For a short time, the vast majority of students found that they no longer existed—on Blackboard that is.
Of the 13,526 students at Oxnard, Ventura and Moorpark who are enrolled in the 580 Blackboard online classes offered at all three campuses, at least ninety percent were unable to log online on Jan. 24, starting at 2 p.m., according to Associative Vice Chancellor of Information Technology David Fuhrmann.
While the problem was corrected on Jan. 25, many students were met with an error message for 30 hours.
The error message displayed the student’s first and last name, separated by an underscore, and claimed that the student’s login information no longer existed.
Student records and class information in Webstar were still accessible, however.
“There was a lot of anxiety among students because assignments are usually due on Sunday,” said Executive Vice President Brenda Shubert at Moopark College.
Shubert also says that teachers were notified on Monday of the problem, so many of them were able to let students turn in assignments at a later date.
Lisa Miller, dean of student learning at MC, still feels that the problem could have been resolved much faster.
“To be honest, I think there could have been a quicker solution,” said Miller.
The issue lies with the fact that there is currently no staff assigned to treat technical issues on the weekends, according to Miller, and students were left without anyone to turn to.
Shubert also says that MC has been looking into acquiring its own servers. The current servers are for all three campuses and are located in the district office. Switching out the Blackboard platform service for another one is also something they are considering.
“There has been some discussion, but no decision has been made,” said Shubert. Betsy Wagner is an instructional technologist and she says that the possibility of replacing Blackboard has more to do with enhancing productivity with the advent of more students signing up for online classes.
“I think it’s just an issue of seeing what is out there,” said Wagner. The service itself, WebCT, has not had many issues of this nature up until this one.
“I was surprised to learn that this was the first major incident we have had with this system,” said Wagner.