Blackboard Faculty Announcements

Dear Colleagues:

Academic Technology is committed to keeping the VCU Blackboard system
current by adding new and improved features. In addition, we plan to
pilot the Blackboard Content Management and E-porfolio Systems this
spring, with full implementation of these systems in Fall 2005.

While we strive to minimize disruption in your teaching and advising
activities, we periodically will need to take Blackboard down to prepare
for this major upgrade. If any of these steps to the upgrade fail,
AT will roll back the system to the previous stable state.

Academic Technology staff, in consultation with the Academic Technology
Faculty Advisory Council, have developed the following timetable in
order to accomplish the many activities required to support this upgrade.

Blackboard is scheduled to be down on:

Sat, Nov 6 -- Conversion to Oracle Enterprise Edition
Fri, Nov 26 - Sun, Nov 28 -- Oracle character set conversion
Tue, Jan 11 - Wed, Jan 12 -- Installation of Bb Application Packs 1 and 2
Mon, Mar 14 - Wed, Mar 16 (Spring Break) -- Installation of Content
Management System

If you have any questions, please contact the AT Help Desk at help@vcu.edu
or 828-2227.

Sincerely,

Phyllis C. Self, Ph.D.
Vice Provost Academic Technology

Posted by at 2:04 PM | Permalink

Problem Reported:

This is only for Bb gradebook items that have been weighted by categories (Control Panel – Gradebook – Weight Grades – Choose “Weight by Category”). The weighted grade column is .1 differences in Bb gradebook if compared to Microsoft Excel calculation. For example, Bb displays 73.67% and Excel displays 73.77%.

This problem has only been reported by one faculty member but felt it was important and we should inform faculty of the issue.

The problem has been reported to Blackboard. We are trying to get clarification on how Blackboard calculates the weighted grades by category.

Possible Solution: (If using weight by Categories) (Control Panel – Gradebook)
1. Do not display the Weighted Total column
a. Click on Weighted Total heading
b. Click on Item Options
c. Make item visible to students – Click No.

2. Download Grades from Blackboard
a. Click on Download Grades
b. Save gradebook file to your computer and open in Microsoft Excel
c. Add a New column and calculate grades

3. Upload New Column to Blackboard
a. Click on Upload Grades
b. Browse and Select File
c. Select Column to upload
d. Select destination column
e. Fill out item information and Submit
f. Click on Select All (to upload to all students)
g. Click Submit

Posted by at 3:59 PM | Permalink

Please note that the Blackboard system will be down on Saturday November 6, 2004 from 4pm to midnight. Upgrade to the database will be performed.

Posted by at 3:35 PM | Permalink

Internet Explorer / Virus Issues (11/01/04)
There has been a rise in the number of calls related to problems with Blackboard that are actually Internet Explorer browser / Virus issues.

Problem reported: (note in all these cases the student or faculty can go to another computer and the problem goes away)

1. Student goes to http://blackboard.vcu.edu and the page will not display or they get an error message. They can go to another computer and login with no problem.

2. Students are trying to post to Blackboard and receive an error. They can go to another computer and post with no problem.

3. Faculty try to post grades and it appears to not accept the information. They can go to another computer and the posting of grades works just fine.

In all of these reported cases, the problem has been with the browser Internet Explorer.

Solutions:

1. The help desk (828-2227) has created this web page that offers solutions that have worked. Basically, running Ad-aware and Spybot has solved a lot of problems. Go to http://www.at.vcu.edu/faq/virus/gotviruses.html

2. Use the browser Mozilla. Mozilla can be downloaded free from http://www.mozilla.com. This works but the better solution is to perform solution #1 and clean up the computer.

Posted by at 1:52 PM | Permalink