Current Blackboard Issues

Changing Forum Settings Disrupts Gradebook Weights

If you use forum grading in your discussion board and weight your grades, there is an issue that occurs when you change any of the options under forum settings. Whatever percentage of the final grade the forum was worth, it will now be worth 100% of the grade (without changing the weighting on the other gradebook items). Right now the only fix is to manually update the grade weight in gradebook after making a change in the forum settings. We are working with Blackboard to discover the underlying cause of this issue.

Other Instructor's Discussion Board Showing up in your Course

If you link to discussion forums in your course via a course link (not through the communication button or a Discussion Board button), you may experience an issue where other instructor's Discussion Boards are showing up in your course. Right now the only fix we have is to not click the OK button in the Discussion Board. Use the links at the top of the page or the buttons on the side to navigate the Discussion Board, and that seems to alleviate the problem. We are working with Blackboard to discover the underlying cause of this issue.

Unable to Open Office 2007 Documents

If your students are creating their Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office documents in Microsoft Office 2007, you may be unable to open their files. The file extensions will appear as .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, etc. You could have your students re-save their documents as Office 2003/XP files, or you could install the Office 2007 compatability pack, which allows you to open any Office 2007 document even if you don't have the Office 2007 suite installed on your computer. You can download and install the free tool from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en.

Solution to Blackboard Causing Web Browsers to Close Unexpectedly

We have received reports of web browsers closing unexpectedly while using Blackboard. The cause of this problem is a Java applet called WebEq that runs on several of Blackboard's pages. The simplest method of fixing this problem is to install the latest version of the Java runtime environment. Follow the steps below to install the latest version of the Java runtime environment.

1. Go to http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
2. Click the Download button to the right of Windows (Online Installation)
3. An executable (.exe) file will be saved to your computer. Double-click on this file to initiate the installation, and follow the steps provided by the installer

Please contact the Teaching and Technology Center at 508.531.2634 or e-mail ttc@bridgew.edu if you need assistance.

Read/Unread Messages Issue in the Discussion Board

We have discovered that when reading messages in a Discussion Forum, the messages may still appear as Unread Messages (in bold) even after reading them. This occurs in what is called List View (you should see the List View button in the upper right-hand corner of each of your Discussion Forums upon entering the forums).

To get around this issue so that messages you have read are being displayed as Read Messages (not in bold), click the Tree View button (to the left of the List View button) upon entering your discussion forums, and the Read/Unread messages feature will work properly.