Getting to D2L

Hi Everyone-

The portal is still unstable this evening.  The best way to get to D2L is via the direct URL:  online.ccconline.org.  D2L is up and functioning well.

Lisa

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Lisa.Cheney-Steen@cccs.edu

Up Time

Hi Everyone-

The upgrade IT was working in this morning ran into difficulties and had to be aborted.  They expect to be up again with access to all of our tools (including D2L) in about an hour.

Lisa

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Lisa.Cheney-Steen@cccs.edu

Drop Box Update

Hi Everyone-

D2L believes they have permanently corrected the Dropbox problems at this time.

Thanks-

Lisa

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Lisa.Cheney-Steen@cccs.edu

Drop Box Update

Hi Everyone-

Dropbox appears to be working for most faculty this morning, but at this point D2L has applied only a temporary fix.  They have not yet located the underlying problem.  That means you may see continuing issues with the dropbox as the day progresses.  We are keeping an eye on it and will ask D2L to apply the temporary fix again if it looks like the drop box is stalling.

Thanks for your patience.

Lisa

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Lisa.Cheney-Steen@cccs.edu

Dropbox Errors

Hi Everyone-

We are seeing errors in the dropbox this afternoon.  The issue has been escalated to D2L.  I will let you know as soon as I hear anything.  Meanwhile there is a high likelihood that your students will not be able to post assignments to the dropbox.

Sorry,

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Lisa.Cheney-Steen@cccs.edu

TurnItIn Maintenance

Please do not reply to this automated message. If you have questions, please email me at donna.welschmeyer@cccs.edu. Thanks!

Please note the downtime for scheduled maintenance as noted to us by TurnItIn:

Upcoming System Maintenance: On Saturday, September 4th from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM US Pacific Time (-7 UTC), all Turnitin services may be unavailable while we launch the new Turnitin2 service. If you have assignments due during this window, we recommend that you change the due date and alert your students. Contact tiisupport@turnitin.com for more information.

Update from Profhelp

Hi Everyone-

Here are the responses to the two most common questions received by Profhelp this fall...  or anyway two of the questions for which she has to give you the opposite of the answer you may want to hear.  Sorry about that!

1. The program chairs have elected to turn off the “New” notification of discussions, dropboxes, quizzes, etc. from the Course Homepage.  For example, when a student leaps straight to the discussion through the icon, the "last access" date in the classlist does not update. This notification has been turned off for both students and instructors. Sorry for any inconvenience.  The update widget still shows unread emails and discussion posts and the email button shows unread emails.
2. Unfortunately, we can’t move the Fall2010 courses to the top of the list on your Course Homepage. The good news is that soon all of the previous term courses will appear on another tab which will allow the current term courses to be the only courses appearing on the instructor tab.

That first answer is driven by financial aid and by students who are having trouble in their class.  We need to have login data that is as close to accurate as possible to manage the financial aid process, particularly for those students who simply stop attending class rather than officially drop.  We had hoped D2L would have a fix for this in place for the fall term, but they are not quite there.  

Yesterday's slowness was primarily due to problems in a data center.  We believe there are still pockets of slowness for D2L users, but nothing consistent.  Student calls to the help desk have not mentioned slowness so students do not appear to be experiencing significant problems.  David Chatham continues to track the issue and will let you know if there is an update.

best,

Lisa Cheney-Steen
Lisa.Cheney-Steen@cccs.edu

D2L Problems

Hi Everyone-

We are experiencing problems with D2L this morning.  While it is not necessarily completely down most users are experiencing extreme slowness to the point of un-usability.  D2L is working on the problem and we will let you know as soon as it is resolved.

Thank you for your patience.

Lisa

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Lisa.Cheney-Steen@cccs.edu

Photo from Javaturtle, http://www.flickr.com/photos/javaturtle/with/117152990/

BB Vista is back up

BB Vista is up. BB is investigating the source of the problems in the data center.

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Vista update

Here's the news from BB:

There appears to be a Datacenter event that is causing a problem for many Vista clients. This is not specific to your site but rather a more widespread infrastructure issue. Our engineers are currently working on the problem as fast as possible. I will provide additional details as they are released.

We'll let you know when we have more information.

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Up again

Well as soon as I send an email to everyone BB Vista pops back up. David has not heard from BB yet, so no information on what is happening. Be sure to save any work you are doing frequently and please remind students to save test questions one question at a time as opposed to completing an entire exam and then saving.

Lisa Cheney-Steen

BB Vista is down

Hey Everyone-

It looks like BB Vista is currently down or at best very, very slow. David Chatham is contacting BB for additional information.

Lisa Cheney-Steen

BB Continues to Troubleshoot

Hey Everyone-

Blackboard is continuing to troubleshoot the Vista issues, but the latency and stability issues are still occurring. BB is now performing a complete audit on our database. Our AT staff is spending the evening monitoring the situation. If you attempt to work in Blackboard this evening please be careful about saving work.

Best,
Lisa Cheney-Steen

Vista continues unstable

Hi Everyone-

Vista has continued to be unstable throughout the afternoon. We received our first alerts around 1:00 pm. Blackboard briefly thought they had the problems solved around 2:45, but unfortunately the system continues to be up and down. Internal email is generally not working, so not a good choice for communicating with students.

We appreciate everyone's patience with your students, Vista, and CCCOnline in general. Please be assured we didn't plan this just to make everyone feel really good about the move to Desire2Learn. :^)

best,
Lisa Cheney-Steen

BB Vista Stable Again

Hi Everyone-

You should find BB Vista's speed to be acceptable again. We've increased our available storage space, so should make it through the remainder of the summer without additional problems.

Sorry for the long periods of slowness!

Lisa Cheney-Steen

Note for Mac users

This is a technical note for Mac users who are also using Elluminate:

Important Technical Bulletin: Apple J2SE6

Apple has just released a new version of Java: J2SE6 for Mac OS X 10.5.

The J2SE6 release is currently incompatible with Elluminate Live! We have notified Apple of the issue and are investigating potential work around options.

This update is not mandatory and we strongly recommend against installing it at this time. Unfortunately there is no easy way to un-install J2SE6 once installed.

Lisa

Qwest Maintenance

Hi Everyone-

I have a note from CCCS-IT about some maintenance Qwest is performing this weekend that probably doesn't affect you. This will only affect you if you are doing something on the CCCS Network during the time of the maintenance. So if you are accessing Vista from home, no problem. If you want to access Banner or if you are on a campus than it will affect you. From IT:

We have been informed that Qwest will be performing maintenance on their equipment tomorrow morning, March 15th, between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM. This maintenance will effect the primary circuits coming into our facilities at Lowry. This will cause an outage for Internet access for the schools, inbound and outbound telephone calls at Lowry, and Wide Area Network connectivity into and out of Lowry for all schools. While the circuits are down access to FRS, Banner, VPN Connectivity, and inbound and outbound e-mail will be unavailable.

Thanks for your understanding

Bryan Crawford

Same effect for students -- if they are on campus at 3:00 am they won't be able to get to your online class. :^)

Lisa

Downtime

Good Morning Everyone-

We are back up again this morning as of around 6:00. That would put last night's downtime at close to 12 hours. I don't have an update yet on why we were down, but I'll pass on information as I have it. We do appear to be stable at this time.

Lisa

Daylight Savings Time and Due Dates

Hi Everyone-

I have an update on daylight savings time and how that affects due dates and times in Blackboard Vista:

You can not set an assignment or quiz date/time due date to close with in an hour of midnight, March 9, without the time changing in the setup to the next day because of the daylight savings time change. We have had two courses do this on the March 9 date. When we set it for 10:58 PM it comes out 11:58 PM, as we want. If you set it for 11:58 it moves to the next day at 12:58 AM. (This is still only an hour later, but the date has changed). That is Bb’s explanation and I wanted to pass it along so you don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure it out.

That was from David Chatham. Let me know if you have questions.

Also a reminder that registration is open for the free faculty conference in Colorado Springs on Friday, February 22nd. www.ppcc.edu/conference.


Lisa

Military Students and Access

Hi Everyone-

Some of our military students may not be able to access the classes at this time. Beginning last week the military in the middle east closed access to all but .mil and .gov websites due to some bandwidth issues. They do not expect the problem to last more than another week. Please allow your affected students some extra time to catch up.

If the problem continues we will work with the colleges centrally to find the best solution for the students.

Thanks!
Lisa