The storage system on which Blackboard runs will undergo an upgrade tonight (Thursday, May 10th) beginning at 9pm and concluding tomorrow morning by 6am.
During this time Blackboard and Elluminate will be unavailable.
Please save any work before 9pm or risk it being lost.

Putting the proper intermediate certificate back in place, and both Safe Assign and Mobile Learn are working again.

Unfortunately, there is no way for existing Safe Assign submissions to be placed back into the Grade Center. The only option is to either grade them manually and transcribe the grades into the Grade Center, or have the student resubmit their papers (which may get flagged 100% for having been previously submitted). There’s no good solution, only different levels of bad.

Spread the word…

Sorry for all the problems this caused.

There is a workaround for clearing your browser of some cruft that may be causing this problem. Please read the instructions below carefully. They need to be performed exactly or the fix may not stick.

INTERNET EXPLORER 9.0
If you have added the Blackboard server learn.usf.edu as a bookmark in your favorites, please first delete that bookmark before proceeding with any of the actions below.  

If you do not have the site bookmarked, please follow each of these steps in their entirety.
1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Click “Tools”
3. Select “Delete Browsing History”
4. Uncheck “Preserve Favorites website data”
5. Check “Temporary Internet Files”  
6. Check “Cookies”
7. Uncheck “History”, “Form Data”, “Passwords”, and “InPrivate Filtering Data”
8. Click “Delete”
9. Select “Tools” menu
10. Select “Internet Options”
11. Select “Security” tab
12. Click “Trusted Sites” icon (green check mark)
13. Click “Sites” button
14. If “learn.usf.edu” is not already in the list of trusted
websites, type it (without quotes) in the “Add this website to the
zone” field, make sure the “Require Server Verification…” check box
is unchecked, and click the Add button
15. Click “Close” button
16. Select “Trusted Sites” icon (green check mark)
17. Click the “Default level” button if it is available in the “Security level
for this zone” area of the dialog box
18. Click “OK”
19. Close Internet Explorer
20. Restart your computer

A few days ago an email was accidentally sent to you with a message reading

“An account has been created for you at usflearn.instructure.com, but you already have a Canvas account. If you would like to merge them together, please visit the following url:……”

USF IT regularly evaluates new products to ensure we are making the best use of resources. Recently we began evaluation of a new Learning Management System called Canvas by Instructure. Part of our evaluation involved loading user data into the system, and this resulted in the email being sent.

You do not need to take any action with regards that email. Please delete it and do not give it another thought. We apologize for the confusion.

Sincerely,

USF IT

Solaris 10 with patch 141444-09 and without patch 142900-02 causes interface failure in IP Multipathing.

The interface failed because the ICMP probe replies for e1000g2 are received on e1000g1 instead of e1000g2.

The current fix for this is kernel patch, 142909-17. Unfortunately we’ll have to have some downtime to reboot for this patch.

In short, if the instructor links directly to a discussion forum
though a content area and a user goes to create a new thread they
receive an error.

In Lion, scroll bars are now dynamic. This means that you only see a scroll indicator when you are actually scrolling a page. Otherwise, the content fills the screen.

Grade Center
This causes two problems for Blackbaord Grade Center (and probably other Blackboard list elements)

1)
There’s no indication that there are 200 students in this course.

2) Gestural scrolling doesn’t work with the Grade Center. If you try to swipe up/down or left/right, it won’t scroll the grade center, rather it will scroll the entire page, including the unfortunate behavior when swiping right of returning to the previous page (a back
button behavior). The only way to scroll in Lion is to click where the scrollbars would be, and hope you hit the 2-3 pixels reserved for scrolling.

In Safari, the right two finger swipe gesture goes back one page. This does not happen in Chrome or Firefox.

In Chrome, you can see the scroll bars always, but you cannot swipe to scroll within the grade center, you still need to click to scroll the grade center.

Also, in both browsers, there are no longer arrow click elements to scroll left/right. You need to click & drag the scroll bar, or click on the right side of the scroll bar to scroll right.

In Firefox, vertical scrolling works, but both the grade center and the whole page scroll at the same time, so it’s very distracting. horizontal scrolling doesn’t work, need to click the scrollbar as in other browsers. Actually Horizontal scroll works in FF but only if you are hovered over the scroll bar. Hovering over the scroll bar also allows for vertical movement in the GC without the whole thing moving.

Technically speaking, this is also true of Internet Explorer and Safari. All browsers are subject to regular updates, and it’s not feasible to test every release that comes out.

Last week Firefox 5 was released hot on the heels of Firefox 4. There has been a lot of chatter about Mozilla’s rapid release strategy and their focus on the individual user over enterprise needs. That puts Blackboard and Universities into a difficult position to stay current and ensure Blackboard performs well with the newest Firefox browser. The same situation is true with Chrome. The best we can do is inform you of the compatibility issues between the browser and Blackboard. For Firefox 5, we are conducting testing and in a few weeks will communicate any Known Issues. The important thing is that we will accept problems on the browser today.