Microsoft Word's Not a Native Web Format

While Microsoft Word is ubiquitous, it’s still not a native web format. In other words, it’s not a file format that is opened by a web browser without a plug-in or without having the application on the recipient’s computer. Further, Microsoft Word 2007 files are often misinterpreted by Blackboard (and other applications) as zip (or compressed) files. The moral of the story is when possible use “native” web formats in Learning Modules and elsewhere in Blackboard rather than using Microsoft Word files (.doc or .docx). The best options are to use .html files (web pages) and PDF (portable document format) files. For images use files saved in either the .gif (line art) or .jpeg/.jpg (photographic image) format.

You can convert Microsoft Word files to .html in several ways. The best options are to cut and paste into Blackboard’s HTML Creator tool or to use a product like SoftChalk.

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.

Printing from a SoftChalk-created Learning Module Page

Faculty members using SoftChalk to create Learning Modules for use in Blackboard have found that when the student uses the Blackboard Learning Module Print function, the top of each printed page repeats the table of contents (TOC). Here’s the response from SoftChalk regarding this problem.

"What is happening is that when you print a page using the WebCT/Blackboard print function, Blackboard is just grabbing the "text" of the html page. When you created your lesson pages, you included the page navigation at the top of the page and the "drop-down" Table of Contents link in the sidebar. Normally when the student views the page, this information is formatted as the navigation bar across the top of the page and also as the drop-down TOC link in the sidebar. The navigation bar displays as it does because of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) that is "behind-the-scenes". But when WebCT/Blackboard displays the page for printing, it doesn't reference the CSS, so all of the text for the navigation bar and the TOC sidebar link appear as a list of items at the top of each printed page.

"You could easily get rid of the TOC appearing on the printed page by just removing the TOC drop-down link in the sidebar of your lesson. You will have to decide if it is more important to have the TOC as a drop-down link in the sidebar, or have the TOC info print when the student uses the Blackboard print function.

"In our next version of LessonBuilder, we plan to include a new "print all pages" option that will appear on each lesson page. Then, your student could click that link and it would print all of the lesson pages with the correct formatting. But until then, I would suggest that you might want to remove the sidebar TOC drop-down menu."

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.

Current List of Blackboard CE 6.1.1 Bugs

Periodically I try to alert you to problems we’ve encountered with Blackboard CE so you’ll know it’s the system and not user error. This list is not complete but at least covers most of the more common and problematic issues we have open with Blackboard Support. By the way, for JCCC faculty members, if you have major issues not listed here, please alert your Ed Tech Center Designer.

We have experienced:

1. Cases where course content from one semester fails to copy successfully to the next semester’s course shell.
2. Unexpected System Exception errors that occur for a variety of reasons (opening a course, switching between tabs, and so on), none of which are clearly indicated in the server logs or displayed on the screen for the user’s benefit.
3. Problems for end users with:
   a. multiple versions of Java installed,
   b. recent versions of Java installed (you should be using version 1.5 with updates 6 or 7 installed, but not Java 1.6)
   c. Internet Explorer 7 or latest version of Mac Safari installed
   d. Windows Vista installed.
4. Search tool failures with incorrect or no results reported.
5. Failure of the Banner XML file to import Summer Non-Credit Courses.
6. Failure of the garbage collection routines to work so the database gets more and more bloated, which we believe contributes to slower access times.
7. Failure of the Media Library/Glossary tool if a single image is attached to an entry in one of the tool’s collections.
8. Crash with an exception error if a Learning Module has more than 20 headings or entries included.
9. Lose of embedded images in assessments when the assessment is exported and then imported into another course shell.
10. Calendar tool entries entered by an instructor for a specific course being displayed as institutional entries in all courses; which is very confusing for students.
11. A limit on the number of characters allowed (1333) when an instructor grades and adds comments to an assignment.
12. Failure of the mail forwarding feature to work when a student or an instructor wants email received in Blackboard CE to be forwarded to their external email accounts.
13. Confusion when the Submitted and Not Submitted tabs in the Assignment tool show the reverse information.
14. WebLinks that do not import when a Learning Module is exported and then imported into another course shell.
15. Course names that are truncated (so as to be indecipherable) or are not in alphabetical order throughout the application (e.g. when setting calendar dates, publishing content from Respondus, importing or copying content from another course and when setting the order of courses displayed or hidden on the My Blackboard screen).
16. No ability for the instructor to edit Assignment Drop Box comments posted for students after they are posted.

We know there are many more bugs, we currently have about 70 cases open with Blackboard support, but these seem to be the major items that effect students and instructors.

Consider File Size!

Are your students complaining about slow download times when accessing PowerPoint slideshows in your Blackboard CE course? If so, you need to first understand file sizes. If you want to see a chart of equivalencies, e.g. how many kilobytes (KB) in a megabyte (MB), and so on, check out http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/.

The basics are obvious: it takes longer for a 5 MB file to download than a 1MB file and it takes longer for a 500 KB file to download than a 1 MB file. So smaller is better.

Also effecting the download time is the type of internet connection (ISDN, DSL, Cable, Dial-up and so on). You can determine your connection speed (it’ll be different in your office, on a laptop at Starbucks, or at home) by going to http://promos.mcafee.com/speedometer/test_0600.asp. Keep in mind that the access speed may vary each time you take the test (depending on factors such as time of day and network traffic). If you and/or your students are experiencing slow access, take the test several times (at different times when you might normally access the Internet) to get a sense of the connection speed at which you can expect to access online materials. You can also see the optimal speed for various types of connections by visiting http://support.primus.ca/en/dsl/speedtest.php (review the chart on the right side of the web page).

Your connection’s “optimal” speed is based on average network traffic between your computer and the server; obviously heavy network traffic or outages between your home/office and the Blackboard server (or any server on the Internet for that matter) can reduce the download speed (upload speed too).

Another factor is whether media is non-streaming (e.g. PowerPoint slideshows) or streaming (e.g. MP3 and Flash files). Streaming files start playing before the entire file is downloaded (so it appears to download faster) while non-streaming media must be completely downloaded before playing.

So, in a perfect world without heavy network traffic, without considering Blackboard or browser problems or any network disruptions, you can calculate the best possible download time for a file traveling from one location on a network to another by using the calculator at http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/accessibility/webaccessibility/download_tool.html.

The calculator asks you to enter kilobytes, so remember that a one megabyte (MB) file is 1024 kilobytes (KB) and a 25 MB file is 25,600 KB. As an example, if you have a 25 MB PowerPoint slideshow (e.g. 25600 KB) and were using a DSL or T1 connection, it would optimally take 2000 seconds (or over 33 minutes) to download that single file. On the other hand, if the file were reduced in size to 1 MB (e.g. 1024 KB) using the same connection, it would take 80 seconds to download the file. Obviously slower Internet connections (ISDN, dial-up) would take significantly longer.

We’ve seen PowerPoint slideshows within Blackboard courses that range from 25 to 70 MB. In tomorrow’s tip, we’ll tell you how to reduce a PowerPoint slideshow file by 60-95%. Imagine how that will increase download times and reduce frustration!

Learning Modules, TOCs and System Exception Errors

If you are using a Learning Module (LM) in your Blackboard CE course and that LM includes 20 or more entries (e.g. headings, Web Links, HTML pages, Assignments, Quizzes, and so on), read on. These issues have come to our attention as we’ve taught the iTeach Online Workshop (formerly WebCeTera) and discovered additional flaws or bugs in Blackboard CE 6.1.1.

Background
Normally as you construct each module, the student would see a left-hand table of contents (TOC) that indicates every entry in the module. The entries in the TOC are hyperlinks to navigate through the module (skipping entries, viewing just the elements the student wants to review and so on). The TOC serves as a site map for the module. Normally, the student can quickly discerned the structure of each LM; e.g. the fact that each module starts with learning objectives, includes pages of content (text, PDF and Movie files) and ends with a page of assignments, module tips and maybe an assessment covering the module’s content.

The Problem
Due to a “bug” that cropped up with CE 6.1.1 (and was not present the last time we offered WebCeTera using CE 6.0.2) if you include the TOC as the first page of a LM or have it displayed in a left-hand panel and the student is using Internet Explorer, the student will get an “unexpected system exception error” each time they click a TOC link. Further, even though the message has a link to “Return to My Blackboard” that link simply displays another “unexpected system exception error.” The net effect is the student (designer and instructor too) must close the browser, log back in and if you try the same process again (even to access a different LM page), the browser crashes again.

Solutions
The only options to date are:

1. Require everyone to use FireFox (which requires that it be installed and configured for Blackboard) – Firefox doesn’t encounter the same problem.
2. Break each module into 20 or less entries; but that may require hours of rebuilding the course, cause an awkward separation of related information and may devastate the planned structure of the course (requiring changes in course syllabus and other instructions).
3. Turn off the TOC and have students navigate blindly not knowing how many elements are in each LM. Additionally, the student will need to navigate the module sequentially to find and view or review a specific page.

Additional Problems
For iTeach Online, we finally decided to break the modules up because we could export a module and then import it two or three times and in each duplicate module remove enough entries so the total number of entries would be under 20. The net result would be the revised Module 1a, 1b, 1c and so on where each new module would have less than 20 entries and the student would need to complete all of them as part of what the syllabus called “Module 1.”

So we tried it and found two more bugs. When you export and then import a Learning Module, Web Links are not imported. In our case the most time consuming aspect of the task was not avoided (e.g. creating Web Links and identifying the specific URL for each).

We also discovered that even though Blackboard doesn’t allow duplicate, identical names for assessments, if you import a Learning Module that has an assessment link in it, the assessment is duplicated with the very same name. The import process also ignores the release criteria for the quiz when it creates the duplicate. That means students will see the quizzes and they’ll be available immediately…which will cause confusion.

We are detailing these bugs because, even if you’ve avoided encountering them early in your course, you may still encounter problems if later modules include 20 or more entries. Blackboard has the TOC fix planned for Application Pack 2, tentatively scheduled for Spring 2007. So at best, we’ll have a fix for Summer 2007…we’re still looking for an effective work-around.