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=__Frustrating Aspects of Blackboard 9 at AUM__=

Students
Students complain about not being able to upload files and it taking an inordinate amount of time to submit assignments. Whatever the file size limits are, they need to be extended. My students create and submit podcasts and digital stories and their files are large. The old Blackboard presented NO problems with uploading files. I don't recall a single complaint about uploading large files when we were using the old Blackboard.

Help Desk
It doesn't appear that the help desk students are familiar with Bb9. When will they be trained so that the can help my students when they call?

File Manager
On the test server, the file manager worked ok (aside from the issues related to being off-campus). With the http://bb9.aum.edu site, the file manager does not work. I've asked about this and Carl said it was not working currently. We can go into a folder and browse for the file and then it will show up in the file manager, but we cannot go to the file manager and browse or drag and drop any files into it.

Working from off campus:
Bb9 has some **serious** issues from off campus. I've tried this from multiple locations and with both a mac and a pc. It freezes up and says, "waiting....." so I have to click on another folder and then go back to the original location and try again. It almost always works the 2nd time. This happens with assignments, folders, pages, calendar entries, etc. If I do it very quickly, it seems to work most of the time. If there is any delay....like 1-2 minutes, it doesn't work.

Grading is almost impossible since I can't quickly look at the assignment, enter the grade and comments and hit submit. So I have to look at the assignment, enter comments, copy comments, click submit, see that it isn't responding, click on a folder, go back into the gradebook, find the student, click on the assignment, enter the grade, paste the comments I copied earlier, then hit submit. It will usually work if I do it that quickly. This is an asinine way to grade papers. It takes so long that usually it's worth driving to campus to grade.

Gradebook:

 * Grading Awkwardness**: To start grading assignments now you have to go to the grade center, choose a column of specific to one assignment, click on the first student who has a green arrow (that corresponds to "needs to be graded") and then view the assignment with the little drop down arrow. When you are finished grading that one student, you go to "save and next." this works fine if the next student has a submission. If they don't have a submission, then you have to go back out to the gradebook and find the next student who has submitted and then start again.


 * Multiple submissions**: If a student accidentally submits the wrong file or wants to correct their submission, there is an option to let students submit multiple times or you can choose the number of submission times. (In the older version, students had to ask the professor to return the assignment to them so that they could resubmit.) While multiple submissions seems like a good thing, there are several problems that only someone who's actually taught would recognize. First, if you export the gradebook at the end of the course so that you can use Excel to calculate results, the multiple submissions won't be included. So, if a student submits two times, where is the grade? Who knows.


 * Needs to be graded:** if you allow a student to submit multiple times, you have to assign a grade to ALL the submission (really? are you serious?); otherwise, the assignment has a green "needs to be graded" notification. As you can tell from the previous issue, if you grade all of the submissions then they won't show up in the exported gradebook. What grade do you assign to multiple submissions? If the assignment was worth 20 points, do you give 20 points to the last one they submitted and a zero to the first one? If you do, students are confused...."why did I get a zero on assignment 6?" Well, you actually got a 20 on the 2nd submission and a zero on the first. Not to mention, how does this affect the final calculation of the grades?


 * Late designation:** If you want to see whether something is late, you must hit submission history first; otherwise, you don't see that the assignment is late.


 * Default grade:** A minus sign shows up in grade center boxes as a default. This must be removed or students will receive negative grades.


 * Negative Grade:** You can assign negative grades...seriously?

Assignments

 * Assignment Dropbox**: There is NO assignment drop box so you can't sort by order of completion and grade all assignments in the order in which they were received.


 * No calendar option**: There is now NO option to put assignments on the calendar automatically.


 * Assignments in general:** With the old version, we could create an assignment and Bb automatically put it in a drop box for the students and posted it on the calendar (with the click of one box). Now, I create the assignment, put a link to the assignment individually in all the folders I need it (like a make-shift drop box and a weekly folder), and then go to the calendar and create a reminder about the assignment on the due date.

Calendar

 * Daily, weekly, monthly:** There is no way to change the default. It always shows up as daily.


 * Adding multiple dates to the calendar:**


 * Assignments**: As mentioned above, you can't have assignments automatically show up on the calendar. You have to manually enter them. This is impractical and is a set back from the previous version.

Student View

 * Gone is the student view:** Now, you can no longer look at Bb from your students' perspective. Before, I could submit an assignment and grade it and then go back and see what the students sees. No longer. Now I get a message (see figure 1 below) if I try to view anything I have submitted.



Breadcrumbs
They aren't always visible so you have to leave the course tool and then go back...