Viewing Calendar Entries in the Student View

In the Ed Tech Center (at JCCC) we sometimes hear from faculty that they can’t see any entries in the Calendar tool when using the Student View tab. When viewing the Calendar tool using the Student View tab, be sure the View setting (upper right hand corner of the Calendar screen) displays This Course Only and not Personal Only view. Once you change the setting, click the Go button (looks like a right pointing green arrowhead) to effect the change.

Student View Tab Problems

JCCC currently has Blackboard CE (Campus Edition) 6.2.2 installed. With this version, there are problems with the Student View tab, which exist when student access to the course has yet to be enabled. By default, unless you request otherwise, all Blackboard hosted online courses are not available to students until the first day of the semester (e.g., January 16, 2008). Therefore, until student access is enabled on January 16th, the following “issues” exist with using the Student View tab. These problems go away when student access is enabled. Blackboard has indicated that these issues are resolved in Service Pack 3 (e.g., CE 6.2.3) which JCCC has access to, but has not tested yet (it was released in late December 2007).

1. Despite the Release Criteria (selective release) settings for an item (e.g., Learning Module or other course element) items will show up on the Student View tab even though the selective release criteria has not yet been met.
2. Other schools have reported that the Group Sign up buttons do not appear (the Sign Up for Group column is not present). I do not have access to a course that uses this feature, but we assume this report is accurate since it’s been reported by several other Blackboard schools.
3. An “unexpected system exception error” will appear if a course has either assignments or assessments and the Assignments and Assessment tools (respectively) are selected from the Student View tab. The problem disappears when the course is made accessible to students.
4. Calendar entries are not visible on the Student View tab when the course is inaccessible to students. The entries do become visible once student access to the course is enabled.
5. In the Discussions tool, when the “Students can reply to messages but cannot post messages” setting is selected and you open a message (posted by the instructor) using the Student View tab, the Reply option (button) does not display as long as student access to the course has not been enabled. As soon as the section is open to students, the Reply option is available on both the Student View tab and when a student logs in.
6. An “unexpected system exception error” will appear when attempting to access the Who’s Online tool from the Student View tab if student access to the course has not yet been enabled. The problem disappears when the course is made accessible to students.
7. Some tools, e.g., Discussions, Chat and Announcements, display options on the Student View tab that are not visible to true students. For example, the Discussions tool displays options for creating topics and categories as well as the ability to reorder those elements. The Chat tool includes the Create Chat or Whiteboard Room button. The Announcements tool contains the Create Announcement button.

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.

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.

Using the CE 6 Tabs Properly

When new mail messages, discussion postings, or assignment are submitted in Blackboard CE, a New Activity icon (white asterisk on a green background circle) appears. However, the New Activity icon is based on items you’ve viewed or new items received on each tab (Build, Teach and Student View). When you view the new activity on one tab, the New Activity icon disappears on that tab only (e.g. the corresonding New Activity icons are still visible on the other tabs).

Blackboard CE 6 has three tabs serving three specific purposes. The Build tab is used when building the course. The Student View tab is used 1) to see how the course displays to students and 2) for in-classroom use of Blackboard (so you don’t accidentally open up the Grade Book in class). Once the course is built one should teach the course using the Teach tab. By remaining on the Teach tab throughout the semester you will always know which items you’ve opened or not. If you switch back and forth between tabs when doing routine “Teach” activities, you’ll may find “new” items identified on each tab (Build, Teach and Student View) depending on what you’ve already opened on that tab! This can be confusing if you’re unaware of the pattern.

Of course one problem of using only the Teach tab all semester is the lack of access to the File Manager among the Teach tab tools—forcing you to use the Build tab for any file maintenance or uploading. Also, the Calendar tool on the Teach tab does not allow the instructor the option of creating a new calendar entry and linking it to a Learning Module. That option is found on the Build tab only. As a result, there are times when you will need to use the Build and Student View tabs. Generally, try to remember to return to the Teach tab before tackling postings in the Discussions tool and Mail tool so you can avoid opening items already viewed.