As many of you know, at Dundee we have opted for Perception to ensure
support for assessments is as good as it can be. For us this means two
QM Perception servers, one coupled to Bb for seamlessly delivering the
formative assessments, and the other stand alone, only ever delivering
summative assessments.
Issues within these systems are not totally absent, but they are
extremely rare. On a busy day we can be delivering over 3000
assessments.
My concerns on using a Bb system alone would be the inability to
control the load on server as many other groups and users could be
performing intensive activities with the VLE server at the same time as
a scheduled assessment. Add to the that the issues of Bb instability as
we are discussing.
Richard
Dr Richard Parsons
Director of eLearning
[log in to unmask] +44(0)1382 344265
Why ePortfolios? http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~rparsons/portfolio/
Online Assessment Course:
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/learning/dol/caaonline.htm
Learning Technologies: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/learning/ilt/index.htm
>>> [log in to unmask] 01/18/05 9:20 am >>>
Thanks Mark, Kim and Kate for your responses.
As a user group we seem to be saying that, for summative assessment at
least, Blackboard is not reliable enough to use, certainly 6.1 anyway
(there were none of these problems with 5). If entire exam 'scripts' can
be lost (remember, we had four students for whom all responses to a 55
question exam were lost), then I simply can't recommend its use. But as
Kim says, what then are we paying for?
Perception anyone ...?
Spencer
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Northover [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 17 January 2005 19:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: BB assessment question
Sounds very familiar. We had an assessment in which two students'
responses
appeared as padlocks with no attempts available. We checked in the logs
that
they had not inadvertently double-clicked the Submit button, and we
could
check that they had definitely submitted each question correctly. The
lecturer had done everything correctly in setting the assessment up,
and
advising his students. The attempts had simply vanished. I was
desperate to
show it was user error, but couldn't.
I logged a ticket with Bb in early December. They provided a suggested
script to recover the attempts, but with no success, the attempts table
was
empty. We had to take the students' case to the exam board. Very
unsatisfactory when it appears to be clearly a fault in the
application.
We simply cannot advise anybody to use the assessment engine for
summative
assessment at the moment.
Regards
--
Mark Northover
Flexible Learning Services Manager
Auckland University of Technology
Auckland, New Zealand
Ph: (649) 917-9999, ext 8688
mob: (64) 021-628603
On 18/1/05 3:44 AM, "Kate Boardman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Interesting you should bring this up.
>
> I've got a few problems with the gradebook which might be linked.
> Students who say they were thrown out of a quiz now can't get back
in
> again, but when you go to the gradebook to clear the attempt there's
no
> attempt listed, so I've had to tell the instructor to try allowing
> multiple attempts for a while. Interestingly, one of the common
features
> heard in the student complaints was that it gave them errors when
going
> to the next page, so I checked and this is also a test marked as
single
> questionat a time. Haven't yet managed to recreate it, but there was
a
> sizeable number saying it was a problem.
>
> I've also got a case where the padlock doesn't let you view the
attempt,
> only clear it, even if you have submitted a number of answers. I
guess
> it might do this if it hadn't registered an attempt at all (though
> there'd be no need to clear it either).
>
> no answers, though, sorry!
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Kate Boardman
> Learning Technologies Team
> IT Service
> University of Durham
>
> t: 0191 334 2778
> e: [log in to unmask]
> w: http://www.dur.ac.uk/k.l.boardman
>
> duo: http://duo.dur.ac.uk
> BbUK: http://www.dur.ac.uk/ltteam/bbuk
> IT Service: http://www.dur.ac.uk/its/lt/duo/
>
>
>
> Jordan, Spencer wrote:
>
>> I was wondering whether anyone has seen this . . .
>>
>> 81 students taking summative assessment in blackboard (55
questions).
>> When it comes to look at the marks, it appears that four students
have
>> padlock symbol with no answers submitted for any of the questions!
The
>> students are adament they submitted responses to each question; the
>> test was set to 'one question at time' so any responses should have
>> been recorded as they progressed through the test. The responses of
>> these four students appear to have disappeared into the Bb ether.
>>
>> Any suggestions welcome.
>>
>> Spencer, UWIC
>> (Bb version 6.1.5.5, App Pack 1)
>>
>>
>
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