Known Issues with Blackboard

In Blackboard Original courses, File Response Questions Will Not Allow File to be Attached When Test is Set to Open in a New Window

In Blackboard Original courses, when trying to attach a file to a File Response question in a test that is set to open in a new window, students are unable to attach and submit a file. There is no obvious error, the file just will not attach.

Date published: 2/7/2023

Workaround: In the "Test Information" settings, ensure that "no" is selected for "Open Test in New Window."

BB Annotate Displays Wrong File When Navigating Between Group Submissions Using the Back and Forth Arrows in Ultra Courses

When using the arrows to move back and forth between group submissions, from the grade book in an Ultra course, BB annotate shows up the same submission for all the groups making it seem that the groups all submitted the same document. But if the instructor opens individually each group's submissions then they can see the correct paper for each group.

This is only happening to Group Assignments. Bb annotate works as expected for individual assignments.

Workaround: Go back to the Gradebook and open group submissions individually, avoiding using the arrows.

Selected Text in Bb Annotate is not Highlighted From the Second Page

In Bb Annotate, when a user selects a text from the second page in PDF and Word documents to highlight, it does not get highlighted. Instead random characters are being highlighted. This is not replicable if the text format is aligned to the center, either with content selected on the first page.

Workaround: There is not an identified workaround for this issue.

Unable to View Ultra Assessment Submission or Download File in Bb Annotate

When a student submits an attempt to their assessment, the Bb Annotate tool does not display the document's contents and if an attempt is made to download the original file, an Access Denied error is generated.

Workaround: The current workaround is for the student to be given an exception and to resubmit the file.

Note: The fix for this issue was deployed 10/26/22. This fix does not retroactively fix previously impacted submissions. The safest and most efficient process is for the student to resubmit.

In Blackboard Original, No Option to Expand the Contents of the Newly Copied Folder to Create Item Course link

Instructors are unable to create course links to content into subfolders. The option to expand folders is missing.

In the Ultra Experience, an instructor is not able to upload the file by clicking on the + symbol in the course content page. In some cases a "space" appears where the file would normally appear, but the upload does not complete. This issue happens inconsistently.

Workaround

1. Create a new folder in Blackboard (instead of adding directly to the course content page). Upload the file into the folder.

2. Create a new Blackboard document and then add new files to the document. 

3. After seeing the "space" created for the file you've attempted to upload, try to upload the file again. 

4. Upload the files to Google Drive, Box, or One Drive and then link them into Blackboard.

Instructors are unable to make hidden Ultra tests or assignments visible to students, and are unable to edit the due date.

Workaround

Open the assessment settings icon, save the assessment in the settings pane, and then change the assessment's visibility. More details.

To edit the due date, use the built-in calendar instead of typing the due date manually.

SafeAssign reports may fail to load if you attempt to refresh the page.

Workaround: 

1. Navigate out of the attempt
2. Refresh the page
3. Access the attempt again

The updated content editor's toolbars and utilities do not load for the Grade Questions > Grade Responses screen in an Original course.

Workaround: Grade the attempts individually.

After creating a comment bank in Bb Annotate through the Content Library, instructors are unable to copy the comments to reuse in Chrome. 

Workaround: Use Firefox.

Common fonts such as Times New Roman are substituted with other, visually and metrically incompatible ones in BB Annotate.

Workaround: Encourage students to submit files as PDFs.

Ultra Grade Center Filters Broken For Assessments with Essay Questions

In the Ultra Grade Center, the filter for Needs Grading / All Statuses stops working for Assessments that include essay questions. These Assessments show up for all Students regardless of their graded status.

Math Editor Interpreting Inverse Trig Function Incorrectly

The Math Editor is interpreting Inverse Trigonometric Functions incorrectly, leading to correct answers being marked as incorrect.

Unassign all does not do Anything when Editing an Ultra Course Groups

Selecting "Unassign All" does not appear to remove Students from assigned Groups in ULTRA Courses.

Workaround: Individual "unassign" works. If possible, unassign Group members one by one.

Conditional Availability Prevents Students from Viewing Grade Feedback

Conditional Availability prevents Users from viewing their feedback if the 'hide after date' is in the past.

Assignment Feedback Documents not Accessible to Students

Attempting to download Assignment feedback documents in Ultra Course may produce an Access Denied error.

Emoji in Content Titles Broken in Ultra Activity Stream

Emoji in the titles of Content Items display as replacement characters in the Ultra Activity Stream.

Group Assignment Rubric Score can not be Updated

If a Rubric score is updated for a group assignment, the score does not change from the original.

RTF Documents Truncated in Safe Assign

Safe Assign does not display all of the contents of .RTF files.

Ultra Groups Student List Unsorted

When looking at the list of Students that can be added to a Group, the list does not appear to have any sorting applied, making it difficult to find specific Students.

When viewing the Conversion Exceptions for a Course that was converted from Original to Ultra View, all of the items do not expand properly in Chrome. This happens in both Windows and Mac, but occurs more consistently on Mac.

Workaround: Use Firefox.

Files added to Ultra course must be downloaded to view

Ultra Assignments can be submitted blank with no warning

Ultra Course Preview tooltip overlay appears in the wrong place

When hovering over the Ultra Course Conversion Wizard button, the tooltip text overlay appears on the far left of the screen.

Trouble clicking links in Ultra Documents

If a link is in the last line of a Document in an Ultra View Course, the link is very difficult to open as not all of it is clickable as usual. 

Workaround: Add more content under the link.

When an Assignment is created with two Rubrics, one to be displayed without grades and another for actually grading the Assignment, then is shown to the Student properly. However, if the Rubrics are created in reverse order, the the Rubric allowed to be shown to Students is displayed empty.

Best Practice: Make sure that the Rubric that you want to be displayed to Students is created first in the list, or release both Rubrics to Students.

Wiki Grades not visible to students in wikis

Wiki grades are not visible to students in the Wiki "My Contribution" page. The grades simply don't display.

Workaround: The grade can be viewed in My Grades.

Grading Ultra Assignments with a rubric causes inline document preview to close

Unable to add smaller image for course cards

Ultra course rubric data disappears if the rubric type changes

Users with Attempts for Ultra Assignment are in the Gradebook after Enrollment Disabled

Numbered Lists Item Counts Reset by Images in Ultra View Courses

Ultra Activity Stream Issue

Ultra course documents do not save if closed during initial creation

Incomplete Subsequent Attempt of Trigger Revokes Assessment Conditional Availability in Ultra View Courses

Student Preview breaks when Analytics link clicked in Ultra course

Student Preview presents error when clicking on an Analytics link within a Ultra Course.

Apostrophe in Ultra course announcement displays as HTML code

Access Denied error when trying to view self & peer assessment submissions

Turning Edit Mode off While in a Learning Module with an Unavailable Assignment Causes Error

Skip to Content Link not Detectable by JAWS Screen Reader

Announcement Emails have a Broken Image

Documents do not have an Ally Indicator or Score

Documents within a course folder do not have Ally indicators or scores.

Workaround: Reducing the number of documents per page will resolve the issue.

Rubric detail panel is blank & unresponsive

Ultra Course Missing PDF File Icon in Student View when File is not Available

When a PDF document is added to an Ultra course and the availability is set to 'Conditional availability', the PDF icon does not display in Student view.

Cloud Storage File Uploads to Assignments with no Extension

Files uploaded from Cloud storage, created using Google Docs, do not have a file extension. This is preventing the files from being opened properly.

Workaround: Download the file > then edit the filename to include the extension. Then open/re-upload to your course.

Inline Grading Will Not Render File While Grading an Assignment

Error message "An Error Occurred While Generating the Menu." is Received by the Students when they Click the Link of the Email Notification

Students receive a message "An error occurred while generating the menu" when they click the link of the Email Notification provided by Learn.

Workaround: If you copy the link directly from the Course and paste into a browser, it will ask for the Users credentials as expected and allow download of the file.

SafeAssign not Generating Originality Report when Disabled Student Enrolled in a Group

If SafeAssign is being used for a Group submission and the Group contains a User who has been disabled, SafeAssign will not generate an originality report for that Group. Also, there is no record of said submission in the Submission Receipts report in Grade Center.

Rubric Reports Occasionally Produce Blank Results

Some rubrics will generate a report with blank results.

0048846

Grade Center Horizontal Scroll Bar Inaccessible in Full Screen Mode

When using the full-screen option in the Grade Center, the horizontal scrollbar disappears unless the Browser's zoom is under 100%.

Workaround: Set the Browser's Zoom to 90%.

Inline Grading not Available for Submissions from Blackboard App in Ultra Course

When submitting an assignment file from the Blackboard app in an Ultra course, the file is not available to preview via Box for inline grading. Only the file name is displayed (URL encoded) and available to download, but it is not rendered inline by the Box service.

Workaround: This issue was resolved with the release of Blackboard app version 4.3 in June, 2019.

Students Receive Error if Test has File Response Question

Last Name Column Duplicated in Grade Center

Access Denied when Making a Course Using Course Availability Lock Tool

Tests with a Large Number of Essay Questions Cause Browser Performance Issues

Tests with 80+ essay questions that display all-at-once cause Browser performance issues. The test loads slowly, scrolling is not smooth, and auto-save & spell-check are slow to trigger.

Workaround: Display the questions one-at-a-time.

Needs Attention Module Shows Incorrect Assignment Needs Grading Count

New Box View not Displaying all of Documents

Error when Previewing Image Uploaded via Build Content

Previous and Future Courses Disappear after Resizing Browser

When looking at enrolled Courses, shrinking the re-expanding the size of the Browser will cause the left/right navigation options to view previous/upcoming (respectively) Courses to disappear. However, this issue disappears if navigating away from, then back to, the Courses page.

Workaround: If you go to another page then go back, the Previous / Upcoming Course arrows will return.

Unable to Disable Delegated Grading after Eligible Grader is Enrolled in Course

Course Messages Sent from Ultra Courses are Received in Centered Format

Text with HTML Markups in Test Question Causes an Error when Student Submits Test

If text with HTML markups is pasted into the Visual Text Box Editor for a Test question, an error occurs when a Student tries to submit that Test. This issue is caused by inserting an HTML Form into a Test question.

 Workaround: Do not insert HTML Forms (<form>) into Test questions.

Unable to Load Inline Grading Due to Disabled 3rd Party Cookies

A Blank Page Item in Course Menu may give an access denied for guests. Please open an RT ticket if you experience this issue.

For Bb SysAdmin: The issue occurs when the Permit Guests option is chosen, the allow_guest_ind=Y in the course_toc (for the link) changes, but the underlying content still has allow_guest_ind=N. Contact BtBb.

When an empty Group Set is created, and an attempt to add groups at a later time is made, an error is thrown. The received error is an 'AddgroupRefrenceError' error.

Workaround: Re/create the Group Set with at least one Group Set.

When opening two tabs in a browser for two separate courses, opening the Grade Center in both Courses and sending an email to students sends them to the wrong course.

Workaround: Open only one course when sending email communication through the Grade Center.

If the font is changed (or styled) in the Content Editor, paragraph breaks will not be displayed after editing.

Workaround: Use Shift+Enter (instead of just Enter) when creating content to display the desired paragraph breaks.

When editing a content item attachment to be overwritten, if the Link Title doesn't match, the file will not be saved and overwritten with the new version.

Workaround: Update the attachment without changing the Link Title. Afterwards change the Link title.

When an audio file is embedded into the Question Text field of a Question in a Test, the play button is unresponsive and the file cannot be played.

Workaround: Upload media files to Box and embed using advanced share features. Remember: Blackboard is not a streaming server!

The Content Collection tab (e.g., My Bb Files) will not load in Chrome for some users. For those same users, attempting to access My Content from within a Course Content Collection will throw an error.

Not all Users are affected by this issue.

In Chrome (versions 58.0 and newer), you cannot select Images in the Content Editor by left-clicking on them.

Workaround: First right-click on the image, then left-click on the Image.

If a blog is set to be gradable after there are already posts made by students, those posts do not show up in Needs Grading.

Workaround: The Posts can still be Graded by accessing them via the the full Grade Center. Identify the column for the blog and the specific field for a student. Click the action arrow and choose Grade User Activity.

If a Grade Center Column Name is manually entered as "NULL", the Grade Center will not load and continuously displays "Loading Grade Center....".

Workaround: Navigate to Manage > Column Organization and Hide the Column.

After editing & saving an existing course link, the link will drop to the bottom of the content item list.

Workaround: Move the course link back to its proper place after editing and saving.

Students cannot select certain answers for an Assessment. When clicking the radio button, nothing happens.

Workaround: When attempting to answer the question, click to the right of the radio button (typically about a 1/8 to 1/4 inch to the right of the radio button) until it works.

Create multiple paragraphs of content in a text editor (e.g., Notepad). When the text is copied into the Bb Content Editor using Google Chrome, the result is one paragraph instead of several separated by line returns.

Workaround: Manually correct the text in the Content Editor.

Bb Collaborate Ultra recordings in a source Course do not make it into the Destination Course (whether new or existing) when a Course Copy process is finished.

Workaround: Create a content item link that points to the desired Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recording(s).

When the browser window becomes too small, the pull-out tab to show or hide the course menu may not be visible on the left as expected. Users must scroll to the right to see it.

Workaround: A fix has been applied to address this issue.

• Why can't I see the sidebar for my course in Blackboard? 
• How do I hide or un-hide my Blackboard Course menu?

In the Content Editor, pressing Enter to create line breaks between two characters that were selected and styled together does not function properly. The Content Editor only creates paragraph tags. The result is only one space no matter how it is formatted in the edit window.

Workaround: Utilize the keyboard shortcut SHIFT+ENTER to force the VTBE to create a break tag (<br>).

When accessing a Web Link that contains an apostrophe in its name (e.g., "UMBC's Homepage) and set to open in the same window, the page does not load with the external link.

Workaround: Remove the apostrophe in the name AND select the 'Open in New Window' option to allow the page to load with the external link.

Embedded flash videos will not display when added in Course Content items, Wikis, and Assignments. They display without issue in preview mode within the text editor.

Workaround: Please use UMBC Panopto to host and embed multimedia references.

Fillable Forms in PDF Files are not Checked by SafeAssign

The Points Possible of a Weighted Column appear to be incorrectly calculated when using a Category that has more than one Column assigned to it.

This is a misunderstanding about how Equal Weighting works in contrast to Proportional Weighting. See Bb's documentation.

Ultra Learning Module Titles and Content Description Text Turns White in Responsive Design Mode

When viewing Learning Modules in a Blackboard Ultra course on a small screen/browser window or on a mobile device browser, text of learning modules and descriptions turns white. 

See FAQ