CE/Vista Work Group > Resources

Meeting Notes for November 12, 2009

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:35:46 +0000

date

November 12, 2009

attendees

Mary Holmes - Ferris State University, E-Learning Admin, 8.0.3, holmesm@ferris.edu
Amita Mahajan - Alamo-Colleges, system administrator/Network Analyst. Vista8.0.2, amahajan@alamo.edu
Bo Crook – Colorado State U, CE 8.0.2, bo.crook@colostate.edu
Bryant Withers - SUNY Cortland Info Sys Asst CE 8.01, withersb@cortland.edu
Jamie Bethel – Colorado State U, CE 8 jamie.bethel@colostate.edu
Joe Jacobson – University of Tulsa, DB Administrator, Vista 8.0.3, jajacobson@utulsa.edu
Karen Tan – UmassOnline, Ops & Support Manager, Vista 8.0.2 ktan@umasssonline.net
Kathy Saville - Marshall U, Director, MUOnline Design Center, Vista 8.0.2 HF1 MH savillek@marshall.edu
Kevin O’Brien – UmassOnline, Vista 8.0.2
Marianne Kline - Marshall U, LMS Administrator, Vista 8.0.2 HF1 MH, klinem@marshall.edu
Matt Davis – Blackboard, Senior Solutions Engineer, matthew.davis@blackboard.com
Melody Blake – Colorado State U, CE 8.0.2, melody.brake@colostate.edu
Pete Boysen – Iowa State U, System Development, Vista 8.0.3 , pboysen@iastate.edu
Randy Dalhoff - Iowa State - Vista 8.0.3 - rdalhoff@iastate.edu
Scott Randle -Ferris State U, Vista 8.0.3 rand15@ferris.edu
Travis Kramer – Iowa State U, Instructional Designer, Vista 8.0.3, trkramer@iastate.edu

notes

Hot Topics

Kathy reported on events at Educause 2009 in Denver, Colorado. A short preview of Learn 9.1 was shown. Release of 9.1 is now being reported to be released beginning of second quarter 2010. Blackboard is revamping the roles of regional representatives and changes with other things including focusing stability and reliability of the product so speculation is there are more changes are coming.

Individual Reports

Travis – All is well

Scott - All is well

Randy – Experienced a problem with Java but got it resolved

Pete – Randy is his only problem

Melody - All is well

Marianne – Looking forward to the Implementation team coming next week

Kevin – Reported the Maintenance issues are improving. Got confirmation of Support that there is no way to delete failed backups in bulk, they have to be deleted manually. Also wish to share the Unmarshall Directory:From Mike Cooling (ListServ Post) on the Unmarshall Directory:I also learned that restoring sections creates files in the <domain>/unmarshall directory. When the restore fails (especially large restores) that space is left on the managed node forever.

Karen – now able to use the Search Tool

Joe – having a problem with test server with new hardware. Had to reload old software to get system to get Blackboard to work

Jamie All is well

Bryant – Is wanting a solution to Blackboard System timeout. His institution is limiting idle time on all systems to 20 minutes so he is looking for Blackboard to provide a warning message the time is about to expire. BER 639

One suggestion was to contact Global System Services to see what it would cost his university for such a feature. Estimated cost might be $180,000.00. Everyone else agreed Bryant should explain to his systems people that learning management systems operating differently than other campus systems and it is appropriate to allow idle time to be longer. Suggested idle time range from 60 minutes to 120 minutes.

Bo – All is well

Amita – Planning to upgrade to Banner 8 and Vista 8, 1 institution and multi divisions and wishes a screen shot of the Admin screen. Mary will provide and did

Also asked if anyone was using Acxiom. Iowa State is exploring it.

Mary is still working on persistent users issues. VST 4228

November 5, 2009 Meeting Notes

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:58:38 +0000

notes by Sam McCool

date

November 5, 2009

attendees

Matt Davis, Sr. Sol. Engineer, Blackboard
Renee Judd, rjudd@nl.edu, National-Louis University, faculty, technology facilitator for college, CE 8.0.2
Sam McCool - NSC, Vista 4.2.3 Manager of Instructional Technology
Randy Dalhoff-IaSt-V803: Randy Dalhoff - Iowa State - Sys Admin - Vista 8.0.3
Paula Lee: WebCT Admin, CE 8.0
Randy Dalhoff-IaSt-V803: Google can help pay Chasens salary
Mary Holmes: holmesm, Ferris State University,E-Learning Admin, Vista 8.03
Kathy Saville, Director MUOnline Design Center, Marshall University, Vista 8.0.2 MH
Bryant Withers CE 8.01 SQL: Bryant Withers, withersb@cortland.edu, SUNY Cortland, Info Sys Asst, CE 8.01 SQL
Nick Dean, LMS Administrator, Marshall University, nick.dean@marshall.edu, Vista 8.0.2
David Schlater 803: BB Admin - CE 803 davids@uidaho.edu
Kevin O'Brien UMOL 8.0.2 HF1
Jack Sharon, Jamie Bethel, Brett Hardee, Marianne Kline, Scott Randle, Travis Kramer, Paula Lee

notes

Round Table

Bille Dorsey - reminded everyone that SP2 was just releasesed for Bb Learn.

Brett Hardee - asked rumor regarding Google buying Blackboard. Discussion followed. Kathy reported from Educause conference where rumors are flying about that everyone is buying everyone. It's M & A time in America's higher education industry.

Bryant Withers - completed SP2 for CE 8. Getting ready to upgraded to SP3.

Cheryl McCann - upgraded to SP3 and everything running fine. Interested in working on the Assessment patch. She asked whether every school should install it. The patch is available from your TSM and the Bb Wiki. The link to it was also distributed via e-mail by John Porter. Matt Davis promised to check (see Action Item below).

Answer: It is for CE/Vista Rel. 8 (over higher) only. The patch is to overcome issues with Skype 4.1 plug-in for Firefox and the triggering of Gets that occur on some machines clearing the results of a quiz when students attempt to save their answers.

Kevin O'Brien reported in chat that the Skype plug-in is now blocked by Mozilla for Skype users. See Mozilla Blocklist: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/blocklist/. Discussion in chat related to Gets: Renee Judd: Are there any institutions that applied the patch and still see unfortunate instances of the GET? Randy replied: The GETs keep coming, but the patch prevents the errant GETS from erasing answers when Save All is clicked. David Schlater replied: ditto here too - gets happen, but not the issue.

David Schlater - good today and everything is fine.

Jack Sharon - nothing to report

Jamie Bethel - no problems.

Kevin O'Brien - no problems despite month off.

Karen Tan - doing okay, still have context search index issues.

Marianne Kline - reported that MU is still dealing with Bb Support on a couple of issues related to managed hosting.

Matt Davis - recovering from flu; he wasn't able to attend Educause.

Nick Dean - nothing new.

Paula Lee - asked about authentication requirements of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA 2008). Matt gave some background about the legislation and interpretation of the legislation into regulations. The education industry is waiting for actual regulations that should be coming from accreditation boards. Discussion followed about whether schools needed to move to Axciom based on their policies and whether various strategies -- monitoring or prevention -- really worked against cheating. A long discussion followed about FERPA and access to information. Renee Judd added another issue in chat: Anyone else ever hook up their laptap to the projector, move to the LMS window in the browser, and realize you had been in the gradebook before class and forgot you were in the grade book? Ooops!

Randy Dalhoff - nothing more today.

Renee Judd - involved in administrative things about on-line learning and the directions for technology and pedagogy.

Sam McCool - reported on current status of Linux/Oracle hardware installation. The system is now running at 100% capacity and building indices with one of the three nodes on the Oracle RAC. Performance is remarkably fast.

Scott Randle - nothing new

Tim Lambert - asked Sam about how NSC is using one of the nodes in the RAC to build the index files -- Sam will connect Ron Nollen and Dan Rugotzke with Tim (see action item below). Other issue: Tim asked whether anyone knew about uploading large backup section files through the GUI -- specifically a files as large as 2 gigabytes. It nearly brought the node down on which the file was uploaded. The process uses the unmarshalled area to store the file, and then it is unpacked to the database. If the backup process, fails the file stays in the unmarshalled area, taking up storage space. Jack referred Tim to the User List regarding this issue. Lastly, Tim asked about the patch for persistent users. Mary reported that users are currently waiting for a patch for this issue. Tim reported that he thought his TBA had a patch. He will contact Mary with an update.

action items

Matt Davis will follow up on the Assessment patch. - Done: John Porter responded to Matt's query during meeting.
Sam McCool will refer Tim Lambert to Ron Nollen and Dan Rugotzke at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

file

2009.11.05.CEVistaWorkGroup.Notes.html (7KB)

Office Hours for October 22, 2009

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:16:04 +0000

notes by Kathy Saville

date

October 22, 2009

attendees

Mary Holmes - Ferris State University, E-Learning Admin, 8.0.3, holmesm@ferris.edu
Brett Hardee - Linfield College, WebCT System Admin, bhardee@linfield.edu
Bryant Withers - SUNY Cortland Info Sys Asst CE 8.01, withersb@cortland.edu
David Schlater – University of Idaho, CE 803, davids@uidaho.edu
Jamie Bethel – Colorado State, CE 8 jamie.bethel@colostate.edu
Karen Tan - UMassOnline, Ops & Support Mgr, Vista 8.0.2, ktan@umassonline.net
Kathy Saville - Marshall U, Director, MUOnline Design Center, Vista 8.0.2 HF1 MH savillek@marshall.edu
Marianne Kline - Marshall U, LMS Administrator, Vista 8.0.2 HF1 MH, klinem@marshall.edu
Matt Davis – Blackboard, Senior Solutions Engineer, matthew.davis@blackboard.com
Paula Lee - Lee College, WebCT Admin, CE 8.0 Lee College, plee@lee.edu
Pete Boysen - Iowa State, Vista 8.0.3 – pboysen@iastate.edu
Randy Dalhoff - Iowa State - Vista 8.0.3 - rdalhoff@iastate.edu
Scott Randle -Ferris State U, Vista 8.0.3 rand15@ferris.edu
Tigon Woline – Iowa State U, Instructional Development, Vista 8.0.3, tigon@iastate.edu
Tim Lambert - UMass Online Integration support specialist, Vista 8.0.2: tlambert@umassonline.net
Travis Kramer - Iowa State U, Instructional Designer, Vista 8.0.3, trkramer@iastate.edu

notes

Hot Topics

Scott Randle asked as a new Blackboard Administrator how does a new administrator get what he needs to know to success. Many suggestions were offered including:

· Blackboard Training

· Listservs

· Users Groups

Individual Reports

Travis - All is well

Tigon – All is well

Randy – Added the Assessment Patch this past Saturday and no issues
Monday delete 1,300 2-year-old sections and this cause Garbage Collection to oddly for a few days

***Randy will also email to Mary and she will distribute SQL script for the Oracle database.

Pete – reference Randy’s work on data reporting including counts, activities, concurrent sessions, etc. for 30 months. He is using PowerScript to track past history of student and tool use.

Paula – All is well, no problems, no headaches

Matt – continuing talking with Seneca and Grand Rapids Community College about presenting on November 19, 2009 on Project Astro

Marianne – continuing work with Managed Hosting

Karen – Concerns with Garbage Collection failing, Restore Backup files cannot be restored. All appear to be related to database issues. They have received Content Search Index scripts but still having issues so they are running new oracle updates, new scripts and creating new indexes. They hope to have resolution to these issues in a week.

Jamie – asked about the new “Save All” scripts. Both Randy and David said they ran fine. Down time should be no more than 30 minutes. Jamie will probably run it this weekend.

David – Offered clarification that the config.html file in the 8.0.3 manual is wrong, correct file is :

<sub-deployment><name>InboundQueue.ConnectionFactory</name><target></sub-deployment> (not WebCTVistaCluster)

David also reported the patch Randy provided is working well

Wants to know why people are moving to 64-bit Java. Do you need to run a 64_bit OS to run this and the consistence is yes.

Bryant – minor issues, more later

Brett – asking for any information on Windows 64-bet on nodes. He will report back on this later

Tim – working with Karen on database issues and reports they are still battling SafeAssign issues

Mary – continues to work with Blackboard on persistent users and believes more nodes are needed. They tried debugging the system but it only crashed the system. The work around is to take down the node and redeploy. She does not want to have to reboot every week. Restoring the cluster doesn’t help

Mary also asked about backups. She is creating backups for all sections.

Iowa State backs up once a week

UMass Online backs up once a week

Several commented to have the faculty click to create a backup before doing major work in the course.

David asked about a message that came from Blackboard Managed Hosting which stated:

“All -

CourseSites will need to be taken offline shortly for emergency maintenance. We realize this is short notice and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Bb will work to bring the system back online as soon as possible.

Updates will be published at the following location: http://managedhosting.blackboard.com

Regards,

Jason Minkoff
Director, Managed Hosting Support
Blackboard Inc.”

Matt commented this was a generic message that was sent to clients who at one time may have had a hosted course on Blackboard. It is not a message to be concerned about.

action items

Randy will also email to Mary and she will distribute SQL script for the Oracle database.

October 15, 2009 Meeting Notes

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:10:19 +0000

notes by Sam McCool

date

October 15, 2009

attendees

Scott Randle: Ferris State University, E-Learning Specialist, Vista 8.03
Randy Dalhoff, Iowa State, Vista 8.0.3, Sys Admin, rdalhoff@iastate.edu
Sam McCool, NevSt: Instructional Technology Manager, Nevada State College, Nevada Learning Network, sam.mccool@nsc.nevada.edu, Vista 4.2.3
Cheryl McCann, CSUS, V802.1: mccannc@ct.edu, Vista 8.0.2-1, Vista Apps Admin, CT State Univ System
Nick Dean: Marshall University, LMS Administrator, Vista 8.0.2HF1, nick.dean@marshall.edu
Kathy Saville, Director MUOnline Design Center, Marshall University, Vista 8.0.2 MH
Bryant Withers CE 8.01 SQL: Bryant Withers, withersb@cortland.edu, SUNY Cortland, Info Sys Asst, CE 8.01 SQL
Pete Boysen Iowa St,V8.0.3: Pete Boysen, Iowa State, Vista 8.0.3, system analyst,pboysen@iastate.eduMelodyB-ColoState-CE802: Melody.Brake@colostate.edu, Colorado State, CE 8.0.2
David Schlater CE803: davids@uidaho.edu BB Admin, 803 ce
Jamie Bethel, Joe Jacobson, Travis Kramer, Bille Dorsey

notes

Hot Topics

The group celebrated the birth of Amin Ali-Hasan, Sahar and Shahdy's new baby.

Melody Brake - asked about the fix for the Save all feature of the assessment tool. A patch is now available (listserv distribution) from Blackboard. A true fix will be available in an later update. Nick Dean commented in chat: It doesn't actually stop the problem but it enables the operation to complete by ignoring the Gets. David reported that Idaho will install it today. It is for only Vista 8. Matt Davis commented in Chat: "Collectively, this group did a great job of isolating, and helping us solve, this issue! Well done folks."

Cheriyl McCann - reported that assignments hang up when they try to submit an attachment. Kathy suggested recreating the assignment. And, checking the assignment that preceeds the assignment for bad code in the assignment directions. This is case - #626022.

Round Table

Bille Dorsey - nothing today

Bryant Withers - nothing today

Cheryl McCann - Garbage Collection failed three days in a row and prevented them from upgrading to SP3. Discussion followed about how other schools have experienced similar failures and recovery.

David Schlater - reported that he is considering removing JDK150_08, folder of files, and will remove it. Wondered if others have removed it. Bryant reported that he removed the folder from the Cortland installation without detrimental affects. David will patch login page on production now that the patch works on pre-production. Asked if he could install both patches before restarting. Randy confirmed that he could install both before restarting and wouldn't have to run a refresh. Finally, he reported that as a result of his attempts to upgrade the config file with the information regarding clusters, the application won't start. He duplicated the process that Randy successfully completed but still was unable to get application to start.

Jack Sharon - nothing today.

Jamie Bethel - nothing today

Joe Jacobson - nothing today

Kathy Saville - asked about StudyMate CS and issues she encountered trying to import into CS from Author.

Matt Davis - announced that he will be at Educause and will hope to get together with any of us who will also be attending.

Melody Brake - asked about SP3 and lessons learned. She is considering upgrading and wondered if those who have already had advice. Luminis processing - Mary Holmes reported improvement. Others shared issues

Nick Dean - nothing to add.

Pete Boysen - nothing to add.

Randy Dalhoff - reported that he conducted query of student section counts or pulled other stats and discovered that only 3000 out of 27,000 have not touched Bb Vista.

Sam McCool - reported on the Mac browsers Chat links at "Go to Chatroom"; reported on current production state; and then concluded with current state of InTech at NSC -- moving to new offices and hoping to hire two new employees.

Scott Randle - asked what others do for load testing for workflow. Randy reported that the same question was asked at a session on Linux System Administration panel session at Bb Conference. Several tools were recommended: BadBoy, JMeter, and Grinder. Tim Lambert reported in chat: Grinder was used here at UMOL when Bb came in to do performance testing on our new cluster. Jack Sharon contributed several methods for testing load and what to look for during a test. He made a distinction between test cases and real use cases.

Travis Kramer - received pressure from group for pictures; Sahar set a new bar in sharing baby pictures. Nothing new to report.

file

2009.10.15.CEVistaWorkGroup.Notes.html (6KB)

August 27, 2009 Meeting Notes (1 Comment)

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:12:00 +0000

notes by Sam McCool

date

August 27, 2009

attendees

Nick Dean - Marshall University - nick.dean@marshall.edu - LMS Administrator - Vista 8.0.2HF1
Sam McCool, Nevada State College, Vista 4.2.3, Manager Instructional Technology sam.mccool@nsc.nevada.edu
Marianne Kline, Marshall Univ klinem@marshall.edu - LMS Admin - V8.2HF1
David Schlater, University of Idaho - davids@uidaho.edu - BB Admin - CE 803
Karen Tan - UMassOnline - ktan@umassonline.net - Technology Support and Operations Manager - Vista 8.0.2
Joe Jacobson - jajacobson@utulsa.edu - University of Tulsa - DBA - V8.0.3
Kathy Saville, Director, Marshall University, savillek@marshall.edu, Vista 8.0.2. HF1 MH
Scott Randle - Ferris State University - rand15@ferris.edu - E-Learning Specialist - Vista 8.03
Matt Davis, Solutions Engineer, Blackboard
Randy Dalhoff - Iowa State - rdalhoff@iastate.edu - SysAdmin - V803
Mary Holmes, E-Learning Admin, Ferris State University, Vista 8.03
Pete Boysen - Iowa State - pboysen@iastate.edu - Randy's lackey - Vista8.0.3
list - Vista 8.03
Amita Mahajan - systems Admin, Alamo Colleges, Vista8.0.2
Tim Lambert UMOL, tlambert@umassonline.net, UMassOnline, Integration Support, Vista 8.0.2
Kevin O'Brien, UMOL
Tracy Tolliver, ttollive@illinois.edu, University of Illinois, Mgr, Production Applications, Vista 8.0.3
Paula Lee, Lee College
Helena, UConn
Scott Randle

notes

Hot Topics

David Schlater - had to put up a new security certificate, and heard reports from users that older versions of Java seem to have a problem with it. A pop-up tells some users that the certificate is not known. The solution seems to be moving to the newest version of Java. Asked if anyone else was hearing from users about this.

Amita Mahajan - asked about course preview page in Vista. She was able to create a page and wondered whether anyone knows how to create a direct link to the page. It's available while in Vista, but the link inside Vista doesn't work from outside. David Schlater had an answer: In file manager, in public folder, use action link on file and do preview - grab url up to end of file name.

Matt followed up on an action item regarding WebDAV. He explained that he had to be intentionally vague: Zytos is the content management system of Learn, which Blackboard has used historically. Bb purchased Zytos. Blackboard will make drag and drop feature of moving folders from local computer to the Bb Learn content area. A future file transfer feature looks very easy for instructors to move the content to Bb Learn with a future release.

Kevin O'Brien - wanted to know the maximum number of characters of the full pathname of the link to content embedded in a file. Pete Boysen Googled it - 4096 on Linux. Joe Jacobson explained the 3-2 Tree that determines the algorythm for the file name size, dependent on the size of the file structure. 32,000 for NFS. Joe provided the following information and link:

Hard drives store data on the platters using this algorithm:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-3_tree
This is a simple version of it, and when you’re talking about hard drives the numbers are much larger. It’s a very flat binary tree… and its easy to think of it like platters and sectors making up the data and child nodes of the tree. At any rate, the OS formats the track of a platter into sectors that are some power of 2 (for binary searching). Typically these are 255 or 512 bytes. This is where the limits on file name (or on the disk its location) come from.

Helena - asked about difficulties restoring crosslistings after moving from Vista 8.0.2 to Vista 8.0.3. In contrast, moving a crosslisting in Vista 3 to Vista 8.0.3 works. Asked if anyone else experienced this. Mary Holmes reported having the same difficulty with crosslistings in 8.0.1 that she tried to move manually to 8.0.3.

Round Table

Bryan Withers - a professor copied a section into a new section and he then couldn't upload PDFs and images. Might be an issue with moving Learning Modules from one course to another: he had heard that he should NOT to copy the course content but rather export and import the modules. Others reported not having problems with copying courses. Exporting and importing LMs only moves limited content and instructors would have to do some rebuilding.

Cheryl McCann - just listening today. looking to move to SP3 soon.

David Schlater - semester started Monday, and things are good. Matt asked about section growth, and David reported that Banner show 763 sections, down 813 sections last Spring. Mary asked about the alert icon for Discussions on 8.0.3, and David reported that he had turned that setting off. Discussion followed about how to turn off the Show New Items feature. Mary asked if the alerts are working for courses created in 8.0.3 and forward and courses from previous versions won't. John Porter researched the question and the answer appears to be that all courses in 8.0.3 will be corrected.

Joe Jacobson - nothing this week.

Marinne Kline, Nick Dean - still trying to maintain and courses started this week; live integration is still not working with managed hosting. Having to run integrations manually.

Pete Boysen, Randy Dalhoff - nothing new this week.

Sam McCool - reported quickly about changes to new hardware.

Tim Lambert - posted in the Chat, "I'm having an error reporting problem with my batched siapi files so I have to leave. I"ll try again next week. Cheers folks."

Karen Tan - posted to Chat, "Things are good here at UMOL. I have to take off early now. Talk to you all soon."

Mary Holmes reported that Ferris is dropping Webex as of tomorrow and consequently, she has not scheduled the September meetings. Ferris is moving to Adobe Connect, and will investigate setting up the meeting on Connect.

Tracy Tolliver - quick update classes started on Monday, 1500-1600 sections and enrollment increases - 140,000. Everything going well. Big issue is making all pandemic planning operational. Reports of H1N1 virus. 60% of enrollment is present on system, but most the plan's focus is on supporting instructors through a pandemic.

file

2009.08.27.CEVistaWorkGroup.Notes.html (8KB)

October 8, 2009 Meeting Notes

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:09:37 +0000

notes by Sam McCool

date

October 8, 2009

attendees

Matt Davis, Sr. Sol. Engineer, Blackboard
Paula Lee, CE 8.0, Lee College WebCT Admin
Sam McCool, NevSt: Manager, Instructional Technology, Vista 4.2.3
Mary Holmes, Ferris State University, holmesm@ferris.edu, E-Learning Admin, 8.03
Randy Dalhoff, Sys Admin, Iowa State, V8.0.3
Pete Boysen, Sys analyst, Iowa State, V8.0.3
Scott Randle, Ferris State University E-Learning Specialist, v8.0.3, rand15@ferris.edu
MelodyB-ColoState-CE802: Melody.Brake@colostate.edu, Colorado State U, Institution Admin, CE 8.0.2
Joe Jacobson: jajacobson@utulsa.edu University of Tulsa, V8.0.3
Nick Dean: nick.dean@marshall.edu, Marshall University, LMS Administrator, Vista 8.0.2HF1
Amita_Alamo-Colleges-Vista8.0.2: amahajan@alamo.edu, Alamo Colleges, System administrator/Network Analyst.
Tim Lambert UMOL: tlambert@umassonline.net. UMass Online. Integration Support Specialist Vista 8.0.2
Jamie Bethel, Paula Lee, David Schlater

notes

Hot Topics

David Schlater - updated the group on the quiz attempt-missing answer issue. He found 42 cases in which students received a 0 despite completing a quiz event. He isolated most of the events to a specific lab on the Idaho campus. Randy reported finding similar incidents: 70 students, 140 occurrences. On some computers, when students click the [Save all] button at the end of a quiz, the computer saves the answers; on other computers, a Get request is sent instead, erasing the data sent to the grade book (see John Porter's message in last week's notes).

Affected environments: Vista 8.0.2 and Vista 8.0.3. End user environments: uncertain about computer settings, plug-ins; it could happen on any computer environment with Firefox, IE, and Safari browsers with an undetermined plug-in or add-on.

To find the incidents, David used the grep command posted in the forums to identify when get events occur after the Save all is initiated. The command for unix is - "cat webserver.log* | grep ''saveAllResponse'' | grep ''GET''.

Discussion followed about testing policy and procedures. Blackboard is working on the technical side to fix this issue so that some computers will not blank the answers.

Amita Mahajan - asked about how others were saving courses from inactive inventory and then removing them from server. Discussion followed about methods of archiving courses and deleting courses. Matt Davis added this note in chat: "Tracy Toliver at UIUC recenlty completed a large project retiring old sections, you may want to reach out to her as well."

Melody Brake - is interested in getting aggregated usage data and asked about Astro open-source use and when it could be deployed. Matt said that Seneca College in Toronto took it as a joint project with Astro Bb Classic 8 and Bb Learn 9. The school together a suite of scripts and queries, creating a front end interface that makes it easy to use Astro. Jack Sharon referred Melody to the work of Scott Kodai and Ron Santos. Scott Randle provided this link in chat: http://aimlessmusing.com/2009/07/20/extracting-useful-information-from-the-powersight-kit/#more-75

Round Table

Amita Mahajan - nothing new.

David Schlater - updated the group on the patch to fix log issues related to custom login page. Received a patch, but it wasn't dated the same as the one Randy received. He received another patch, and it was missing files. At this point, David is trying to figure out which of the patches to use. Randy reported that he tried several and reverted to a combination of the patches.

Jamie Bethel - nothing new

Joe Jacobson - nothing new

Matt Davis - nothing new

Melody Brake - asked about a resolution for the grade book issue of rows not lining up. Mary reported that change the media setting for monitor and minimum 1024 x 768. DPI must be set default resolution. In Bb, users should use Default Font Size for Tool settings.

Nick Dean - nothign new.

Paula Lee - asked about synch application for iPhone from Bb Classic and Bb Learn. Matt confirmed that it is not for Bb Vista. When she arrives at Behind the Blackboard, she finds that the link to student support for CE/Vista appears to be dead. It is actually a title; the links below for Blackboard e-Packs and Student Access Keys are still active.

Brett Hardee - asked about when a student is trying to do individual save for each question and then the right hand side frame disappears. Melody Brake reported a similar situation: she found that students could leave the exam and reenter without losing questions.

Pete Boysen, Randy Dalhoff - at 12:45 a.m. last Saturday the Bb servers went down. A listener on the Oracle database was stopped. Between 12:05 and 12:10 they were hit with PHP and related commands as though somebody was trying to hack into a Moodle system. The attack originated in Poland, so they blocked the Polish IP address. A Moodle server was also attacked and all of the sections on it were removed. MyPHPAdmin is a free tool to manage a PHP database. Somebody is using it to try to hack at databases on IaSt campus.

Sam McCool - reported on discoveries working with Safari 4.0.3 and Mac OS 10.6. He recommended that when Mac users upgrade to Mac OS 10.6 from the DVD installation disk, they remove previously installed versions of Safari, even verions 4.0.3, and re-install Safari from the Apple upgrade DVD.

Scott Randle - nothing today.

file

2009.10.08.CEVistaWorkGroup.Notes.html (7KB)

October 1, 2009 Meeting Notes

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:05:36 +0000

notes by Sam McCool

date

October 1, 2009

attendees

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

notes

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 Service

Discussion 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 PM Recently 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.

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

Questions can be directed to your institution support center.
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/day

A 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.

file

2009.10.01.CEVistaWorkGroup.Notes.html (12KB)

September 24, 2009 Meeting Notes

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:37:35 +0000

notes by Sam McCool

date

September 24, 2009

attendees

Sam McCool, Manager of Instructional Technology, Nevada State, Vista 4.2.3, sam.mccool@nsc.nevada.edu, 702-992-2741
Travis Kramer, Instructional Designer, Iowa State University, trkramer@iastate.edu, Vista 8.0.3
Randy Dalhoff - Iowa State - Vista 8.0.3 - rdalhoff@iastate.edu
Bryant Withers - withersb@cortland.edu - SUNY Cortland Info Sys Asst CE 8.01
Mary Holmes, E-Learning Admin, Ferris State University, holmesm@ferris.edu, 8.03
Joe Jacobson: jajacobson@utulsa.edu University of TUlsa V8.0.3
Brett Hardee Linfield College WebCT System Admin bhardee@linfield.edu
Nick Dean nick.dean@marshall.edu - LMS Administrator - Marshall University - Vista 8.0.2HF1
Paula Lee, WebCT Admin, CE 8.0 Lee College, plee@lee.edu
Tigon Woline: tigon@iastate.edu, ISU, Instructional Development, 8.0.3
Kathy Saville, Marshall Director, MUOnline Design Center, savillek@marshall.edu
Tim Lambert UMOL Vista 8.0.2: tlambert@umassonline.net UMass Online Intergration support specialist, Vista 8.0.2
Karen Tan, ktan@umassonline.net, UMassOnline, Ops & Support Mgr, Vista 8.0.2
Cheryl McCann, mccannc@ct.edu, CT State Univ Sys, Vista Apps Admin, Vista 8.0.2-1
Matt Davis, Sr. Sol. Eng. Blackboard
Renee Judd, National-Louis University, rjudd@nl.edu Asst Prof and Technology Coordinator, College of Arts and Sciences, CE 8.0.2

notes

Hot Topics

Mary and Sam brought up how slammed we are, taking on new products. Paula says that she deals with it one crisis at a time.

Paula reported about a professor uses Mac and new to Vista. Is there a document to help him? Nick reported that he is not having problems with Safari 4.0.3 and Snow Leopard. Kevin and Sam reported losing functionality when they upgraded to Mac OS 10.6. A resolution to the issue is a mystery at this point becauce Nick cannot replicate the problems with the My Computer applet and the HTML Creator, and his settings appear to match Kevin's and Sam's. Paula asked that Sam describe the steps to find Utilities in Applicatons and open Java.app (see Action Item below).

Round Table

Brett Hardee - nothing new

Bryant Withers - a professor using HTML Creator added a word that was misspelled and wanted to remove it from the dictionary. Bryant, David, and Matt couldn't find a way to add a word to the dictionary. Matt reported that the dictionary are copyrighted by Edit-on-pro (HTML Creator) and they are read only, he believes.

Cheryl McCann - asked about section-size quotas is anyone manage size of sections. Want to institute a size-quota and wants to know how to cap the size of a sections. Space limits for learners and non-learners applies to the My Files storage area. Discussion followed about how to manage media resources: SlideShare, Flickr, Gravity Labs, YouTube, etc. Participants shared experiences related to delivering. Matt reported that Rel. 9 allows settings for user, course disk storage and Mashup functionality. Asked about iTunes University. She also asked about the affect of time out on exams with paragraph test. David reported the para

David Schlater - reported on a strange issue, students reported that they couldn't get to the next pages in a Discussion. The content was copied text including HTML code from web to a discussion message box. Other reported hearing about similar problems when faculty copy HTML texts from external and internal sources, such as from one Assignment directions box to another.

Randy Dalhoff - reported on his ongoing tussle with the custom login page error logs. (Detail: Stackoverflow error goes in the log, up to 20 meg of log, can occur.) After he completed putting in fixes from Bb, login error logs stopped generating thousands of lines errors when users login using malfunctioning browser or browers in which Java hasn't been enabled. The users get an error back to install Java. Now a new problem has occurred as a result of this fix: the direct link to a section doesn't work. Regarding the missing assessment issues: Reported this issue last week and updated this week with information about his issues and another school using CE 8. At this time 5 students are affected. Discussion followed about what the issues might cause this issue. Matt asked Sam to share the policy we push to students about reporting issues with Assessments. (See action item.)

Joe Jacobson - reported on his ongoing concerns about storage space and multimedia issues. He is using a multimedia server and asked about what others have done. He wants access to the multimedia to pass through Bb, to require that access be authenticated. Mary reported using Tegrity. Tim (UMassOnline) reported on using Helix server and only the link to the content is available but not a way to download the resource.

Matt Davis - responded to request about the publish date for the upcoming HF: it is planned for end of November, possibly by the 15th. It will resolve approx 10 issues but not the custom page issue.

Melody Brake - reported on issues with Cengage e-Pack and Firewall problems and IP addresses. Nobody reported problems except with bad access/pin codes.

Kathy Saville - nothing new.

Nick Dean - nothing new

Paula Lee - semester has calmed down, and now she has time to worry about custom login page. She asked Randy to share the information he has on the issue; he promised to get back to her when he gets his custom login page issues resolved.

Sam McCool - reported that the NLN team forgot to build indexes . . . the omitted step has led to some of the database failures over the last two weeks.

Scott Randle - nothing to add

Tigon - nothing to add

Tim Lambert - asked about paging preferences. In his experimenting with preferences, he discovered that 200 posts to a window works well; but 300 posts to a window it cause the page rendering to fail.

Travis Kramer - nothing new.

action items

Sam will share policy and procedures for student who experience problems with asssessments.
Sam will compose a tip sheet on how to locate Utilities folder in Applications and ope Java.app to check settings.

file

2009.09.24.CEVistaWorkGroup.Notes.html (8KB)

September 17, 2009 Meeting Notes

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:37:25 +0000

notes by Sam McCool

date

September 17, 2009

attendees

Sam McCool: Sam McCool, Manager of InTech, Nevada State College, Vista 4.2.3
Melody Brake-ColoState-CE802: Melody.Brake@colostate.edu, Colorado State U, CE 802, Institution Admin
Randy Dalhoff-IaSt-V803: Randy Dalhoff, Iowa State, rdalhoff@iastate.edu, Vista 8.0.3
Kathy Saville, MU V802HF1 MH: savillek@marshall.edu, Marshall, Vista 8.0.2 HF1 managed hosting
Tracy Tolliver Illinois: ttollive@illinois.edu, Vista 8.0.3, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
David Schlater, CE 803: University of Idaho CE803 davids@uidaho.edu
Ggrabbed from participant list: Bill Knapp, Mary Holmes, Brett Hardee, Kevin O'Brien, Matt Davis, Paula Lee, Pete Boysen, Scott Randle, Tigon Woline, Tim Lambert, Travis Kramer

notes

Hot Topics

Scott Randle asked if Tegrity users are having problems with uploads. Nobody spoke up regarding Tegrity.

Round Table

Travis Kramer, Randy Dalhoff, Pete Boysen - reported that Iowa State is experiencing problems students taking assessments in supported browsers. Tracking shows they took the assessment and that they saved answers, but the answers do not show in results. Only happening to 1 in each of five course sections out of 1900 sections. If the attempt is reset, then the issue is resolved in most cases. The quiz event log shows that they saved answers; in contrast, the View Submission screen shows that no answers were submitted. Quiz save issue in Bb Support is case #617495. Other issue -- In custom page, you must have both these widgets in the file.  the customized login page issue is yet unresolved. Randy reported that he had to add both widgets for custom page. Closer to a resolution of the login error logs.

Tracy Tolliver - adding extra nodes to cluster wiped the Wimba Voice tools powerlink. Working on a resolution. Another issue, update to 8.0.3 wiped out Discussion tools setting and reset them to false. Tracy posted the settings that should be in Discussions tool: 3) Enable the All-Topics view = True> 4) Enable the My-Posts view = True. Instead of True, the upgrade to 8.0.3 resets them to False. Discussion followed about the discussions for view all posts. Also having a problem with duplicate question imports => no warning and gives them.

Tim Lambert - still working with SafeAssign and Scholar powerlink issues. Wimba Pronto powerlink - UMass just installed it, and Tim likes it.

Tigon Woline - nothing new.

Scott Randle - asked what are others using for classroom recording. Iowa State reported that it is using Echo360. Tim reported that one of the UMass campuses uses AnyStream (or Echo360). David reported that Idaho Mediasite from Sonic Foundry.

Sam McCool - reported on a rough week with Oracle RAC issues and search index operation failing.

Paula Lee - nothing new

Matt Davis - in response to an action item, Matt reported on hardware sizing. He referred folks to Jack Sharon and provided contact information for Jack: For those of you who would like to talk to Jack Sharon about Hardware Sizing for CE/Vista installations, you can reach him at m3powe@gmail.com. Also, Matt announced the first session of Bb Release 9 Early Adopters Office Hours for CE/Vista Clients. It is scheduled for this afternoon at 3 p.m. EDT. David pointed out that the meeting conflicts with Vista SWAT.

Kevin O'Brien (UMOL) - reported problems with HTML Creator with Mac users with Safari 3.x and 4.x.

Kathy Saville - now Wimba products certified trainers. Also, experienced in entering Greek symbols into documents.

David Schlater - everything running fine.

Bryant Withers - created link to browser checker and plug-ins now is broken link at Blackboard.

Brett Hardee - reported that issues with persistant users are back.

action items

Matt Davis will report next week on the timing for HF1 for SP3 for 8.
Matt will follow up on the broken links for browser support - http://www.webct.com/tuneup/viewpage?name=tuneup_start and http://www2.blackboard.com/tuneup/viewpage?name=tuneup_browser_troubleshoot - Done; redirects are now working.

file

2009.09.17.CEVistaWorkGroup.Notes.html (6KB)

Migration of Vista - Nevada Learning Network, August 13 - 16, 2009

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:15:24 +0000

file by Sam McCool

file

Migration of Vista - Nevada Learning Network.pdf (45KB)

notes

These are Ron Nollen's notes on migrating Nevada Learning Network's Vista installation from Solaris system to an IBM/Linux system (10 nodes) with a 3-node Oracle RAC. The process was implemented, tested, and released to the public in four days, August 13-16, 2009.