Maintenance Outage on May 2 from 6:00 AM - 2:00 PM

We want to remind you that the eClass (Blackboard/WebCT Vista) system
will be offline for scheduled maintenance on Sunday May 2, 2010 from
6:00 am - 2:00 pm. During that time we will be applying performance
and reliability updates to the system.

Please do not schedule any teaching or learning tasks during this
period. If you have any questions, please contact elearning@ualberta.ca

Thank you for your patience.

E-Learning Services

eClass Problem with Java Security Warning (Windows)

The latest release of Java (Java 2 Runtime Environment version 1.6.0_19) causes a problem with all eClass components that require java applets including the html creator, the Chatroom, and the File uploader. Unless necessary, all users of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 should refrain from updating to the latest version of Java at this time.

The update opens a security dialog window requesting users to ‘Block potentially unsafe components’ (as shown in the image below). There are in fact no unsafe components and users should click ‘No’ to allow normal function of eClass to proceed. Clicking ‘Yes’ at this prompt will disable the java functionality of eClass.

Java security dialog - Users should click 'No'

Once in an eClass session, users will only need to click ‘No’ one time for all the java applets to function normally, but if they log out the prompt will display again.

Blackboard is working on this issue with Sun and should have it resolved soon so try to delay updating your Java runtime version if possible.

If you have already upgraded to the latest version of Java and want a permanent solution (ie. you get sick of clicking ‘No’ on the security warning in every session), you can roll back your version of java to the previous version using the following instructions from our knowledge base: https://support.elearning.ualberta.ca/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=31