rant, work

Blackboard 8 Grade Center and Extra Credit Hell

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I actually like the changes made between every prior version of Blackboard’s Gradebook and their (new with version 8) Grade Center. Even the bugs are exciting and new, rather than the old, familiar bugs that faculty are quickly forgetting about in the glare of learning the new interfaces and quirks. (Bear in mind that the Gradebook hadn’t changed appreciably in a decade of use.)

That being said, the bug associated with Grade Center’s handling of Extra Credit columns is terrible! In the old Gradebook, instructors added a column, worth zero points possible, and then gave students points in that column. Simple, easy, and the totaling column counted the extra credit properly.

Now with Grade Center, if an instructor does the exact same thing… the Total column does NOT add the Extra Credit, but ignores it instead. (Actually this is true of any column with zero points possible.)

There is a work-around, but… it’s incredibly frustrating to explain to an instructor that they have to do extra work just because Blackboard’s Quality Assurance guys missed such an obvious trick.

To make the Total column include the zero points possible columns, go to the Modify Column screen for the Total column. (Personally I’m enjoying the little “double chevron” buttons, although I find it hard to remember they exist sometimes.) Scroll down to section 3 of the screen, and change the radio button from “All Grade Columns” to “Selected Grade Columns, Calculated Columns and Categories”.

The screen will change, and then in the newly appearing “Columns to Select:” box you can choose each of the columns from your Grade Center and click the little “arrow in a circle” button to shift them into the “Selected Columns:” box at the right of the screen. (Please note that you can click the first column, hold the Shift key, then click the last to select all the columns in that box on the left.)

This next step is not actually included in any of the documentation I’ve seen yet on Grade Center (and so I’ll need to ensure it IS included in mine from now on): Make sure the “Calculate as running total” settings is set to “No”. If you leave running total on, you will still be ignoring the zero point columns!

Now just Submit this bad boy, and your Total column should be including the zero point columns, both manually entered grades and those from tests, assignments, and discussion boards.

Do the happy dance! (And don’t forget to feel scorn for the Bb QA guys who overlooked such a buggy subsystem.)

Just don’t get me started on how I feel about the whole “Grade Center can drop the lowest test score” debacle…

rant

Bad Spellers of the World, Untie!

Okay, seriously folks. Your word processor, email editor, web browser, these all have spell checkers. So there’s no good excuse for any formal communication to contain a mis-spelt word, right?

Please remember that, just because all the words are correctly spelled, this doen’t mean the statement makes sense as written. “You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means…” Or, proof your work!

Oh, and if I see one more formal memo go out with “your” in place of “you’re” (and, yes, I realize a formal memo oughtent to have a contraction in it in the first place, but believe it or not I’m not really a stickler for this kind of thing) I think I may make a critical failure of my SAN check.

misc

A Yellow Wood

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that, the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no feet had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
–I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference.

I’ve always wondered about The Road Not Taken, because of what seems to me a begged question; where am I going?

If it doesn’t matter where you are going, then certainly, take the road less travelled. If, however, you want to get to a specific place… take the road that leads there. I realize this is overly literal, but I don’t feel it strains the analogy too much.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
–I took the one going my way,
and that has gotten me where I was going.”

rant, work

9>8, and Headdesk!

Okay, so a student calls up for technical support.

“I can’t log in. When I log in, it says I’m not enrolled in any classes.”
ME: “So, you can log in, but it says you are not enrolled?”
“No, I can’t log in.”

What?!?

Much later…
ME: “Can I get your nine-digit student ID number so I can find you in the system?”
“Uh, yeah…” and gives me a five digit number.
ME: “That’s only five digits. Your student ID is nine digits long.”
“Uh…” and gives me three more digits.
ME: “That’s eight. Your student ID is nine digits. Are you sure you know your student ID number?” (This is important, as the username for the system IS that nine-digit number!)
“Yeah. That’s it…” and gives me a different eight digit number.
ME: “Again, that’s still eight digits.”
“No, that’s my number…” and gives me yet another eight digit number. “So, can you find my name in the system?”
ME: “…no.”
“Oh, I don’t have my number here, let me call you back.”
ME: “Okay, that sounds like a good idea. Do you have our direct phone number, or were you transferred here from somewhere else?”
“No, I have to go find my number. I’ll call you back.”
Click.

Ugh.

Later, the phone rings. Guess who?
ME: “Okay, so what is your nine-digit student ID number?”
“Like I told you before…” and gives me a nine-digit number, which bears no resemblence to the previous sequence of numbers.
ME: “Okay, here you are in the system. When you log in, just use your nine-digit student ID number, and the same password you used when you enrolled in classes using our enrollment system.”
“I don’t have an account for the enrollment system.”
ME: “Yes, you do. I can talk you through the process of setting your password there, okay?”
“Okay.”
ME: “First, start a web browser.”
“…”
ME: “Are you at a computer right now?”
“No.”
ME: “Fine. I’ll just give you some instructions to try later, shall I?”

Now, I ask you, when you have a problem, do you try to make it impossible for someone to help you? If your car engine is making a funny noise do you park it in your driveway, walk to the bus station, and take the bus to your mechanic, then ask him for help?

I guess I just assume too much…

Sheesh.

misc

Christmas Pi

Pi Shirt
So Daniel, my four-year-old, picked out a cool gift for me this Christmas: a Pi T-shirt.

Now, I like the shirt, and I like that he knew I would enjoy it. But most of all, I loved when he sat down with me and explained what the shirt meant. The conversation went something like this:

ME: Daniel, I really like the shirt you got me for Christmas. Thank you!
DANIEL: Yeah. That’s pi.
ME: I know. It’s really cool.
DANIEL: Pi is a number made up of a whole bunch of numbers.
ME: Yes, it’s a number between three and four. Do you know what it means?
DANIEL: It’s a number that tells you how big a circle is.

Now, I don’t know about you, but… I think that’s an incredible answer to “what is pi?” for someone who is four.

misc

Wii wish you a Merry Christmas…

My wife and I decided we wanted to get a Wii for Christmas this year; if you aren’t groaning or laughing yet, you obviously haven’t been shopping for a Wii since the start of November. Anyway, my holiday quest for a Wii ended last night, in a GameCrazy.

Congratulate me on my new Xbox 360.

Nintendo, I love your games (Zelda rocks!), your interoperability (the GameBoy Advance/GameCube connection is still kinda cool), and your innovation (the motion controls of the Wii are amazing). But I wanted some new video game choices this year, and I just wasn’t able to get them from you. Maybe next year.

I felt a good deal better about my decision to go 360 when, just during the time I spent in line to check out at GameCrazy, half a dozen other people stopped by the store specifically to ask if there were any Wii in stock… I was not alone, clearly. (For anyone in the Hemet, CA area there is a rumor that the San Jacinto GameCrazy will save a Wii for you at the store when the shipment comes in if you purchase an extended warranty. But you have to inquire in person… or so I’m told.) Best of luck to all those other searchers; I’ll be at home playing Assassin’s Creed and Bioshock.

misc

Lawsuit, Huh

Apparently I was defrauded by the apartment complex I lived in several years back. It looks like for the last eleven months I lived in the Archstone “Club Pacifica” complex in Escondido, CA they were deliberately overcharging for water.

Huh.

Looks like I’ll be getting a settlement in the thirty dollar range. Sweet.

misc

Meh or Treat

Okay, so my Haloween time was rather… meh. I still haven’t replaced my busted glasses, but at least I found my last pair, which are working okay.

Work is hitting the doldrums times; support requests don’t really come in after the tenth week of the semester, and we surely aren’t going to apply any system updates until the winter break hits. We haven’t even had anyone threaten to blow up the campus in quite a while…

On the up side, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. For some reason I am really looking forward to decorating the house this year. (Of course I would never dream of putting up anything before Thanksgiving. That really should be a law somewhere…) I believe I will also put up some sort of decorations in the office; pics will just have to follow. (Hey, this will give me something “productive” to do, given that I have to work the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Huzzah!)

misc

I’m older than I’ve ever been…

…and now I’m even older.

It’s my birthday… gollum, gollum.

I can’t say I like the present I gave myself today though; while cleaning the lenses on my glasses the bridge snapped right in the center. Given that my optometrist doesn’t open until Monday… I’ll be living with the stereotypical geek cred of scotch-taped glasses for the weekend. (And, given the speed with which their glasses providers work, likely the next month.)

Fortunately I’ve got a good suply of Tylenol to help combat the inevitable headaches from malplaced lenses.

Musings of an Academic Tech SysAdmin