Tag: blackboard inc


  • Yesterday a Blackboard Vista node went unresponsive but recovered. Then a second and third did the same. This was odd as only the test which logs into the node reported a failure. Normally, in severe unresponsive cases the Weblogic monitor either reports either one of the parameters we watch is very high or fails because…

  • Tier1 support was contacted by a student to report a problem with a quiz. Some sort of anti-malware software complained about code in the quiz. Tier1 support replicated the issue. Their software identified it as belonging to MyWebSearch. Very bad news. Tier2 support suggested the student remove the MyWebSearch toolbar. Tier1 escalated to Tier3 who…

  • Blackboard acquired patent ‘138 and brought a lawsuit against Desire2Learn. I would say 80-90% of the commentary about this case has been from anti-Blackboard crowd with about 90% of the rest from the let’s-wait-and-see crowd. Blackboard very much has been mum on the subject. I do not recall a blog of a single Blackboard supporter…

  • Someone hit my web site looking for “blackboard administrator certification”. So I was curious out what was out there on the Internet for this. I ran across a Blackboard training web site. In looking though the offerings, I was struck by the use of two different names for the same product. (I don’t mean like…

  • Ran across a video describing how to get the WebDAV info in CE6 (aka Blackboard Vista 4 Lite) for the purpose of using CE6 as a network drive. The narrator says this is a good idea because if the site has good policies, then backups are being made. In the event of a site disaster,…

  • Blackboard support wants a backup of a section to replicate the instructor claimed behavior. Fine. I started making the backup, but I ended up closing the browser to go home. This morning, when I checked, the backup was not in the Vista file manager at the course level where I created it. So, I created…

  • Clusters can making finding where a user was working a clusterf***. Users end up on a node, but they don’t know which node. Heck, we are ahead of the curve to get user name, date, and time. Usually checking all the nodes in the past few days can net you the sessions. Capturing the session…

  • Blackboard Vista tracks student activity. This tracking data is viewed as a critical feature of Vista. Our instructors depended on the information until we revoked their ability to run reports themselves due to performance issues. Campus administrators can still generate reports (though some still fail). We doubt the solution to this is Blackboard improving the…

  • UPDATE: Have another source who disagrees with Badge who made the claim below. ——— Hopefully this is true. I’d hate to be spreading a false rumor. Anyone willing to confirm? 😀 According to J. L. Badge, Blackboard 9 will be the “NextGen” product we are… *cough* eagerly… *ahem* waiting to see. John Fontaine was in…