SafeAssign Performance Advisory: Clients should expect turnaround times for papers submitted at 3-5 days from the time of submission. We are advising that these extreme delays should be expected through the remaining days of the fall term.

SafeAssign/Direct Submit is experiencing delays due to load on the system. The cause of these delays is due to the rate of papers being submitted exceeding the speed with which SafeAssign can process papers. Submissions are processed in a first-in, first-out order. Because of record high usage SafeAssign/Direct Submit has been pretty consistently running over capacity 24 hours a day for several weeks now.

We have applied Blackboard Mobile Learn updates that should have fixed the Bb Mobile Learn issues for the iPad, iPhone and Android devices. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

During the hours of 5:15PM – 6:00PM The Unversity’s network was experiencing problems that affected access to Blackboard services. These issues were intermittent and prevented students from accessing course materials and assessments.

There is a compatibility issue between Blackboard and the newest version of Java Version 6 Update 29.  Users will receive an error message stating “Session has expired. Close the program and log in again.” If you are receiving this error, please remove this version of Java from your computer and install the version from this link.

Access to Blackboard was restored on Saturday, October 22nd at 9:00pm. If you continue to experience problems accessing Blackboard after this time, please email our help desk at colthelp@utpa.edu.

There is a reported bug in the Peer Review system for Blackboard. For those faculty members not using the Peer Review system in their course you will not be affected.

Problem:

The problem arises in the Discussion Board when applying the Simple Rating Scale from the Peer Review options. The error appears sporadically, so it may not occur when you first create it. The following error message will appear on both the student and instructor view not allowing students to post, view or submit their reviews: “The following error has occured” (In Red Text)

 Solution or Work Around:

For those faculty members that do or are planning to use it, we have developed a work around. The instructions below outline the solution/workaround. If you need further assistance, please contact your developer for more details.

Solution:

You will need to create your own Grading Form, our department can provide you a sample one to use. Then:

• Go to Discussions
• Click Create Topic or Edit Properties of existing topic
• Under Peer Review select radial button for “Allow Students to review messages using a grading form.”
• Click Select Grading Form
• Choose the form you created then press Select
• Select the desired Peer review visibility settings
• Finally click Save

If you would like to get a copy of a sample grading form, contact your instructional developer.

The University IT-Data Center Services is planning Data Center Down Time that will affect all IT services to the campus on the proposed dates of Oct 22, 2011@12:00am – Oct 23, 2011@11:59pm. If you have any questions, concerns or conflict please call 956-665-7163.

This down time will also affect all user access to Blackbaord. If you have any questions or concerns how this down time will affect Blackboard, please contact the Online Learning Help Desk at 956-665-5327 or at colthelp@utpa.edu

We are experiencing unexpected issues with the Blackboard Mobile Learn Application. We have temporarily disabled the application for the iPad, iPhone and Android devices. We will update all users when the mobile application is available again.

The University IT-Data Center Services is planning Data Center Down Time that will affect all IT services to the campus on the proposed dates of Oct 22,2011@12:00am – Oct 23,2011@11:59pm. If you have any questions, concerns or conflict please call 956-665-7163.

This down time will also affect all user access to Blackboard. If you have questions or concerns how this down time will affect Blackboard, please contact the Online Learning Help Desk at 956-665-5327 or at colthelp@utpa.edu.

Between the hours of 3:30PM and 5:00PM on Thursday September 29th the UTPA network was experienceing issues. This affected many services on campus including Blackboard. All services are now operational. Thank you and sorry for any inconvinence this may have caused.