Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Bb v9: current issues and work arounds @ KCTCS

Please read through the comprehensive list below of the issues we are currently monitoring with Blackboard version 9 to be familiar with them and any known workarounds. The issues we are seeing are not show stoppers but may be an annoyance until corrected. They have been reported to Blackboard.

If you experience trouble, please contact the help desk @ 866-590-9238 first. They can resolve many of the issues you may see.

1. Discussion forums are out of order and won’t “stick” when they are changed – this is a known bug; Bb is ordering them alphabetically. Current workaround is to add numbers to the Names to put them in order.

2. Can’t remove courses from their course list (gear icon) – known issue, can’t remove more than 25 courses from a list, Bb is aware of issue. But you can use the new My Places tool and set the settings to only show courses visited in X days. This can be done from the Personal Information area.

3. Error when posting discussion – this happens when the discussion board is linked to a content area. Although you get the error, the post is successful.

4. Announcements only appear (for instructor/student) once the course has been made available. Bb is aware of the issue.

5. Instructor not able to edit test settings. This is due to there being no start date and an end date that has already past. We are working on fixing the tests that are currently affected; but until the bug is resolved, when setting up tests make sure to put either both a start and end date or no date restrictions at all.

6. Links to eCommunities/Organizations aren’t working from the My Organizations Plus Module. The edit users feature of the My Organizations Plus Module still work. To access your organizations/ecommunities, use the My Organizations module or the My Places link at the top of Blackboard.

7. When grading discussion forums, you cannot mark messages as read from the Mark as Read action list. In Firefox, you can click the Mark as Read button; this doesn’t work in IE.

8. With this upgrade, we have turned off the Blackboard Collaboaration tools. Wimba tools should be used in their place.

9. When sending announcements as emails, the email doesn’t contain the text of the announcement. It contains a link back to Blackboard which is causing an error if the student isn’t logged in to Blackboard.

10. In Bb v8, the Tools and Communication area links were automatically on the navigation bar for students. These links were removed in the new version since Blackboard combined these two groups of tools. I know many of you just added the tools for your course to the navigation bar, and those are fine. But those of you who depended on those links for students to access the tools (my grades, discussion boards, messages, email, etc.), you will need to add the "Tools Area" link to your navigation bar in Bb 9. Once it is added you should check the page and Hide the links to tools you aren’t using.

11. We’ve seen odd text formatting and splitting of words when in areas, such as Discussion Boards, are viewed with IE – text formatting is fine with Firefox.

Thanks for your patience while we investigate these issues and remember to contact the help desk @ 866-590-9238 or review the information in the Help tab if you need any assistance.