Category Archives: work

work

Grade Center’s Grade History and tech support glee

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.

work

Bb Learn app for iPhone

Well, it’s out. Rather than repeat myself here, let me just refer to my write-up and podcast segment over at the Palomar Academic Technology podcast site: http://www.palomar.edu/atrc/Pod/pod09101.htm#BbFeature .

I do have two problems with the iPhone app already though:

  • There is no way to force a refresh of the data (which automatically updates no more frequently than once an hour).
  • The View buttons that try to take you in Mobile Safari right to the piece of content in a Blackboard course don’t always work correctly. If you already have a session in Safari open and logged in to Blackboard, then the links work fine. If you don’t, the links take you to a log in prompt, then to the default course entry point instead of to the actual piece of content.

Hopefully these issues can be addressed in the near future. Hopefully.

work

Bb and IE 8

Okay, it’s release day for Internet Explorer 8; I’ve installed it on a couple computers and noticed crisper page loads than I’d come to expect from either IE7 or IE8beta. However, it’s still not (and likely never will be) on the Blackboard 8 user compatibility matrix. But…

Someone mentioned to me today that Google Chrome (which also does not appear on the compatibility matrix) loads the Grade Center very quickly compared to IE7, and that spurred me to test the Grade Center in IE8.

Using a training course on our system with 2082 students in it, I’ve timed the Grade Center’s grade grid load time in the past. For such a massive roster, the grid needed somewhere between 24 and 27 seconds to load in IE7. In IE8, it takes between 5 and 8 seconds to load.

Does this mean that instructors using IE7 should upgrade to IE8? Not necessarily, as it’s always a safer idea to stay with a browser/operating system combo that appears on the user compatibility matrix. Does this mean that I will be using IE8 whenever I go into the Grade Center from here on out? Unless I find some truly unexpected bugs (and I have used IE8beta with Bb8 for several months now without finding such), the answer is not only yes, but hell yes.

work

OMG! Bb WYSIWYG XML FTL!!1!

Heh, yeah it’s a sad commentary that the subject line of this post is actually what came to mind when troubleshooting a problem with a Blackboard test this morning. For anyone who can’t comprehend such acronymic drek, let me expand that: “Oh My God! Blackboard ‘What You See Is What You Get’ eXtensible Markup Language For The Lose!”

Okay, so that’s still not much more understandable; let me explain. (No, is too much. Let me sum up.)

The problem reported was that students trying to take a final exam in Blackboard while using Internet Explorer were being “routed into a loop” and therefore unable to take the test. (In fact they were being treated to one of those useless Blackboard error code pages.) My first guess was correct; extra code on the test page was executing in IE while not in other browsers. The test consisted of True/False questions, and when I went to modify a question (using Firefox, as IE would obviously not allow me in) I was astounded. There was the equivalent of over a printed page of XML code prefacing the single line of displayed question text.

Judging from the code, it was copy/pasted into Blackboard from Microsoft Word. Word, in its perpetual attempts to be helpful, tried its best to include code that would preserve all the meta-information about this text in the form of XML code… with some unfortunate results. (Actually from what I can tell, this code would have been fine in a standard page, but the interaction with the Blackboard test layout in a Blackboard frameset was sad.)

I can’t claim this is a Word problem, really; I can’t claim this is a Blackboard problem (although it sure would be nice if their Visual Text Box Editor had some automated way to strip out code); in fairness I can’t even claim this is an IE problem (the program is unable to execute the invalid code included on a convoluted page). But it causes quite a problem, that’s for sure.

So, what’s the fix? Tell the faculty to go in and manually strip out all the XML code. (Yeah, that’s going to happen right away.) Otherwise… have the students for this term’s exam NOT use Internet Explorer.

work

Bb8 Test Evaluation

Sometimes faculty ask me how to evaluate their tests in Blackboard. I don’t mean “how to grade students”, since that’s pretty automatic (saving essay questions). I mean they’re looking for help with “how well is my test being answered” issues, typically with a segway into “what needs improving in my test”.

There actually is a component in Blackboard that makes this relatively simple. Once students have taken a test, and you’ve dealt with all the grades, and you’re ready to start evaluating the effectiveness of your test questions… go into the Grade Center.

Then go get a sandwich, since it takes so long for the Grade Center grid to load. Sheesh…

Okay, next click the “double chevron” button next to the column header for that test column. (Up in the teal header bar, that is.) Pick “Attempts Statistics”, and… voila. You should see all the questions from your test, with breakdowns of how students answered them. Now all you have to do is figure out what to do about the 78% of students put “C” for that question, when the correct answer was “A”.

rant, work

Blackboard 8 Grade Center and Extra Credit Hell

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I actually like the changes made between every prior version of Blackboard’s Gradebook and their (new with version 8) Grade Center. Even the bugs are exciting and new, rather than the old, familiar bugs that faculty are quickly forgetting about in the glare of learning the new interfaces and quirks. (Bear in mind that the Gradebook hadn’t changed appreciably in a decade of use.)

That being said, the bug associated with Grade Center’s handling of Extra Credit columns is terrible! In the old Gradebook, instructors added a column, worth zero points possible, and then gave students points in that column. Simple, easy, and the totaling column counted the extra credit properly.

Now with Grade Center, if an instructor does the exact same thing… the Total column does NOT add the Extra Credit, but ignores it instead. (Actually this is true of any column with zero points possible.)

There is a work-around, but… it’s incredibly frustrating to explain to an instructor that they have to do extra work just because Blackboard’s Quality Assurance guys missed such an obvious trick.

To make the Total column include the zero points possible columns, go to the Modify Column screen for the Total column. (Personally I’m enjoying the little “double chevron” buttons, although I find it hard to remember they exist sometimes.) Scroll down to section 3 of the screen, and change the radio button from “All Grade Columns” to “Selected Grade Columns, Calculated Columns and Categories”.

The screen will change, and then in the newly appearing “Columns to Select:” box you can choose each of the columns from your Grade Center and click the little “arrow in a circle” button to shift them into the “Selected Columns:” box at the right of the screen. (Please note that you can click the first column, hold the Shift key, then click the last to select all the columns in that box on the left.)

This next step is not actually included in any of the documentation I’ve seen yet on Grade Center (and so I’ll need to ensure it IS included in mine from now on): Make sure the “Calculate as running total” settings is set to “No”. If you leave running total on, you will still be ignoring the zero point columns!

Now just Submit this bad boy, and your Total column should be including the zero point columns, both manually entered grades and those from tests, assignments, and discussion boards.

Do the happy dance! (And don’t forget to feel scorn for the Bb QA guys who overlooked such a buggy subsystem.)

Just don’t get me started on how I feel about the whole “Grade Center can drop the lowest test score” debacle…

rant, work

9>8, and Headdesk!

Okay, so a student calls up for technical support.

“I can’t log in. When I log in, it says I’m not enrolled in any classes.”
ME: “So, you can log in, but it says you are not enrolled?”
“No, I can’t log in.”

What?!?

Much later…
ME: “Can I get your nine-digit student ID number so I can find you in the system?”
“Uh, yeah…” and gives me a five digit number.
ME: “That’s only five digits. Your student ID is nine digits long.”
“Uh…” and gives me three more digits.
ME: “That’s eight. Your student ID is nine digits. Are you sure you know your student ID number?” (This is important, as the username for the system IS that nine-digit number!)
“Yeah. That’s it…” and gives me a different eight digit number.
ME: “Again, that’s still eight digits.”
“No, that’s my number…” and gives me yet another eight digit number. “So, can you find my name in the system?”
ME: “…no.”
“Oh, I don’t have my number here, let me call you back.”
ME: “Okay, that sounds like a good idea. Do you have our direct phone number, or were you transferred here from somewhere else?”
“No, I have to go find my number. I’ll call you back.”
Click.

Ugh.

Later, the phone rings. Guess who?
ME: “Okay, so what is your nine-digit student ID number?”
“Like I told you before…” and gives me a nine-digit number, which bears no resemblence to the previous sequence of numbers.
ME: “Okay, here you are in the system. When you log in, just use your nine-digit student ID number, and the same password you used when you enrolled in classes using our enrollment system.”
“I don’t have an account for the enrollment system.”
ME: “Yes, you do. I can talk you through the process of setting your password there, okay?”
“Okay.”
ME: “First, start a web browser.”
“…”
ME: “Are you at a computer right now?”
“No.”
ME: “Fine. I’ll just give you some instructions to try later, shall I?”

Now, I ask you, when you have a problem, do you try to make it impossible for someone to help you? If your car engine is making a funny noise do you park it in your driveway, walk to the bus station, and take the bus to your mechanic, then ask him for help?

I guess I just assume too much…

Sheesh.

work

All Clear

Oh, so the dog doesn’t really need to check our building… the Campus Police visually inspected and didn’t see anything.

(Presumably there weren’t any large alarm-clocks hooked to dynamite or anything of the sort. Sheesh…)

Back to the office…