I am an online student at Georgia Southern University. According to the browser check, this is the version of Blackboard they use:
Blackboard Learning System - Vista Enterprise License (Release Vista 8.0.5) [18.0.5.57]
For the past 6 months it has worked great, but as of about 2 weeks ago there has been a problem which, while minor, is pretty annoying. On the main page, in the center of the screen, there is the "course list" which shows each of my classes. Below the description of the class there is usually a little icon for new mail or new discussions (or both). The problem now is that those icons appear VERY briefly while the page is loading and then instantly disappear when the loading is finished. Very strange. I have tried on multiple browsers on multiple PC's.
Is this problem specific to my school's implementation of Blackboard, or is it a larger problem? Incidentally, if this helps, I noticed this behavior started at exactly the same time that two of my old (past semester) courses were purged from the course list. I did not perform that purge myself, I just logged in one day and noticed they were no longer listed, and noticed later that same day that the "new" icons weren't appearing as they should be.
Thanks!
Matt
I help manage the University System of Georgia's Vista services including those at Georgia Southern and this is the first report I have heard of this issue. I would suggest that you contact the University Systems’ Online Support Center at http://help8.view.usg.edu and open a ticket with them. They should be able to assist you and if they can’t they will escalate it to the appropriate folks here in Georgia to see what may be happening.
Harold
Great, thanks for the quick response Harold! I will do just that... I guess I should have found that link on my own, but I'm glad you pointed me toward it.
Not a problem! We Dr C's are a great source of information and assistance also. It is just in this case the Georgia Online support Center (OSC) may be better equiped to give the assistance you need.
Hope this helps!
Well, after several hours on the phone, the problem persists.
The latest wisdom is that since it works in IE, I should use that instead of Firefox. Which is true, but I see it as a cop-out since:
1) It worked in Firefox for months2) Firefox is supported3) I hate IE ;-)
Ironically enough it also works fine in Chrome which is NOT supported.
Also, the techs I spoke to on the phone kept going on and on about what version of Java I have installed, but the funny thing is even with Java completely removed from my machine the pages still load fine (i.e. bug-free on IE and Chrome, and bugged on Firefox). So clearly not Java-related. And while it could arguably be called browser related, we all know that correlation does not equal causation, so I don't think it's fair to blame Firefox. Again, it worked in Firefox for ages, and only stopped working when some university admin went into my course list and purged out my old courses (again, correlation or maybe even just coincidence... but probably not causation).