The problems that have recently plagued the Missouri State University Blackboard system should be solved by a patch that was implemented last Friday according to MSU Computer Services.
The first days of the fall semester have been difficult for many faculty members with online components to their classes as teachers attempt to familiarize students with the Blackboard system which is often used to upload notes or class assignments.
Becky Baker an instructor of physics and astronomy said that she had given up trying to upload anything from her classes to Blackboard because of how long it was taking and that some of her students were unable to access any class materials through the system.
Baker also said that she would be postponing several of her assignments that were only accessible through Blackboard until a solution had been reached.
Sandra Byrd an MSU professor of accounting agreed that Blackboard s problems had negatively affected her first days of class and said that she had spent several days trying to answer many student emails about Blackboard.
It is frustrating for faculty as all we can tell our students is that they need to contact the MSU Computer Help Desk as we cannot help them Byrd said.
For some reason many students think their professors have a magic bullet that can solve technology problems and/or we can put off the start of school until they are fixed Byrd continued. When actually we are as much affected and frustrated by these problems as the students.
However all of these problems should now be solved according to Patrick Day coordinator of operations and systems with MSU Computer Services.
Day said that Blackboard was recently upgraded to version 9.1 to take advantage of its new features and improvements and the university s hardware was also improved with new servers to handle student traffic online.
These upgrades were important Day said because for the last two years student usage of Blackboard has doubled each year.
Despite all of these enhancements it only took two days for problems to arise. The system hit 100 percent CPU utilization and Blackboard slowed down to almost unusable speeds.
Day said that Computer Services attempted to fix the problem in several ways but was unable to get any meaningful results and the problems remained. Day also said that many other schools were suffering similar issues with their own Blackboard sites.
The official statement received by the university from Blackboard stated that a critical performance bug was found in the code of the latest update to Blackboard 9.1. The issue which related to the deletion of forum posts causes database deadlocks and long wait times within the system.
Blackboard originally said that a solution would be sent sometime in the middle of September which Day said the university found unacceptable. Blackboard then came up with a patch much sooner which was installed last Friday at 2 p.m.
The patch is described by Blackboard in the statement as a two pronged fix that updates the way in which the forum posts are deleted.
Jeff Morrissey Chief Information Officer at MSU sent an email to faculty and students Monday afternoon stating that performance issues were still present and being addressed and that the new fix would hopefully not cause any new problems to arise. At press time Blackboard was working quickly and the university s apology for the slow performance had been removed from Blackboard s login screen.
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