BLACKBOARD UPDATE 9/25

UPDATE: It lives!! Blackboard is back up as of 2pm today 9/25.

• Yesterday at 5pm the way we backup Blackboard encountered an error due to what was later found to be a hardware issue.
• Dell shipped us a new card (the faulty hardware) late last night.
• In order to not risk losing valuable course data if Blackboard crashed we took Blackboard down at 1am on 9/25.
• At 3am we tried to bring Blackboard backup with the new card with no success
• Turns out we need help with the card configuration from Dell's Tech Support group who comes in at 8am.
• We will have Blackboard back up as soon as we can.

We appreciate that Blackboard being down is not what anyone wants. As soon as we can we will have it back up.

Quick & Easy Guidelines for Student Assignment Manager Submissions

Here are some quick guidelines you can copy and paste into your course(s) for your students. You might find them helpful in making sure your students understand how students use the assignment function in Blackboard.

Naming your files

• Please begin your filename with your last name, followed by some descriptive text. For example: smith_case_summary2.doc.
• Please do not use any of these symbols (or spaces) in your file names: # % $ & * as they sometimes cause problems in Blackboard.

Completing/Submitting Assignments

1. Every assignment has a View/Complete Assignment link at the bottom of the description/explanation of the assignment. This link takes you to an area where you can
   
   a. find attached files associated with the assignment (if any)
   
   b. attach/upload your completed assignment (i.e., return to this area when you're ready to submit your work)
   
   
2. When you're ready with your assignment file, go back to the View/Complete Assignment link that corresponds to the assignment you want to submit and follow the steps for attaching your file and sending me a brief comment. Be sure to click "Submit" (and not "Save" - see below).
   
   NOTE: Unless otherwise specified, all assignments are to be submitted as separately attached files (e.g., Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc., as appropriate). The comments box is generally not the place to enter your assignment response.
   
   
3. Once you submit an assignment, I will grade it and give you feedback. To access your grade/feedback, go to Course Tools > My Grades. If you see an exclamation point (!) where your grade should be, that means I haven't graded it yet, please be patient. If you see a padlock icon, that means that you have clicked Save rather than Submit (in lower right corner).
   
   Save means you intend to come back later and finish (e.g., it's a work in progress). Submit means you're ready to have the Blackboard system send it to me for grading and feedback.

See your courses as your students do.

Finally, you can see your Blackboard courses just as your students do. New with the Fall upgrade to 7.3 our Programming team has bundled into every course you teach, a student account accessible only by you that will allow you to view your courses as your students do.

If you see your name in the gradebook, don't worry it is not a mistake. It is just your student account showing up. Accessing your courses via your Blackboard "student" account is a snap! The following details how you will access your courses in the student view:

• username = username_std (ucs_jws_std or jfk004_std)
• password = INITIALS(uppercase) + last 3 digits of SamID (JWS###)
  
  *NOTE: if no middle initial, substitute an X (JXS###)
  

The Good News.....and the Good News

A little "Weekend (Blackboard) Update" for you. We undoubtedly have had a bumpy start this semester. The good news is that this semester, more than ever, students & faculty are using Blackboard @ SHSU. Unfortunately, the more users that utilize Blackboard's tools, the more of a drain is put on our current server setup. We realize what a slow (okay a standing still) Blackboard does to the faculty & student online experience, and are taking steps to remedy the situation.

We are currently working to ensure that Blackboard is up to the amount of traffic it is encountering. Part of the plan is for us to use multiple servers to "share the load" of the users accessing the system, as well as to have special "load balancing" servers to distribute the load and also to ensure that if one of our servers goes down traffic is automatically "routed" to another.

We have ordered the system and are currently testing parts of it. The "other" good news is that we have already added another front end server to help "share the load" until the "Enterprise Level" solution is in place.

We thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to make your Blackboard environment the system you want and expect.

NOTE: Over the weekend we actually brought up the second server to distribute the load and didn't open it up for folks off of campus, so to some people it seemed that Blackboard was down when it wasn't.

...and we're back.

Blackboard is back up and working at this time.

Blackboard is down.

Blackboard is currently unavailable. The Blackboard Team is on the phone with support trying to solve the problem.