After students complained about having problems with Blackboard, the administration started working on fixing them.
Greg Horne, executive director for Information Technologies Systems and Services, said the platform should not kick students out of exams after the week of the 14th.
Concerns about the platform were one of the major issues raised in the Student Town Hall meeting with Chancellor Ray Ferrero Jr., Ph.D., last semester.
Ferrero said, “We recognized early in the fall semester that there were problems but they became more apparent during the town hall meetings. We realized that the problems were serious enough to elevate them to top priority.”
Brittney Do, sophomore biology major, said she took a math class last semester and it was a challenge to get her work done using the platform.
“It kicked me off, and when I tried to log back in it gave me a blank screen,” she said. “It doesn’t load correctly. It’s a waste of my time.”
Students are not the only ones having trouble with Blackboard. Randi L. Sims, Ph.D., professor of economics, said she received 19 error messages in 11 minutes.
“I think students don’t get as many error messages as we do because they don’t e-mail dozens of people a day,” she said.
More than 1,000 schools use Blackboard, but not all of those schools have the latest version like NSU does.
George L. Hanbury II, Ph.D., NSU president, said that all schools with the latest version have experienced similar problems with the platform.
Horne said, “The glimmer of hope is that Blackboard has addressed the worst of the problems.”
Horne said there were originally about 15-20 major issues with the platform including slow speed loading the discussion boards. Horne said the university fixed that problem last semester.
There are approximately eight remaining issues, which include dropping students and faculty from class exams.
Sims said she has seen an improvement in the system. She set up WebCT as a back-up to administer exams last semester but said she did not need to use it for last week’s midterms. But she said she wished the university would have waited for the bugs to be fixed before making a transition to the newest version of the platform.
“Any time you learn a new system is hard. There’s no doubt but the fact that there are bugs make it even more difficult,” said Sims.
Juan Rivera, senior sports management major, took an online class last semester but said he has seen improvement this semester.
“I’ve had problems with it but it’s mostly connection-wise. It kicked me out once but I just went back to it. It wasn’t a major problem.”
Kristina Farag, sophomore biology major, uses Blackboard as a supplement to her day classes. She said the platform was down only few times when she needed to log in.
“But it’s really nothing big. [Blackboard] is more of a help than anything,” she said. “It’s nothing that can’t be fixed by logging back in, so it’s nothing that would cause a big inconvenience.”
However, Frank DePiano, Ph.D., vice president of Academic Affairs, said any inconvenience was unnecessary.
“The platform was supposed to make all this stuff simple. That was the beauty of it,” he said. “Instead, it is putting a strain on a student who may have a heavy workload and who may also have a job.”
Hanbury said there are 14,000 students in the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, the H. Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship, and the Fischler School of Education and Human Services, who use Blackboard.
Horne said, “There was over a year of research and planning to purchase this product. It was a major university decision. But the reality was the platform didn’t meet our expectations.”
Ferrero said it was not feasible to go back to WebCT, since Blackboard bought WebCT.
But DePiano said the university stopped the transition of more students from the WebCT platform to Blackboard and received an extension of its contract with WebCT until further notice.
Meanwhile, the chancellor and the president are having weekly conference calls with Blackboard of-ficials to address problems that arise.
“We’re going to continue on the path we are. If these issues can’t be resolved, then we need to see if this is the best product for us and if it’s not we’ll have to make some hard decisions,” said Ferrero.
Some faculty members, Ferrero said, are finding their own solutions. They have found that reducing the number of questions in a test to 20 or fewer decreased the chances of a dropped exam.
Ferrero said, “A release [of the platform] should have never happened.”
The university set up a blog to update students and faculty on the status of Blackboard. The blog may be accessed at www.nova.edu/update.
Also, students can report any errors they experience by taking a screen shot and filling out a form found at www.nova.edu/help/bb_problem.html.
