Category Archives: troubleshooting

Using a Universal Blocker and video viewing not getting counted?

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If you watch echo360 videos as part of your class, and your instructor has told you that you have not been watching them…  AND you use a universal blocker, you may need to add echo360 as a trusted site.

for example, for ublock specifically – add this to trusted sites:

@@||api.echo360.org/analytics-collector/player/beacon

@@||api.echo360.org/analytics-collector/player/session

 

Note… the fact that you watched the video won’t count until after you have these lines in place, so you would still need to replay the video for it to show up in the analytics that your instructor sees.

 

 

Creating a VoiceThread Assignment that is tied to the Blackboard Grade Center

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To create a VoiceThread Assignment, you will go to Build Content -> Mashups -> VoiceThread.
Make sure to enable Grading.
Screen Shot 2020-04-30 at 9.05.25 AM.png
If you forgot to do this part, you will not see the Assignment Builder option in the next step.  You can go back and enable grading if you need to:
1. Edit the VoiceThread link that you’ve already built in Blackboard.
2. Scroll to the grading section and make sure that “Enable Evaluation” is set
to “Yes.”
3. Set the number of points your assignment is worth.
4. Save.Now Click Assignment Builder.

Screen Shot 2020-04-30 at 9.06.56 AM.png
.

After you click on Assignment Builder you will have options of VT assignment types:

This is the Create a VT option:
Notice the option to allow resubmitted assignments
This is the Submit a Comment VT assignment option:
Note the name of my assignment is VT test.
The watch a VT assignment looks much the same where you have to select the already built VT (or create a new VT that you want them to watch).
The Grade Center won’t show that something has been submitted, but as soon as
you enter the grade into the VoiceThread assignment, that grade will be passed
back to Blackboard for you automatically.

Image not Appearing in Test?

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This is from the Bb listserv.  I thought it might be of interest.

 

…yesterday we had an instructor report that students could not see images in
test questions, but they could. After extensive testing, we discovered that
if the ‘Display Until’ date has passed, the images will no longer appear.In our situation…
Due to a recent issue of students cheating, the instructor set a 10 or 15
minute time window where students had to start the test.They did this by
using the ‘Display After’ and ‘Display Until’ settings. The test was
setup to present/display “One at a time”. When the ‘Display Until’ date
passed, the images no longer appeared in the test. The test continued to
function as normal and the text is all there, just the images do not
display and instead a broken image icon displayed. If the ‘Display Until’
date was changed to in the future, the images reappeared.

I submitted a support ticket to Bb Support and after submission it gives
you potentially related articles. One of those was a Nov 06,2015 “Article
No.- 000041338- Assessment Images and Other Attached Files Cannot be Viewed
While Inside a Test After Display Until Time”:
https://blackboard.secure.force.com/btbb_articleview?id=kA3700000004EdO

So our particular issue has been around for a while and doesn’t appear is
planned to be fixed anytime soon.

Jeffrey Ries
Applications Administrator/LMS
IT-Educational Technology & Media Services
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa

STOP THE ZOOMBOMBS!

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You made a room from Zoom Meetings in Blackboard.  You know it has a forced password.  You know students will be logging into Blackboard to find the link.  Isn’t that enough to prevent others from joining?  And when I say others, I mean truly foul people who apparently have nothing better to do with their time then really and truly mess up your whole class.  Nope.  We have to do more

After creating your room in Blackboard, leave Blackboard, and sign back into zoom at stonybrook.zoom.us.  Your room will be listed under meetings. Click on the name, go to the bottom on the page and click edit meeting.  Just above there, in meeting options, you will find the “only authenticated users can join” option.  stonybrook.edu will pre-populate for you.  This will force them to use a stonybrook.edu email address and they can no longer be anonymous in the session.

Please note that this means that guest speakers from outside the University will not be able to join.  Nor would high school students be able to participate.  See other methods for tightening up security below the screenshot.

If you want people from outside stonybrook.edu to join, here are other things that you can do:
Never share the meeting link in Social Media.
from the participant list inside an active meeting:
Lock the Zoom Meeting room once everyone has arrived from the participant list.
Mute Participants on Entry & Don’t allow them to unmute themselves.
Remove unwanted visitors* 
Under the share button in an active meeting:
Do not allow participants to share their screen
When you schedule the meeting:
Don’t use recurring meetings.  They all have the same URL and password. Obviously this isn’t as convenient. Maybe try this if you continue to have issues and have tried other steps.
Schedule the meetings outside of Blackboard and only give the students the link from a blackboard announcement or email right before it starts. This way the students will not have the URL to share with others beforehand. This means scheduling from stonybrook.zoom.us and not from Blackboard’s Zoom Meetings menu item.  You will find that setting for Only Authenticated Users right away if you schedule in this manner.
Don’t Allow Students to Join Before the Host
These settings are found in your stonybrook.zoom.us Settings area.
*Don’t Allow Removed Participants to Rejoin.  The default on this setting is for it to be off (which is correct).  What it doesn’t tell you though, is the user that you booted from the room can clear there “cookies” and reenter anyway. So it depends on how savy your bomber is.

“Require a password when scheduling new meetings” – this is locked on.  So you’re good.

“Require a password for Instant Meetings” – default this is on.

“Require a password for Personal Meeting ID” – default this is off. 

In addition, you can disable the setting called “Embed password in meeting link for one-click join”. This means you will have to provide the password in a separate communication from the meeting link. This is much less convenient, but is a deterrent to unwanted visitors.

Consider having a Co-Host to handle these items during the meeting.

and finally:

Shut Down the Meeting

  • In an emergency, end the meeting by clicking “End meeting” in the lower right corner of the Zoom window. Then set-up a new meeting with a unique URL, and send it to participants via a Blackboard Announcement and email, etc.

After having said all that…. don’t you wish people were just nicer??

Zoom feature that doesn’t work as expected

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Polling.  I love polling.  It allows you to engage with a large group of students and comes with all sorts of side reasons to use.. assessment, active learning, demographics, attendance, etc.

But, we are strongly encouraging remote learning these days, as well as asynchronous learning.  This means recording things.  Turns out that zoom cuts polls clean out during a recording.  The screen that is pops up in isn’t part of the recording, and even if you share your display and the poll is on your display when open and as you go through the results, that window is not part of the recording either.

argh.  You could speak the poll question and verbally go over the findings, they just won’t be able to see anything or participate.  So… perhaps a good time to bring Turning Technologies back into the mix??

Let me know what you think in the comments.

 

Have a used clicker?

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Some used clickers are coming from classroom kits where, because they are used differently than we do here at SBU, have had their clicker IDs changed and they no longer match the ID printed on the back on the device.  This will result in your course results not processing correctly.

To check to see if you device ID is set correctly…

 

press the wrench button
then the go right button twice
press the button under where it says OK
press under OK one more time
You should see Device ID: and whatever the device is set to will show here.
see if that matches what is on the back, printed on the clicker.

IF IT DOES NOT MATCH;  please email sliebschner@turningtechnologies.com   

After contacting Susan, follow her instructions to have this resolved.

 

 

 

 

Oldie but goodie – scrollbars missing in Blackboard

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Let’s set the stage:

You are in your Blackboard grade center in your course.

There are plenty of columns, in fact you are pretty sure there are more than you can see at the moment.  But … there is the vertical scroll bar… and there, I’m pretty sure, is where  the horizontal scroll bar should be, but it is not.

Did I mention that you are on a Mac?  (I am too, no shame there.)

OK – this is a system setting on your Mac.  Go to the Apple menu.

Select “System Preferences…”

Now select General.

and finally, make sure “Show scroll bars:” is set to Always.

 

Missing Clicker Grade? Check this:

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I have written about this before, but the clicker looks different, so I thought it was worth going over again.

There are two different ways that a student can use a clicker to send information to the instructor.  The first is the normal use of the clicker in the classroom… the poll response.  When a student uses this, the screen looks like this,

And when the student answers, they get a confirmation that the answer was received, and as long as the poll was given some grade, they may also get points in their blackboard grade book.

The second thing that students can send with their clickers are Messages.  The student enters into this mode by pressing the wrench button on the clicker,

and then sending the message

The student also gets a happy confirmation that this has been sent.. and messages can only be sent when the polls are open. But there are no grades or points associated with this activity, and if they believe they have answered a poll, they will get a zero.

As the instructor, you can check to see if this is happening in your class by opening the TurningPoint 8 software, go to the Manage tab, select a session file and click on Reports.

If you, like me get this error – ignore it

just click ok

and use the pulldown to select the report type Session Log

 

If you see entries that look like:

“Doe, John (8D5678) sent a message to the presenter: D”

You have students that think they are answering polls, but are really sending messages.  If you see things like:

“Doe, John (8D5678) sent a message to the presenter: Can you talk more about Mitosis?”

You have students who are sending messages, thinking you will see them and respond.

If you would like to see messages during class – you can.

You can click on the button as seen above that looks like a comic dialog bubble..  and that brings up a chat area that looks like this:

I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to either TLT @ tlt@stonybrook.edu or Turning Technologies at support@turningtechnologies.com