Red - Greater interest to Faculty
Blue - My additional comments
Blue - My additional comments
Attended:
Blue Ridge, Central, Danville, Germanna, J. Sargeant Reynolds, John Tyler, Lord Fairfax, Northern, Piedmont, System Office, Southside, Southwest, Thomas Nelson, Tidewater, Virginia Highlands, Virginia Western,
Did not attend:
Dabney, Eastern Shore, Mountain Empire, New River, Patrick Henry, Paul D. Camp, Rappahannock, Wytheville
Overview and preliminary remarks
As per previous communications, performance has gradually improved after a bit of a shaky start, and Monday 14th generally went very well. It was our busiest day of the year so far with over 27 million hits, with a peak per hour of 1.9 million hits. A lot of these are images attached to page loads, so some statistics related to distinct sessions and user logins is attached.
We plan on implementing Domain-related administrative changes after Tuesday, 1/15. Make sure all courses and organizations are appropriately categorized as soon as possible. Review the recording of this session for screen captures of how to do this.
We plan on turning off of Blackboard 6 on January 25.
We have been alerted to a security issue with WebDAV for the content system and will be turning off this functionality until we can implement SSL. A separate communication will be forthcoming, but this will be done on Friday, 18th January.
Question: The problem with Wimba announcements—is there any way to prevent it?
Answer: We will follow up with Wimba but at the moment they are acknowledging it as a known bug. It is related to the WYSIWYG editor (and Internet Explorer I think). Turning off the WYSIWYG editor will prevent it happening.
Question:Having a problem with respondus – “cannot be verified or opened”
Answer: Check that the setting is for Blackboard 7.x May need to reinstall. Otherwise, please file a ticket.
Question:Having problems with Vista and the discussion board.
Answer: General rule of thumb is to turn off the WYSIWYG editor and see if that addresses the problem. Also check Java and any related security settings.
Question: Transferring files from Wimba in Blackboard 6 is tedious.
Answer: You can grab all the files in a Voice Board in one Export operation.
Question: When taking a test, the computer slows to a crawl with one character at a time coming in to the answer field.
Answer: Probably computer or browser specific. Please file a ticket, but review OS, etc.
Question: Dates of availability in announcements and chat don’t seem to work.
Answer: See ticket #91347
Question: How do you categorize courses and organizations?
Answer: In the System Admin control panel, find the courses you are seeking to categorize, e.g. with a search like “VH2 SP08”. Then go to the bottom of the page and choose Show All. Then go to the bottom of the page and choose Select All to check all the checkboxes. Then choose the Availability button at the top of the page.
Comment: Quick enroll is a bit of a pain.
Answer: See last week’s notes for an improvement to the bookmarklet, plus also get the Enrollment bookmarklet to facilitate unenrolling: http://learn.vccs.edu/bbcswebdav/users/wccartd/pub/quickEnroll.html.
Question: Had a couple of reports of items being posted, but that subsequently disappeared.
Answer: Please get us details if possible, but theorize that it could be related to performance and server bounces, which have significantly reduced since last week.
This may be related to how often your browser is set to check for a new page. Adjust how often to update stored pages in cache (Temporary Internet files)
Question: Students are confused by the discussion board calendar thing.
Answer: What discussion board calendar thing?
Question: Are there archives of Spring 2008 courses yet?
Answer: No, not yet. Will start on the evening of Thursday, 1/17.
Comment: Inez Farrell has files of incompletes from Fall 2007 that she is happy to share with Blackboard administrators. Please contact her for your file. Note that those with access to SIS Query should be able to use the VX_INCOMPLETE_GRADES report.
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