Attending:
Matt Davis (moderator), Bb, matthew.davis@blackboard
Pete Boysen, Software developer, Iowa State, Vista8.0.3
Kathy Saville, savillek@marshall.edu, Director MUOnline Design Center, Vista 8.0.2 HF1 MH
Randy Dalhoff, SysAdmin, rdalhoff@iastate.edu, Vista 8.0.3, Iowa State
Sam McCool, sam.mccool@nsc.nevada.edu, Instructinal Technology Manager, NevSt Vista 4.2.3, Linux
Travis Kramer, Instructional Designer, trkramer@iastate.edu, Vista 8.0.3 Iowa State
Jack Sharon
Marianne Kline, Marsall U
Melody Brake, Melody.Brake@colostate.edu, CE8.0.2, Institution Admin, Colorado State U.
David Schlater, University of Idaho, BB Admin, CE803
Kevin Lowey, Univerisity of Saskatchewan. Kevin.Lowey@usask.ca CE 8.0.3 and deploying Learn 9 in co-production
Joe Jacobson, University of Tulsa, DBA, V8.0.3
Jamie Bethel, Colorado State University
Tracy Tolliver, Mary Holmes, Cheryl McCann, Bille Dorsey
Hot Topics
Melody Brake - had three pressing questions for the group. First: CSUS encountered an issue with enrollments in cross listed sections. Enrollment is fine in child sections, but sometimes some students don't show up in the parent section. CSUS uses Banner, and Melody wondered if others have encountered this. She does not have a way to detect this, other than, instructors reports of missing students in the grade book of parent section.
Second: In SafeAssign students are not listed in drop down box until they click on the SafeAssign link at least once. Then they appear on the SafeAssign dropbox in all of the sections in which they are enrolled. Travis will follow up about his experience at Iowa State. Jamie reported that Bb Chris Bay reported that this is the way the tool works -- the dropdown menu will only show the students who have clicked on the link. Melody scoured the SafeAssign Wiki and couldn't find information on this. Matt suggested contacting Andy Jacobson (andy.jacobson@blackboard.com). Andy manages the documentation team at Blackboard. Please feel free to forward him your requests regarding SafeAssign documentation requests about the issue.
Lastly, her third question was why does the search tool in Content Manager when locating files not open the file for the instructors like it does for students. Is that normal? Discussion followed about whether or not to permit students to use the Search tool. Kathy suggested hiding the search tool from the students.
Cheryl McCann - just put another server on the cluster and the load balancer fails (after 20 seconds) to recognize it and then drops it. When the load balancer sees the server again the user count appears to double. She wondered if anybody else had encountered a similar issue. (Using an F5 load balancer.) Discussion followed about why the server might not be responding to the load balancer. Mary Holmes suggested that it could be related to a persistent users problem. Cheryl asked about how to find users that are server bouncing. Discussion followed about monitoring user bouncing. Suggestions in Chat: from Joe Jacobson -- munin is really good about monitoring; and from Jack Sharon -- http://www.whatsupgold.com product produced by Ipswitch, Inc. Matt asked about whether to take the server off the cluster. Randy suggested taking it off the F5 but keep it running. A question about what would be a normal timeout time prompted a discussion and sharing of timeout settings. CSUS's timeout is 3 hours; others varied between 60 and 90 minutes.
Round Table
Travis Kramer, Randy Dalhoff, Pete Boysen - This weekend Iowa State will try to post a custom page script to overcome the generation of error logs. It won't fix the problem with logins from users who don't have javascript on, but it should return an error to the user rather than create a error log on the Blackboard server. Randy will fix a problem using post upgrades steps that weren't included in the release notes for 8.0.3. pp. 21-23 on July, 2009 for clients with Luminis Message Broker. But apparently, all clients should run that post upgrades steps.
Tracy Tolliver - not much to report. Compiling user reports for internal management. 90% of students enrolled in 1,600 course sites. 60% of overall gradeable enrollment is in Banner/Vista seats. So far so good.
Sam McCool - nothing new to report.
Melody Brake - smooth start to the semester.
Mary Holmes - nothing new. In first week. Running well in 8.0.3.
Marianne Kline, Kathy Saville - still working on resolving issues with Live Integration.
Kevin Lowey - The start of term was yesterday and is going well with CE 8. Reported an issue with course administrator access to crosslisting. Upgrading to Learn 9 in co-production in test environment. Computer Science department is deploying a mobile phone app to integrate with Bb CE 8 -- to report grades to students. Tracy echoed the issue with course URLs and reported the issue to Bb Support, and Randy reported resolving the issue with a work around. Kevin also asked whether anyone was running CE 8 / Learn 9 in coproduction integrated with Banner and Luminis portal and wanted to know if single signon to a CE 8 course from Luminis contiues to work when coproduction is in effect. Matt reported that Bb is planning to start an Office Hours for Early Adopters.
Joe Jacobson - at start of term, reporting a 12% increase in sections. Administrators are pushing a pandemic policy that requires all courses to have online content.
David Schlater - Second week on 8.0.3 and everything going well. A big milestone is coming up: He hopes to pass next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, without an incident like last year when post Labor Day hits brought down the server. He reported having one backup that he couldn't restore. Sent it to Bb Support, and they fixed it. David reported that IE8, FF 3.5 and Safari 4.0.3 are working well with 8.0.3.
Matt asked that we get OS and Browser information from everyone at a later session.
Cheryl McCann - asked about how many institutions were supporting IE6. Discussion followed about Banner version and migrating to Banner 8 that supports IE 7.
Bille Dorsey - nothing to add except to concur with David about users bypassing the alerts on the login screen.