1, the Blackboard Server had to be rebooted daily. Background jobs (indexing, garbage collection, and so on) were writing error logs to the server and filling up disk space to the point where response time came to a standstill. There are six background jobs that are run by the Blackboard system and four of them are new with the App Pak 2/Hotfix 1 upgrade. Since we did not have this problem before the upgrade, we assumed one or more of the four new background jobs were causing the problem. These new jobs we set to kick off automatically at Midnight, so ATS shut down the Blackboard server every evening around 1 AM and then restarting it, to avoid the slowdown caused by the buildup of log files. Ultimately, we discovered that by staggering the start times of the jobs, the problem appears to be fixed.
10. There are some strange behaviors taking place when entering new Calendar entries. We’re receiving reports from faculty on the following:
    
    a. After entering a new calendar entry, the screen refreshes and brings you back to the first day of the month from which you came, but NOT on the specific date from which you came. So, if you’ve got three items on January 18th to move to August 16th, each time you change the date of an item on January 18th Blackboard “leaves“ you back on January 1, rather than the 18th. If you’re moving an item from February 20 to September, after the change you’ll end up on February 1.
    
    b. Some faculty members have reported not being able to edit calendar entries after a course copy.