Attending:
Mary Holmes, E-Learning Admin, Ferris State University, 8.03
Sam McCool, NevState, Manager/Instructional Technology, sam.mccool@nsc.nevada.edu, 702-992-2741, Vista 4.2.3
Nick Dean, LMS Administrator - Marshall University - nick.dean@marshall.edu - Vista 8.0.2HF1
Matt Davis: Matt Davis, Sol. Eng., Blackboard
David Schlater CE803: BB admin University of Idaho 8.0.3
Pete Boysen, Sys. Analyst, pboysen@iastate.edu, Iowa State, 8.03
David Schlater CE803: BB admin University of Idaho 8.0.3
Pete Boysen, Sys. Analyst, pboysen@iastate.edu, Iowa State, 8.03
Tigon Woline, Instr. Designer, ISU
Amita Mahajan, Alamo Colleges, Vista 8.0.2, E-Learning Administrator/ Network Administrator
Tracy Tolliver, Manager, Production Applications, Illinois, Vista 8.0.3
Paula Lee, CE 8.0, WebCT Administrator, Lee College
Kevin O'Brien, UMOL, Tech Support Coordinator, Vista 8.0.2 HF1
Tim Lambert UMOL: Vista 8.0.2 Integration Support Specialist
Randy Dalhoff - Vista 8.0.3 - Iowa State - SysAdmin
Jack Sharon
Hot Topics
Paula Lee -- wanted to verify the answer to a question regarding this scenario: A student takes exam and three weeks later complains that he got a zero because it seems as though he didn't take the test. Can that happen? Paula looked in database; queried for a submission id; looked in submission log; looked in the tracking logs for the class. Result: Could not find evidence that the student took the test. Discussion followed about how to respond to these claims by students. Likely answer: Student may have confused two tests.
This is not the same type of incident that Randy reported last week. WebCT Administrative maillist recently posted a note on this issue. (BTW: To subscribe to this list go to https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/webct-admins.)
Here's John Porter's notes on the phenonomen:
From our preliminary review we've discovered how to reproduce this
issue:
1) Begin an assessment as a student and answer all questions then
click on the "save all" button.
2) Next in the right frame RIGHT click on any of the questions and
click on "open in a new window."
3) In the webserver.log file you will then see an entry for
saveAllResponse.dowebct with a GET request.However, unless a user does the above steps, they will not encounter the
issue.
We are continuing the analysis of this issue and I will update everyone
once we have resolution steps.
Please let me know if you have any questions.Thanks,
John Porter | Blackboard, Inc.Paula started the discussion of Cheryl's e-mail related to a spam from http://webct.questionform.co:
At 09:52 AM 10/1/2009, Cheryl Bermani-McCann wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I will ask this question at the meeting today but thought I would send
>it along ahead of time so you can see the actual message a faculty
>member received on their iphone regarding WebCT storage issues.
>
>I have a ticket in with Bb.
>Has anyone come across this?
>Thanks,
>
>Cheryl A. Bermani-McCann
>Applications Administrator
>CT State University System
>39 Woodland Street
>Hartford, CT 06105-2337
>860-493-0112
>mccannc@ct.edu
>
>
>From: Rosa Mathis [mailto:rmathis@newcityschool.org]
>Sent: Wed 9/30/2009 9:54 PM
>To: info@notice.com
>Subject: WebCT Service
>Your mailbox has exceeded it storage limit set by you administrator.
>Because of this, you might not be able to send or recieve email. You
>are to click on the link below to get your account re-activated.
>http://webct.questionform.com/public/webct
>Note: Do not send email username and password through email!!!!
>Regards,
>WebCT ServiceDiscussion followed about how to deal with this kind of phishing expedition. NSC/UNLV posted immediately a warning, through the Bb domain announcements, for all faculty users.
Alert! Possible Phishing E-mails
October 1, 2009 5:00 PMRecently some users started receiving messages claiming to be about "WebCT Service" and requesting users re-active their accounts. These messages ARE NOT from your institution and should be deleted. Official messages from your institution:
- would be sent from an e-mail address containing @unlv.edu or @nsc.nevada.edu.
- will NEVER ask for account passwords or other sensitive data
- and, should contain contact information in the message
Campus e-mail administrators have been notified in an effort to prevent these messages from reaching end-users.
A sample of the phishing email is below.
Questions can be directed to your institution support center.From: Rosa Mathis <rmathis@newcityschool.org>
Date: Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 9:30 PM
Subject: WebCT Service
To: "info@notice.com" <info@notice.com>Your mailbox has exceeded it storage limit set by you administrator. Because of this, you might not be able to send or recieve email. You are to click on the link below to get your account re-activated. http://webct.questionform.com/public/webct
Note: Do not send email username and password through email!!!!
Regards,
WebCT Service
Nevada State College, Computing Support Center
702-992-2400 | 1-866-590-9234 (toll free) | Available 24 hours/day
UNLV IT Help Desk
702-895-0777 | 1-866-846-7088 (toll free) | Available 24 hours/dayA big thank you to Cheryl for catching this and alerting the community.
Cheryl McCann - reported an issue about a graded discussion topic that disappeared. The grades were recorded in the grade book. Not only did the discussion disappear but also the grades in the grade book. Discussion followed about methods to use for recovering the section data. Paula suggested: Add user/support account at course level of the section and run an activity report to see section instructor activity in the raw tracking information.
Amita Mahajan - asked about how to customize the login page. Can you customize the original or do you have to make up your own page? Answer: You have to create a page and upload that into the System Files. Then get the page ID number and place that in the settings for "Custom institution entry page using file content ID" under Branding Administration settings. Matt suggested that Amita and Paula to reach out to David and Randy about customized login page.
Round Table
Amita Mahajan - asked about reporting issues. DBA does not want to use the standby database for reports because that would break the image process. Instead, Alamo Colleges schedule the reports at a non-prime time on the primary database. Large reports can take as long as 45-50 minutes. Is this usual and should she be concerned about performance? The general thought was that the reports do not affect performance. David and Randy run reports during the day and haven't notice performance problems.Scott Randle suggested looking at the views that are created with the PowerSight Kit (power sight kit is basically Oracle views and tables that can be used for reporting. It is available to the serveradmin in Utilities settings=>Server Administration: reporting interface administration). It is a way to look at performance numbers. The views can be created at non-prime times. David and Randy run these report daily. Admin uses SQL queries to pull data from the views. Some tables are updated real time, and some are updated by batch job.
Bryant Withers - nothing new to report.
Cheryl McCann - nothing new.
David Schlater - next week Idaho will attempt to put the custom login page fix in place.
Jack Sharon - nothing new.
Nick Dean - nothing new.
Paul Lee - nothing new.
Pete Boysen, Randy Dalhoff - reported that login error page logs are 50 times smaller than before the fix. Amita asked about the details and Randy referred her to Chapter 7 of the Vista installation guide.
Renee Judd - nothing new.
Sam McCool - reported on unresolved indexing issues (Case ID #621668) regarding the length of building the indices. Amita reported that they were never able to build the indices until they got scripts from Blackboard. Send Amita email. Jack suggested references the ticket # with Bb Support rather than trying to duplicate the Alamo solution. After the meeting, Amita and Sam exchange emails which led to Alamo Colleges' DBA helping NLN's DBA to resolve the issue. NLN (Nevada Learning Network) is now running at full capacity on 10 application nodes and a 3-node Oracle RAC. Thank you, Amita.
Tracy Tolliver - we figured out how to run SafeAssign in multiple environments at the same time. On another matter, UMassOnline opened a ticket this morning about a error in IS manager for the Luminis message broker. He had to add a couple of stanzas to the confg.xml file to overcome the error in the webct.config file on the jms node.