Blackboard 9 and known Issues

 Have you worked with blackboard 9 lately and got upset that things are not working right! As a Faculty member, I get bothered when a function does not work; sometimes I need to look for available training or reference but most of the time things do not work because of a known issue, (a simplified term for a bug) in blackboard that I did not know about.  For example, an instructor creates a new announcement and checks the box “Send Email to all users even those that choose not to receive Announcement notifications through email” but an email is not sent to students.(Recently Fixed). This is one of the known issues that blackboard is aware of. Another instructor gets frustrated after losing 25 minutes of his precious time sitting in front of his desk trying to reorder forums in the discussion board but the forums are not displayed in the reordered pattern when the discussion board page is refreshed.
Blackboard has a list of known issues obviously not listed on the homepage, but found in the Blackboard knowledge base. Following is a list of known issues to keep in mind when working with blackboard 9.

•     Any time display dates are used be sure to select both a display-after date and a display-until date. Do not use both availability dates and adaptive release.

•    A difference between number of students listed in Blackboard and the number in Webadvisor. (The students need to activate their accounts in order to be listed in Blackboard).

•   Bug: Switching the Visual (Text box) Editor off or on will cause the page to refresh and all work on that page is lost. This is very important to avoid when typing text in Bb.

• Issues with Internet Explorer 8 and Blackboard: Using Internet Explorer 8 with Blackboard will cause problems for students attempting to submit tests or use the file upload feature. Instructors are not able to see the right scroll bar in the grade center.  To avoid issues it is suggested to advise students to use Mozilla Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ie.html or change to the “compatibility mode” in IE8 (Tools > Compatibility View Settings > Check 'Display all websites in Compatibility View' > Close.

• In IE 8 changing the number of rows in the grade center will cause the grade center to suddenly close.

• Announcements notification by email is not working : Announcements notification by email is now working. Students enrolled in class receives an email from the Blackboard Administrator titled " New Announcement Available in course: .."  informing them  that a new  announcement was added to the course

• When copied to new shells text generated in the Text Box Editor does not keep the formatting: You would need to reformat the text (Known issue, pending Blackboard solution.)

• Reported by Dr. Balch: Blackboard does not import tests created using at least one textbook manufactures test management system. Sometimes BB reported an error sometimes tests just disappeared into the ether. The work-around is to save the test in WebCT format and import as a Pool.  

• If you have a quiz bank in RTF format that you would like to convert to blackboard , following is a link to a quiz generator  http://www.csi.edu/blackboard/bbquiz/      where you can past the questions and edit them to be  in a certain format per documentation  , download zip file and upload to blackboard through the pool.  

• Notification modules are not synchronized to real time. (Known issue, pending Blackboard solution.)

• Instructors using Safari may get an obscure error message when trying to update a weighted total in the grade center. The error might be something like blackboard.persist.PersistenceException: Unable to generate id. The provided key value is invalid: blackboard.platform.gradebook2.GradingPeriod - - {2} the bug occurs if there is no grading period in the course. You can fix the problem by creating an empty grading period. Go to the Grade Center and click on "Manage"->"Grading Periods", then "Create Grading Period"; give it a name (perhaps "term") and click "Submit"." If you are using MAC and have Firefox, try using Firefox to add the weighted total.

• Some Instructors may see a broken link on the homepage, this happen if the Module page is not available in tools availability. To make module page or any other tool available click “Customization”-“Tool Availability” and check the box near the tool needed. You can change the entry page through “Customizations”-“style”- “Select Course Entry Point

As with every learning management system , bugs are fixed and other unknown issues may occur. The above list is updated regularly if you would like to report any known issue please let us know.