Bb 9 Important Information!

Please Report Blackboard Slowness/Timeouts

If you experience Blackboard running slowly, crashing, or timing out, could you please send me an email immediately with the following information:

1. Date and Time you experienced this
2. What you were doing in Blackboard at the time
3. What you experienced (i.e. slow, crash) with as much detail as you can including error messages
4. What internet provider were you using (i.e. Cox cable, AT&T DSL, or on campus)

Check the End Date for Tests

There was a serious problem with dates for tests, and Blackboard ran a script to fix that problem.  This fix may impact your courses.  If you previously set begin dates for your tests, please double check to make sure the end dates are the dates you want.  The script may have reset the end date to a date 30 days after the start date.

Copy Settings when Copying a Course

Copying a course to a new course without copying course settings can create a situation where the new course does not have any settings for one or more course tools. If a course that is copied without settings has one of the checkboxes selected in "My Courses" (using the gear icon) to show Announcements or Tasks, the system will fail while trying to determine whether this tool is even enabled in that course, and any courses later in the list will fail to display in My Courses.  This problem may also result in a red error message in the My Tasks module that says: Error reading 'showCourse' on type blackboard.webapps.portal.bbtasks.BbTasksHelper$CourseTasksHelper.

Blackboard has run a script to clear up the current instances of this issue. This fix will not be permanent, but should clear up any current lack of settings.   A workaround you can apply is visiting each tool enabled in the course after copying it. A full fix for this issue will be available in a later version of Blackboard.

To prevent this from happening, it is important that Settings is checked every time you use Course Copy, so please keep this in mind when you prepare for your Fall classes.

Course Entry Point

Make sure you set your Course Entry Point (Control Panel > Customization > Style) to Announcements, a content area, or a module page.  If you set your Course Entry Point to either My Grades or an External Link, you will not be able to access your course.

Students are not receiving Announcement emails from Blackboard

When you post an announcement to your courses, normally Blackboard sends that announcement to your students through email.  Right now, some announcement emails are not being sent by Blackboard.  To make sure your announcements are reaching your students, please use the Send Email tool (Control Panel > Course Tools > Send Email) to send your students the information they need to begin your courses.

This issue has been reported to Blackboard and has been given the highest priority.  I am hopeful for a fast fix for this, but wanted to give you an alternative to use until it is fixed.

A Few Tips For Bb 9

As anticipated, there are a few things that need to be adjusted for Blackboard 9.  I'll address a few of them here.

1.  SafeAssign needs to be enabled
This only pertains to course containers that were created for the summer semester.  Fall semester containers should be set correctly for this.  In order to use SafeAssign you need to change these settings.

• Control Panel > Customization > Tool Availability
• Scroll down and make sure that both SafeAssign and SafeAssignment are checked, then click Submit

2. My Courses list

Some people have had problems getting all their courses to show in the My Courses section on the Welcome page.  If you are experiencing this problem, follow these steps to get your courses to display.

• Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the My Courses section
• Uncheck every check that appears in the Display Announcements column
• To have a course show, check the Display Course Name and Display Course ID columns
• To hide a course from My Courses, uncheck everything in the row for that course
• Click Submit when done

3. Always choose a Display Until date if you choose a Display After date

For an item, test, discussion board, or just about anywhere you can choose a date range, make sure you choose both a Display Until date and a Display After date.  An error can occur if both dates are not defined.

4. Use dates for announcements

When you create an announcement, you have the option to set the announcement duration to Permanent or Date Restricted.  If you choose Permanent, your announcement will not show up in the My Announcements section on the Welcome page.  To make sure it shows up there, you need to choose Date Restricted and assign both a Display After and Display Until date.

Blackboard 9 Resources

Now that we're up and running with Blackboard 9, I'd like to point you to a few resources to help you find the information you need to use it.  Chris Rodgers and I are combining our efforts and creating resources that will help both colleges.  You can find a page on the GCCCD Online site that has all the Bb 9 tutorials we've rewritten at http://www.gcccd.edu/online/fac/.  More will be coming soon.

The section containers that were created for the summer semester have incorrect instructions on how to make your containers available.  The Bb 9 way of making a course available can be found at http://www.gcccd.edu/online/tutorials/bb/course-availability-9.pdf.   In short, the steps are:
Control Panel > Customization > Properties > Set Availability (yes or no) > Submit.

Other resources for Blackboard 9 are the videos that Blackboard has created which you can find at http://ondemand.blackboard.com/r9/index.htm.   They're really done quite well.

And as always, please contact me if you have any questions!