Fixes in Service Pack 1

Blackboard’s Service Pack 1 (SP1), which was installed on JCCC’s production server (according to Blackboard) “resolves several Assignment (tool) related issues and lists 33 issues in total on the resolve(d) issues report.”

The following issues specifically related to the Assignments tool were resolved in SP1 and these situations should no longer occur:

• An Instructor would receive an error when trying to access an Assignment Dropbox in which Assignments had been deleted or a Dropbox for a course in which a student, who had submitted assignments, had them graded.
• There are no longer exception errors occurring when attempting to create or edit the Cutoff Date for an Assignment or when leaving blank the Cutoff Date for an assignment.
• If un-enrolling a user and then re-enrolling the same user, the data previously entered, such as grades, are retained as well as the Assignments (which prior to the upgrade were marked as Missing Attachments). Further previous Comments are now displayed.
• When the Instructor goes to the Assignment Dropbox, selects the All tab, and tries to sort the list by the "Assigned to" column, it will now sort “the list properly.” For example, clicking the “Assigned to” link in the Assignment Dropbox does now sort the Student list in alphabetical order. Note: testing at JCCC has found that the sort does now work, but it’s in alphabetical order by the first name not the last name. So it still is not useful or efficient for the instructor. We’ve reported this as a new bug.
• If an Assignment has already been created and marked gradable (numeric), if the Instructor or Designer attempts to change the Setting to Grading Form, that is now an option (we have not yet tested this at JCCC but it’s indicated as a fix in the Blackboard docs).
• Students are now able to attach files with ampersands (&) in the filename to an assignment submission. Previously, If they tried the action would not complete and an exception error was displayed.

Additional bug fixes in SP1 include:

• Accessing a student Assessment Submission for an Assessment with calculated questions no longer generates an exception error.
• Students who have been un-enrolled from a cross-listed Child Section of a Course, but not from the Parent Section, or who have been un-enrolled from both, but not from a Group within the Parent Section, were unable to view their Courses on the My Blackboard page.
• When the Course Menu is expanded or collapsed, most icons displayed a pop-up label of "course tool" rather than the tool name (e.g. “Mail”). This was problematic for students using JAWS or other assistive technology. Further, it made it hard for all users when the menu was collapsed to determine which icon represented which tool. (reported by JCCC).
• The newest version of Java (JRE 1.6.0_01) was not supported properly by the browser checker; therefore, there were multiple warnings throughout the Blackboard when attempting to login or when attempting to use Blackboard Java applets.
• When using the newest version of Java (JRE 1.6.0_01), when accessing the Chat tool a message indicated that the user could start a second Chat Session, even though the user had not yet started a Chat session.
• Following a SP2/HF1 upgrade (to CE 6.2 hotfix 1), invitations to Chat were not received. On loading the chat applet, the participant list was empty and messages were not processed.
• With Java 1.5.0_07 installed or higher, on a hyper-threaded machine, attempting to use the My Computer applet to upload a file using the Content Manager resulted in a system lock up.
• After selecting the Reviews icon to view a peer's review, the student was able to see the reviewers' username even when peer reviews for a Journal type Discussion topic were supposed to be anonymous.
• When using Grading forms, if the comments exceeded 1000 characters an exception error was displayed.
• With Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and Java 1.6.0_01, in a Discussion forum and when using the Content Manager, it was not possible to upload files using the My Computer applet.
• After updating from CE 4.1 to CE 6.0, the glossary terms no longer would hold apostrophes.
• Learning Modules containing the character # in the title or filename did not display on the Teach and Student View tabs.
• If the sender had mail forwarding turned Off in the My Tools tab options (accessed from the My Blackboard by selecting the Settings link), the email would not be forwarded to the recipient's email address regardless of whether the recipient had mail forwarding set to on/off. If the sender had mail forwarding turned On using the My Tools tab options, the email would be able to forward to the recipient's email address regardless of whether the recipient had mail forwarding set to On or Off.
• After upgrading to Application Pack 1, Service Pack 1 (CE 6.1.1), there were performance problems. It would often take 20-30 seconds to load a page. This would occur for users in courses that had a high number of Groups and Assignments.
• When using Internet Explorer 7, the Open in WebDAV Folder feature did not work.

We have tested only some of these bug fixes at JCCC.