The Blackboard 8 Grade Center’s history has actually smoothed the path for handling a technical support issue. Amazing, but true.

Okay, so it’s probably an exaggeration to call that issue a “technical support” one, since the student had started a test attempt (for a test comprised of a single essay question) and either navigated away or otherwise killed the test attempt. Ordinarily the resolution would have been to tell the student “contact your instructor to see if they’ll clear your test attempt”, but when looking in the Grade Center to get details on exactly which test had the locked attempt I noticed a funny thing: There was not a locked attempt, and the test I was fairly sure the student was referring to had no attempt listed.

Huh. Well, then it hit me; what if the instructor had already been contacted, and already cleared it. Dang, this could turn into a whole exchange of emails on this topic, what a drag… oh, yeah, such a thing would show up in the Grade History list… sure enough, there it is, test attempt cleared by the instructor a good hour and three quarters BEFORE the student emailed for help from tech support.

So, the moral of this story? Grade History: good; assuming a student actually has a problem when they call for help: not so good.