Known Issues in Blackboard

If you have a suggestion for an improvement to Blackboard, please send it to suggestions@blackboard.com.  These are reviewed by the Blackboard product management team and are used to develop future releases of the product.

• Copy to self doesn't work
• Dropped Connection
• Instructor Course Copy produces multiple copies
• Can't tell how many times a student has taken a quiz set on multiple attempts
• Weighted Percentages in the Blackboard Gradebook

Please review the 20 Blackboard Gotchas Document if you are new to Blackboard.

If you have a Blackboard issue you wish to report, please send it to bbhelp@algonquincollege.com

 Send Copy Message to self doesn't work

In this version of Blackboard, Send Copy of Message to Self doesn't work.  Even if you or your students tick this box, no copy of the message will be sent to your mailbox.

This is a known issue in Blackboard 5.5 and will not be resolved until the new version of Blackboard (6.0) to which we will probably move

Workaround:

Use send email to All Users (where you will be emailed along with everyone else in the class) or send email to Single/Select Users but be sure to include yourself among the users to whom you are sending the email.

Dropped Connection

You have spent a long time composing a text in a document window in Blackboard then you find that when you go to submit your text, the network or your dialup connection has dropped and you are neither able to submit your work nor to save what you have composed in the window.

Workaround: 

Compose long documents in your word processor (where you have spell-checking and other useful tools as well) and then Copy  the text and Paste it into the Blackboard text window.  This also gives you the opportunity to save your document on your local hard drive for later use/revision.

Instructor Course Copy produces multiple copies of documents

Instructor Course Copy is a tool that is designed to take all or selected information from one course and copy it to another course, ideally at the start of the second course. This Acrobat File describes how to do this.

This tool is not suitable for repeated copying of materials from one course to another, say where you are updating one course and would like, every week, to copy materials to another course. Since Instructor Course copy only allows you to select broad categories of content for copying, it will create duplicate copies in the target course if it is run more than once.

If you are in the situation of having to update several sections of the same course, please contact bbhelp@algonquincollege.com to consider other options, such as combining courses or using pools to develop your assessments.

Can't tell how many times a student has taken a quiz set on multiple attempts

When you set a quiz on multiple attempts your gradebook only shows you the student results from the last attempt.  You do not know how many times a student has taken the quiz.

Workaround:

When you make a quiz available, do not create an announcement, rather create a link in another area (for example in Assignments/Quizzes).  Modify that link document to track the number of views.