Missouri State University
Blackboard Learn 9.1

Blackboard will be impacted by scheduled systems outage on Jan 7, 2012

Posted on by Brenda Burrell
In order to provide the highest level of service to the campus community, the computing and networking systems maintained by Computer Services require occasional downtime. On Saturday, January 7, from 7:00AM until 7:00PM, several of the University computer systems will be offline for system updates and unavailable for use. Some services may be available during part of the scheduled downtime, but service may be interrupted during this time period without notice.  Departments and users are encouraged to plan accordingly and not to be dependent on the services during the scheduled outage.

 

Questions? Contact the Computer Services Help Desk:
By phone: 417-836-5891
By email: helpdesk@missouristate.edu
By web and Live Chat: http://helpdesk.missouristate.edu
In person: Visit any of the Computer Services Open-Access Labs in Cheek 150, Library 200, Strong 107, and Glass 229
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SafeAssign Performance Update

Posted on by Brenda Burrell

From Blackboard:

SafeAssign continues to experience long delays as a result of paper submission volume. The expected turnaround time for papers submitted is still estimated at 3-5 days from the time of submission. The processing and accuracy of the plagiarism detection remains normal, but the high volume of submissions has impacted paper turnaround time. Given projections from historical usage, we expect the significant delays to decrease near the end of next week as the semester closes.

Additionally, we are working to identify papers that have encountered processing problems and plan to reprocess those papers on Monday, December 19 when we expect the submission rate to slow. We ask that you do not resubmit papers at this time as it will not improve the turnaround time.

We thank you for your patience, and please contact Blackboard Learn Client Support if you have any questions.

Questions? Contact the Computer Services Help Desk:

By phone: 417-836-5891
By email: helpdesk@missouristate.edu
By web and Live Chat: http://helpdesk.missouristate.edu
In person: Visit any of the Computer Services Open-Access Labs in Cheek 150, Library 200, Strong 107, and Glass 229

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Blackboard Learn 9.1 Spring 2012 Training Workshop Schedule Now Available!

Posted on by Brenda Burrell

Spring 2012 Blackboard Learn 9.1 training workshops are now available for registration! More information about the training courses can be found at http://helpdesk.missouristate.edu/blackboard/training.

To register, go to http://my.missouristate.edu, click the Profile tab, and find the Professional Development channel. Click the My Learning Connection link; this will open My Learning Connection in a new window where you can search for and register for classes (PDF file).

Have questions about the training classes, or about which is right for you? Contact Computer Services Training and Documentation by email at CSVTraining@MissouriState.edu or by phone at 417-836-6056.

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SafeAssign Performance Update and Maintenance Scheduled for December 27, 2011

Posted on by Brenda Burrell

SAFEASSIGN PERFORMANCE UPDATE:

SafeAssign is experiencing regular delays due to load on the system. In one sense, the cause of these delays is quite simple: the rate of papers being submitted exceeding the speed with which SafeAssign can process papers. Submissions go into a queue, and are processed in a first-in, first-out order. When the submissions are entering the queue faster than they are processed, a backlog builds up. Normally, SafeAssign catches up on that backlog when the submission rate drops below the processing rate. However, because of record high usage we’ve been pretty consistently running over capacity 24 hours a day for several weeks now (except for the US Thanksgiving weekend). So the system never fully has the time to catch up, resulting in turnaround times of 12-24 hours in many instances.

Given projections from historical usage, the significant delays of 12-24 hours or more will continue through the first week of December and then rapidly ease off in mid-December as the semester closes. Clients should expect that they will not see any significant improvement in turnaround times before mid-December. Please do not re-submit papers that have not received a matching report to prevent creating an even larger backlog.

From a development perspective, the current focus on SafeAssign is scalability and improving turnaround time of submissions. We hope to be able to deploy further improvements in this area early next year.

SAFEASSIGN MAINTENANCE UPDATE:

The SafeAssign service will be unavailable on Tuesday December 27, 2011 from 9:00 AM US Eastern (GMT-5) until Tuesday December 27, 2011 at 3:00 PM US Eastern (GMT-5). SafeAssign is being taken offline for a maintenance upgrade. Upon completion of this upgrade, the RSS feed will be updated to indicate SafeAssign is back online and available.

This maintenance upgrade will improve hardware failover and upgrade the software. In conjunction with version 2.4.11 of the SafeAssign Building Block to be released at the same time, this software upgrade will include several maintenance fixes, including:

  • SafeAssign now displays submissions for courses that have larger rosters and SafeAssignments without significant delay. GMNIBB- 163
  • SafeAssign now allows downloading of SafeAssignments that contain the forward slash (/) character in the titled. GMNIBB-168
  • The correct Feedback file is attached on the SafeAssignment grade. GMNI-249

During this outage SafeAssign will be unavailable. End-users will not be able to submit papers through SafeAssign during the planned downtime and will receive an error message if they attempt to do so. SafeAssign Originality Reports will not be available to Instructors or Students during the planned downtime, nor will Instructors be able to access SafeAssign DirectSubmit. Please make end-users aware of these limitations. Use of SafeAssign can continue as normal after the planned downtime are complete.

 

Questions? Contact the Computer Services Help Desk:

By phone: 417-836-5891
By email: helpdesk@missouristate.edu
By web and Live Chat: http://helpdesk.missouristate.edu
In person: Visit any of the Computer Services Open-Access Labs in Cheek 150, Library 200, Strong 107, and Glass 229

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How to paste from Microsoft Word to Blackboard Learn 9.1

Posted on by Brenda Burrell

We’ve released a new feature in the rich text editor for Blackboard Learn 9.1 at Missouri State University – copy from Microsoft Word!

To copy from a Microsoft Word document:

1. Add a content item to Blackboard Learn 9.1 (see more details).

2. In the rich text editor, click the “Add Mashup” icon and choose “Paste from Word”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. A popup window will open. Select and copy your content from your Word document.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Press CTRL + V (Windows) or CMD + V (Mac) to paste into Blackboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Edit the content in the rich text editor as usual. When finished, click Submit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Content copied from Word 2010 seems to retain formatting a little bit better than from Word 2007; both versions are, however, fully supported.

Questions? Contact the Computer Services Help Desk:

By phone: 417-836-5891
By email: helpdesk@missouristate.edu
By web and Live Chat: http://helpdesk.missouristate.edu
In person: Visit any of the Computer Services Open-Access Labs in Cheek 150, Library 200, Strong 107, and Glass 229

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Blackboard Learn 9.1 Open Workshop today relocated to Cheek 100

Posted on by Brenda Burrell

The Blackboard Learn 9.1 Open Workshop scheduled for 1:30 – 5:00 pm in Library 205 today will be held at that time in Cheek 100. The Workshop will return to its regular weekly location next week.

Questions? Contact the Computer Services Help Desk:

By phone: 417-836-5891
By email: helpdesk@missouristate.edu
By web and Live Chat: http://helpdesk.missouristate.edu
In person: Visit any of the Computer Services Open-Access Labs in Cheek 150, Library 200, Strong 107, and Glass 229

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Update: Blackboard 8.0 now sending emails

Posted on by Brenda Burrell

The Blackboard 8.0 system (which as a reminder will be taken out of service in December) is not currently sending emails. If you are using Blackboard 8.0 to migrate course content to Blackboard Learn 9.1, please check the archive/export log to see when the operation is complete rather than waiting for an email notification.

Questions? Contact the Computer Services Help Desk:

By phone: 417-836-5891
By email: helpdesk@missouristate.edu
By web and Live Chat: http://helpdesk.missouristate.edu
In person: Visit any of the Computer Services Open-Access Labs in Cheek 150, Library 200, Strong 107, and Glass 229

Update 11/22/11 11:26 am: Blackboard 8.0 is now sending emails normally.

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Respondus LockDown Browser – Mac/Java issue

Posted on by Brenda Burrell

From Respondus, Inc.:

An important issue has come up for Respondus LockDown Browser users who run Mac OSX with the latest release of Java (version 1.6.0_29).

The issue is that WebKit-based browsers running with Java 1.6.0_29 will crash if a Java applet is encountered. Respondus LockDown Browser relies on WebKit so it exhibits the same behavior. (Note that Chrome and other browsers based on WebKit exhibit the same problem, although Apple has modified its Safari browser to work around the issue.)

For Blackboard Learn customers, Java applets are encountered when an exam containing essay questions is started (the rich-text editor for essay questions uses Java applets). For Blackboard CE/Vista customers, a crash occurs at the login page since Java applets are used with the browser checker.

The developer community anticipates that either WebKit or Apple will resolve this issue in quick order. Unfortunately, at the moment, WebKit feels that Apple should fix the issue, while Apple feels that WebKit should provide the fix. In the meantime, however, we are doing two things:

1) We have issued a patch for the Mac edition of LockDown Browser. Once the update is applied, LockDown Browser will detect, upon startup, whether a user is running Java 1.6.0_29. If this combination is found, they will receive this message:

———————————

WARNING: Java version 1.6.0_29 detected.

This version of Java is known to be incompatible with your learning system and may cause this browser application to crash. We recommend that you do NOT continue. As a work-around, you may consider using a different computer.

    [Quit]  [Continue]

———————————–

IMPORTANT: In order for users to be aware of this update, the institution’s Administrator for LockDown Browser should login to the admin area (https://www.respondus.com/campus-portal/login.php) and select “yes” for the setting “Check for newer version of LockDown Browser” (the default setting is “no”). This will enable Mac users to receive a notice each time they start LockDown Browser that an update is available.

Note: Missouri State University’s LockDown Browser Administrator has enabled this setting, so LockDown Browser users will be notified of any updates.

2) Simultaneously, we are working on a solution where our own version of WebKit will be embedded with each installation of the Mac LockDown Browser software. This will require substantial QA testing and our hope is that the issue will be resolved by WebKit or Apple before we have to resort to distributing our own WebKit.  However, given no official response on timing of the solution from either WebKit or Apple, we feel this is a prudent path to pursue.

We hope this information is helpful. If you have questions about this issue, please don’t hesitate to open a support ticket at www.respondus.com/esupport.

Sincerely,

Support & Licensing Group

Respondus, Inc.

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UPDATED: Blackboard/TurnItIn Integration Issue

Posted on by Brenda Burrell

Computer Services is currently working on an issue with the integration between Blackboard and TurnItIn. Right now, TurnItIn assignments in Blackboard can be created by instructors and submitted and viewed by students, but submissions cannot be viewed or graded by the instructor. This does not affect users who access these assignments through TurnItIn.com, just users of TurnItIn through Blackboard.

The workaround for now is to use TurnItIn.com to create and submit assignments and view originality reports. Check back here for updates on this issue!

Questions? Contact the Computer Services Help Desk:

By phone: 417-836-5891
By email: helpdesk@missouristate.edu
By web and Live Chat: http://helpdesk.missouristate.edu
In person: Visit any of the Computer Services Open-Access Labs in Cheek 150, Library 200, Strong 107, and Glass 229

Update 11/21/2011 1:55 pm: TurnItIn assignments are now behaving as expected in Blackboard Learn 9.1.

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