Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Changes After Service Pack 2 installed

JCCC installed Service Pack 2 recently (Mid-October) and here is a summary of some findings:

  1. The icons on the My Blackboard screen meant to alert the student/faculty member when there is something “new” do not consistently work in Service Pack 2 (SP2). Within the course itself, New Activity icons (the green asterisk) do not consistently identify when new postings appear. For instance, if you copy content from one course shell to another and then check the Discussions and Assignments tools, both with be marked with the New Activity icon even before any students enter the course. In Discussions the icon seems to appear if the instructor has used the topic description even if initial postings have not been entered. The only way to get rid of the New Activity icon is to open each discussion topic (even if nothing is posted) and then click the Teach tab (or Student View tab), which refreshes the screen. The same erroneous New Activity icons appear in the Assignments tool.
  2. Descriptions for the Course Content Home Page icons that use special characters (semi-colons, ampersands, colons and pound signs) now display properly (text following any of the special characters is no longer truncated).
  3. Descriptions for Learning Modules can now include special characters (semi-colons, ampersands, colons and pound signs) in their descriptions and the text displays properly (text following any of the special characters is no longer truncated).
  4. SP2 fixed the problem generated when an instructor/designer accessed the Student View in Blackboard which generated an "unexpected system exception error" if student access to the course had not yet been enabled.
  5. However, when instructors/designers access the Student View, they may see instructor/designer tools and not just student tools and options. Further, the Assignments, Who’s Online and Assessments tools when accessed on the Student View tab, may display an “unexpected system exception error.”
  6. Icon descriptions on the Course Content Home Page (Build tab) when using Internet Explorer are no longer rendered one word per line.

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