|
|
Common Classroom Scenarios
Common
scenarios you might experience while taking online classes and tips from
Blackboard on how to handle them.
Quiz Scenarios
Your Internet connection goes down while you
are taking an online quiz.
- Attempt to reconnect. If you can't, quickly
call your instructor and ask him or her reset your exam. This will allow
you to retake the
quiz.
- If you are able to reconnect, log back into your class and begin
the quiz again. Blackboard will remember the answers
to the questions you had already answered and saved. To help avoid this
problem try to use a stable Internet connection such as Cable, DSL,
or a campus computer lab. These connections
are usually more stable than dial-up modems, resulting in fewer dropped
Internet connections.
Before being able to reconnect to the Internet,
the quiz-testing period closed. You are now unable to
get back into the quiz.
- Contact your professor and ask them to
allow you access to the quiz. Make sure your e-mail or phone call is detailed
as to what happened. The professor has the final decision as to whether
you will be allowed to complete the quiz. If possible, make sure you begin
a quiz well before the testing period closes. This will allow you time
to reconnect and finish the quiz.
You
are taking a quiz using the AOL or MSN browser and experience a problem.
- Connect
to the Internet using AOL or MSN then minimize the browser window and open Internet
Explorer (version 6.0 is preferred).
You are taking a quiz with matching
questions. You use the scroll wheel on the mouse and your answers to the
matching
questions change.
- Use the browser scroll bar to scroll up and down while taking the quiz.
Avoid using the mouse scroll wheel.
You are taking a quiz and your browser is loading
an old page.
- Set your browser to check for a new version of the page each time it visits
the page. If you are using Internet Explorer click on Tools in the menu
bar and then click Internet Options. On the resulting screen click the
Settings button under Temporary Internet Files. Set it to “Every
visit to the page” and click OK. Click OK again. Now refresh the page.
You changed an answer while taking a quiz and Blackboard did not record
the new answer.
- If you change an answer, make sure you click the Save Answer button again.
If you are ever unsure if you saved an answer, click the Save Answer button
again.
You had a problem during the quiz and need to contact your instructor,
as directed by the Helpdesk, for an academic issue. What should you tell
your instructor?
- Give your professor a detailed description of what happened (time
you were taking the quiz, the exact problem, and steps you took
to try and resolve
the problem). The professor will analyze the information and determine
a course of action.
Discussions/Chat Scenarios
In the Discussion area of the course, you accidentally
enter your posting in the wrong discussion topic. What can you do?
- Blackboard features Discussions, where both the instructor and learners
can communicate asynchronously. Once the posting has been sent or posted,
no one but the instructor may remove the message, so look before you leap!
Be sure to check your writing for clarity, spelling and grammar. Most of
the time, the instructor can offer an informal or casual discussion (Coffee
Shop) topic where you can post informal messages and interact with other
course members.
You have been required to post a message in a
discussion topic. You type the message in a word processing program and
copy and paste the text into the message box in Blackboard. You want
to make sure that your
posted message appears correctly.
- Blackboard uses HTML (hypertext mark-up language) code to display all
postings. When you paste your message to the text box, you may lose some
of the formatting (bullets, bold, paragraphs, etc.). To retain the formatting,
you will either need to either enter your own HTML tags or save the word
document as a web page and then copy and paste into the message box.
It is always suggested to preview the text before posting.
While in a synchronous chat room, you want to
send another team
member a private note without letting others read it. What can you do?
- Sending a private note in the chat room is permitted in Blackboard.
While you are in the chat room, you click on that particular person's
name
(or multiple names) showing up in the top right window. This will highlight
their name. Type and send a message in the normal way and the message
will be sent only to the person you selected. Click
on the name again to turn off the feature and post public messages
in
the
chat room.
|
|
|
|
