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[chocolatechicken]

Hi all,

I'm in my second term working as a teaching assistant for an online course that uses Blackboard's digital dropbox for assignment submission. I have a couple of students whose files aren't retrievable from the dropbox - they show up as submitted, and yet when I go to open them, I get an error message. The professor and our department's tech staff haven't been able to figure out why this is happening, so I figured I'd ask the wise forumites if any of you have had a similar issue, and if so, how you resolved it.

Last term, I had the affected students e-mail me their assignments after several attempts to figure out why blackboard was acting up. This term I have even more affected students, including a couple who failed the course last term - I feel embarrassed that we still haven't resolved this issue.

[concordancia]

Any chance this is a language class? In our system (SAKAI), I can't open files with accents (may also apply to other characters) directly from the site. If it has been submitted as an assignment, I can download all, and most of the files are fine, but if they are in the drop box, there is no solution.

Also, if they are using a Mac and hiding the file extensions, this can cause some odd issues.

[melba_frilkins]

Check what browser your students are using. We have the same exact problem with ANGEL (not BB) when students use Safari or Chrome. They submit their files and nothing is there. If the student uses Mozilla or MS Explorer, the problem goes away.

[chocolatechicken]

Thanks all,

It's a math class, not a language class, yet that could very well be the issue (as sometimes students will use symbols and accents in Word in their assignments).

I'm going to send the affected students an e-mail asking about how they're submitting the assignments, and hopefully we can figure it out.

Thanks again

[zuzu_]

Good luck, and you should really push your IT people to take this up with BB. I did this with a different glitch, and BB actually made a hotfix for the problem I identified. Mine was the first report to BB about the issue.

(unrelated) Is your moniker inspired by this book?  I love that book.

[dept_geek]

Double check that they do not put any odd characters ( # ? / @  etc) in the file name. Students get in the habit of assignment number 1, so they name their file assignment#1.doc.  BB will immediately eat the file and you'll never see it.  (BB knows about this one, I don't know if there is a hotfix (ever) coming)


Related, somewhat (and from experience): don't use these characters in naming assignments, quizzes, tests, surveys, or pools. It will cause you no end of grief.


How to solve: post regular announcements to "don't do this, please!" Eventually..... it will help. Good luck.