Support Announcements

Brief eClass Maintenance Outage on Thursday May 17th 2012

Dear eClass users,

We would like to inform you that the eClass (Moodle and Blackboard Vista) systems will be offline for about 10 minutes at 5:00 AM on Thursday, May 17th 2012. We will be using this brief outage to fix an urgent issue.

If you have any questions, please contact ctl@ualberta.ca. Thank you for your patience.

Regards,

CTL Technology Services

RESOLVED: Latest Safari Update Has problems with eClass Login

The latest update of Safari, version 5.1.4 released on March 12, 2012 causes some users to experience login issues when accessing eClass. The browser will get stuck in an infinite loop where it switches back and forth between the portal page and the weblogin page.

UPDATE: CTL Tech services team implemented a fix on our portal page to make it functional with the latest version of Safari.

Users can safely update their Safari to the latest version (5.1.5) without experiencing any further eClass login issues.

If you have any questions, please contact ctl@ualberta.ca.

CTL Tech Services

UPDATED: eClass Moodle Problems for PDFs with Adobe Reader Update for Mac/Firefox

The latest release of the Adobe PDF Reader (version 10.1.3) causes problems for some eClass Moodle users when viewing PDFs within courses. This issue only affects users on Mac computers who are using the latest version of Firefox (11).

When version 10.1.3 of Adobe Reader gets installed, users can no longer view eClass PDF files using Firefox. When opened, the PDF content will not render directly in the browser, nor will any link be provided with the option to download the file.

UPDATE: We have been tracking this issue and it is not limited to eClass Moodle PDFs. Mozilla support has released 2 support posts that describe a couple of different workarounds.

The first involves switching Firefox into 32-bit mode and will allow users to view PDFs directly within their browser: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/925330.

The second is a Firefox setting that will allow users to force downloads of PDFs to save them, print them, or view them offline: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/925055

At this time, we still recommend that users do not update to this latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. If users have already performed the update, they will need to remove Adobe Reader version 10.1.3 to restore PDF function within eClass on Firefox. The previous safe release, version 9.4, is available at http://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/.

If you have any questions about this, please email ctl@ualberta.ca.

Regards,
CTL Technology Services

Problems Submitting Assignments to eClass Moodle

There is currently a known issue for students submitting assignments in eClass Moodle. This issue stems from incorrect system feedback that tells students they have successfully submitted an assignment when in fact they have not.

During the submission process, once a file has been selected, it will initially appear on the assignment submission page for confirmation. At this point, the file has not been uploaded. Users must then click on ‘Save Changes’ or else their file will not be uploaded.

Depending on the setup of the assignment, students may see incorrect messages telling them that their file has been submitted - either in the assignment submission tool, or on their course home page. Students should always verify that they can see their assignment file in the Submission Draft area. If this area has no files in it, regardless of any other messages visible, the assignment has not been submitted.

This is a known bug in Moodle that we are tracking and we will implement a fix for it as soon as possible.

Regards,
CTL Technology Services

eClass Outage Schedule 2012

To ensure adequate maintenance of the eClass and eClass Live! services, we are scheduling a monthly maintenance outage on the last Sunday of each month. During each outage we will perform routine maintenance, address any outstanding problems, and add or update plugins as required. The length of each outage will be determined by the complexity of the changes required.

eClass and eClass Live! may be unavailable during the time slots listed below so plan accordingly.

eClass Outage Notification Sunday April 1st 2012

Dear eClass users,

We would like to inform you that the eClass (Moodle and Blackboard Vista) systems will be offline this coming Sunday April 1st, 2012 from 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM. We understand that this date might cause some confusion, but please rest assured that this is not a joke. We will be using this brief outage to upgrade a number of Moodle plug-ins. Some of these changes include:

- Enhancements to the eClass course creation and enrollment plug-in

- Improvements to the current U of A Moodle theme

- Improvements to the eClass Live (Elluminate) plug-in

Please do not schedule any teaching or learning tasks during this period. If you have any questions, please contact ctl@ualberta.ca. Thank you for your patience.

Regards,

CTL Technology Services

eClass Moodle HTML Editor Problems

There is a problem with the HTML Editor in eClass Moodle when using the latest version of Firefox, version 11+. The issue occurs when there are 2 or more text entry fields on the same page. The second and subsequent text entry fields do not allow text entry.

This is a known issue with the Tiny MCE HTML editor plugin utilized by Moodle that is being worked on by the Moodle development team. CTL Tech Services will implement a fix for the problem as soon as it is available.

As a workaround in the interim, users who encounter this problem can fix broken text boxes by resizing the editor text-entry display box using the handlebars on the bottom right. See the screenshot below:

You only need to re-size the text box by a small margin and the editor will refresh on the page, allowing text to be entered.

If you are designing activities like quizzes where you can control the number of text entry boxes on a page, you should only allow for 1 entry box to display at a a time so that users do not encounter this problem.

If you have any questions, contact ctl@ualberta.ca.

CTL Tech Services

eClass (Moodle and Vista) Outage February 23, 2012

We would like to inform you that the eClass (Moodle and Blackboard Vista) systems will be offline Thursday February 23rd, 2012 from 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM. We will be using this brief outage during Reading Week to upgrade a number of Moodle plugins and make some system administration changes. Some of these changes include:

- Improvements to the eClass Live (Elluminate) plugin

- Integrations for Respondus and Respondus Lockdown browser

- Enhancements to the theme

- Minor changes to system roles

Please do not schedule any teaching or learning tasks during this period. If you have any questions, please contact ctl@ualberta.ca. Thank you for your patience.

CTL Technology Services

Electronic Grade Submission

The University is taking its first steps to move from a paper-based final grade entry process to a system-based final grade entry process by implementing an electronic method for instructors, departments and faculties to enter, submit and approve final grade information for students. This will replace the manual process that is currently in place.

The new functionality will allow instructors to either download a class grade roster spreadsheet from Beartracks to input grades, download an appropriate gradebook spreadsheet from eClass (Moodle), or enter grades directly. Though there will not be a one-click solution to upload grades directly from eClass (Moodle) at this time, this simpler and more transparent process will increase efficiencies and conserve resources across campus.

All instructors, departments and faculties are expected to start using this automated process starting during the Winter 2012 term. An overview of the new grades process is available at  http://www.ais.ualberta.ca/ (see Current AIS Projects - Grades Presentation). If you have any questions regarding this project, please contact Barry Scott (AIS Project Manager) at barry.scott(at)ualberta.ca  or 492-2815.

Correct Java version for eClass Blackboard Vista on Windows

For best performance of eClass Blackboard Vista on Windows XP, Vista, or 7, users should avoid using versions 1.6.0_27 or 1.6.0_29. The best choice is to upgrade to the latest version, version 6 update 30 (1.6.0_30), as this has resolved the issues with the chat forum and quizzes that had been identified with version 29 (see the following support post for more information).

To get the latest version of Java, visit www.java.com and click on the ‘Free Java Download’ button.

If you have other system requirements that prevent you from moving to the latest version, the previous stable recommended version is 1.6.0_26.

If you have any questions, please contact us at ctl_at_ualberta.ca.

CTL Technology Services