Blackboard

We are happy to inform you the Blackboard Upgrade went very well. We were ahead of schedule and dd not run into any unforeseen problems. We where able to finish the upgrade today and Blackboard is live again. Do note, we had to reset the MyTUDelft-tab so you might have to customize it again. Use the ‘Add Module’ button at the top left to add the modules of your choice.

December 8th and 9th we will upgrade to Blackboard 9.1 SP9.

For Blackboard 9.1 SP9 to work properly, your computer has to meet some software requirements. Some of the errors that occur may be caused by for example using the wrong version of Java or an older browser version.

For Blackboard to work properly you need to use Java 6 or 7. There is a catch: Java 6 Update 29 causes trouble, so you need Java 6 Update 30 – 33.

Blackboard no longer supports:

• Internet Explorer 6, 7
• Firefox 1.x, 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5
• Safari 2.0, 3.x and any version on Windows
• Mac OSX 10.3, 10.4 “Tiger”
• Java 5, although it may continue to work

Windows users
Blackboard supports Windows XP (32-bit), Windows Vista (32 & 64-bit) and Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit) in combination with the browsers: Internet Explorer (IE) 8, 9 Firefox (FF) 3.6 and the Final Release Channel and Google Chrome (Stable Channel).

Mac OSX users
Blackboard supports Mac OSX 10.5 “Leopard”, Mac OSX 10.6 “Snow Leopard” and Mac OSX 10.7 “Lion” in combination with the browsers Safari 4.0, 5.0 and 5.1, Firefox 3.6 and Final Release Channel and Google Chrome (Stable Channel) except for the combinations “Leopard” with Safari 5.1 and “Lion” with Safari 4.0 and 5.0.
Also Firefox 8 and Mac OS are not compatible with the drag and drop functions on Blackboard.

What Browser to use
Since some of the problems that occur in Blackboard are browser depend, we can not advise one specific browser. If something does not work the way you expect, please try using another browser.  We keep you informed about known issues and workarounds.

In two weeks we will upgrade Blackboard to version 9.1 SP9. There will not be any severe changes. This upgrade will provide some new functionalities, but the most important part of this upgrade is fixing bugs.

The most important changes in Blackboard are:

• Enhancement in general. Several bug fixes improve the performance of several parts in Blackboard.
• Improvement of the Grade Center:
  • New functionalities within the ‘Needs Grading’ page for gradable Blogs, Journals, Wikis and Discussion Board activity.
  • A new View Grade History option where users can choose a time period for the history that is shown.
• Add Menu Item redesigned. The Add Menu Item option list for the Course Menu has a new look. The option names are shorter.
• Course-to-Course Navigation. When in a course, click the Action Link next to the course title to jump from course to course to access the same page/tool.
• New reports:
  • Activity Reports
    • Student overview for single course
    • Course activity overview
    • User activity overview
    • Single user activity overview
  • Performance reports
    • Course performance
    • Learner performance
    • Goal performance
• Digital testing with Blackboard
  • Automated Regrading. Instructors can now fix problematic questions by simply editing the invalid question directly and having all necessary updates flow automatically to the Grade Center.
  • Negative Marking. Negative marking allows instructors to apply negative point values for wrong answers on test questions. For instance, this allows them to prevent (by penalty) guessing.
• Security updates

Due to the upgrade Blackboard is not available from Friday evening December 7^th 23.55h until Sunday December 9^th. Check the IT Maintenance Page for information about the availability of other systems.

Please check this weblog if you would like to be informed of the progress of the upgrade or follow us on twitter (@TUDelftBb).

The last posts on this weblog are about the upgrade to Blackboard 9.1 SP8 and the rollback of this upgrade. This was at the beginning of the summer. Since then it was quiet on the blog, but we have been busy finding the cause of the failed upgrade and making plans on how to proceed.

With help from Eveoh, we were able to find the cause of the Blackboard failure. The Blackboard upgrade is one of many steps that has to be done during the summer, so at that time it was to late to redo the upgrade. We have decided not to wait until next summer to do the next upgrade, since this version has some anoying bugs, that will not be solved with patches.

So, even though it was quiet on this blog, the preperations were started to upgrade to BB 9.1 SP9 later this year. Somewhere in November we will inform you about the possibilities of this new version and more.

Unfortunately we did not get the new version of Blackboard stable. We have reached the point that we can not be offline any longer, so we decided to do a rollback of the previous version. We have planned to be online again later today.

All went well with the Blackboard upgrade yesterday, until we went live at 18.00. When users started coming in, our servers went down and we had to go offline again. Since then we have been searching for a cause. Blackboard has been working around the clock (first support in America, then Australia, now Europe), to help us solve the problem. At the moment Blackboard has a good idea what has caused the problem and they are working on a fix.

We are doing our best to be online again as soon as possible. If we will not succeed in getting the new version of Blackboard online this afternoon, we will go back to our back up’s and restore the previous version. 

We are sorry for the inconvenience. We will keep you informed about the upgrade via twitter @TUDelftBb. You can also follow our progress on the temporary Blackboard page.

This summer we will upgrade Blackboard to version 9.1 SP8. There will not be any severe changes. This upgrade will provide some new functionalities, but the most important part of this upgrade is fixing bugs.

The most important changes in Blackboard are:

• Improvement of the Grade Center:
  • New functionalities within the ‘Needs Grading’ page for gradable Blogs, Journals, Wikis and Discussion Board activity.
  • A new View Grade History option where users can choose a time period for the history that is shown.
• Enhancement in general. Several bug fixes improve the performance of several parts in Blackboard.
• Add Menu Item Redesigned. The Add Menu Item option list for the Course Menu has a new look. The option names are shorter.
• Course-to-Course Navigation. When in a course, click the Action Link next to the course title to jump from course to course to access the same page/tool. 
• New reports:
  • Activity Reports
    • Student overview for single course
    • Course activity overview
    • User activity overview
    • Single user activity overview
  • Performance reports
    • Course performance
    • Learner performance
    • Goal performance
• Automated Regrading. Instructors can now fix problematic questions by simply editing the invalid question directly and having all necessary updates flow automatically to the Grade Center.
• Negative Marking. Negative marking allows instructors to apply negative point values for wrong answers on test questions. For instance, this allows them to prevent (by penalty) guessing.

In August there will be an open office by E-Learning Support (ELS). There will be a daily presentation with various subjects. One of the presentations will give you an overview of all changes within Blackboard. The first week of August, the courses for next academic year will be produced.

Due to the upgrade Blackboard is not available from Sunday evening July 8th until Tuesday July 10th. Osiris can be reached.

Please check this weblog if you would like to be informed of the progress of the upgrade.

Today we applied new Java certificates in Blackboard. All users should clear their java AND browser cache to prevent future Blackboard problems. If you forget to clear the cache, it is possible you will receive a pop-up box that advises you that you are using an expired certificate. Make sure if you receive this message you clear both your java AND browser cache again.

How to clear your browser cache:
For most browser use CTRL + F5.
Click here for a browser specific overview.

Click here to see how to clear your Java cache.

After clearing the cahches, you will have to accept the new java certificate. There will be an automatic pop up, if you access a java applet inside Blackboard.

Attention Students! We need your help.

The Blackboard Product Development team is currently investigating social learning ideas with students. We have questions that cover ideas related to delivering information and content to students via a single interface (My Blackboard) that provides greater opportunities for user-to-user interactions. We want to understand your motivations for integrating social capabilities into the online learning experience. Please set aside about 15 minutes to tell us about yourself and answer some questions so we can better understand your motivations.

Survey Link: https://bbuxresearch.wufoo.com/forms/my-bb-design-ideas/

This survey will be available to you for the next week.

Blackboard has let us know that the SafeAssign Backlog has been processed and the processing time is back to normal.