Blackboard Exam Problems and How to Avoid Them
- For Questions Adding Math Notation to Blackboard, see this page.
- Avoid Force Completion!
- Force Completion is a feature in the Blackboard Exam settings that forces students
to complete the exam in one attempt. While this may sound like an ideal situation
to avoid cheating, this is more often a pain than it is beneficial. What the brief
description doesn鈥檛 say, is that this feature actually forces the attempt to close
in the event that the user tries to back out of the exam or close it temporarily and
return at a later time. Again, this may sound good at first, but this feature is extremely
sensitive to any interruption. If the user鈥檚 internet flickers out for even a few
seconds, due to bad weather or technology failing at any point in the process and
for any reason, this feature will interpret the loss of internet as the user attempting
to navigate away from the exam and鈥攁s such鈥攚ill close and submit the user鈥檚 attempt;
regardless of how far into the exam they are and how much time is remaining. This
often results in panicked users with 鈥渃ompleted鈥� exams that they still had time left
on and that were not finished, emailing their instructor for help to reopen their
exam.
- Important to note: an attempt鈥攐nce submitted鈥攃annot be re-opened. Only a brand new
attempt can be provided, but no answers from their original attempt will be saved and present in the new attempt. This is a major headache that may be avoided by ensuring that you do not use the Force Completion feature.
- All Users: Avoid Internet Explorer!
- Internet Explorer is鈥攗nfortunately鈥攖he default browser on a number of computers both
at 九色堂 and on many users鈥� personal devices. Please strongly encourage students to
use only Chrome, Firefox, or Safari to take exams. Internet Explorer has two known issues that
can cause fatal errors for a user鈥檚 Blackboard exam. So that you can recognize the
cause of these errors, should they occur for one or more of your students, please
review them as follows.
- Exam answers stop saving when users click on the individual 鈥渟ave answer鈥� button associated
with each question. When the 鈥渟ave answer鈥� button is used鈥攅specially in conjunction
with Internet Explorer鈥攁nswers may stop saving entirely as the system begins to experience
an compatibility glitch. Because submitted test attempts cannot be re-opened, the
only solution for this is to 鈥淚gnore鈥� the test attempt inside of Blackboard and open
a new attempt for the impacted student.
- Only one question displays on the screen but will allow the user to endlessly scroll
down the page. This is a known issue in the compatibility between Internet Explorer
and Blackboard, but it does not happen every time. In the event this occurs, the student
will need to exit the exam and log back into it through Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.
If there is a timer running on the exam, this will have continued to run in real time,
and may be something to consider when grading their work. If no time is left on the
timer or if the exam has been submitted鈥攅ither by the student or because of a test
setting鈥攁 new attempt will need to be opened for the student to allow them to properly
attempt the test.
- If you need additional training on opening additional test attempts for a single user,
visit OIR's Blackboard/Accessibility Labs hosted on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 1:00
to 3:00 over Zoom. No appointments are required; these are come-and-go labs. To access the labs,
- Don鈥檛 Use Exam Passwords!
- Passwords are often thought to provide an extra security measure to prevent unauthorized
users from accessing an exam; but this simply isn鈥檛 necessary for your exam. Almost
without fail, at least one student will forget the password, misspell it, or delete
the email with the password in it.
- This will result in panicked emails from the student, who鈥攊n many cases鈥攈as waited
until the last minute to complete the exam and is anxious that they will not be able
to take the exam at all. By the time you are able to receive and reply to the email,
indicating the correct password or removing it entirely to avoid further complications,
the original timeline for the exam will have passed or both parties will be frustrated
by this problem. Avoid the use of passwords and the headaches that come with them.
- Double Check Your Exam Dates!
- One of the biggest errors that we see with exams stems from incorrect availability鈥攐r
display鈥攄ates. We often receive emails and calls from students and instructors indicating
that an exam that should be available is not. Upon looking at the underlying issue,
it frequently turns out that the availability/display dates are incorrect, and as
a result the exam is unavailable for students.
- These dates do not automatically change in Blackboard when you roll over content from
a previous semester, so each time you use these exams, you will need to manually update
the dates to conform to your new schedule. This is also true for any 鈥渄ue dates鈥� you
have written into your item descriptions or marked in assessment settings.
- Make Your Exam Available To Students!
- When you set up an exam in Blackboard, you will need to ensure that you have selected
the 鈥淵es鈥� option for the 鈥淢ake available to students鈥� setting. This is a small radio
button setting listed first under the Test Availability heading. This setting is often
overlooked as it is small and inconspicuous. However, this setting will default to
being marked in the 鈥淣o鈥� position which will mean, even if the exam dates are correct,
the exam will still not be available. To avoid this confusion for you and your students,
be sure to check this setting is marked to the proper position.
- Avoid using this option to "hide" an exam from students temporarily unless you are
certain you will remember to come back to it and change it before the exam is meant
to begin.
