Blackboard Courses

Course not visible on Blackboard
Outage category: 
Blackboard
Location: 
Online
Status: 
Open
Resolved alert: 
08/23/2019 5:32 pm

Faculty and students were unable to see their fall 2019 courses in Blackboard

Initial symptoms: 

There were a few scattered reports of students not being added to their Blackboard classes

Duration: 
08/23/2019 4:45 pm - 08/23/2019 5:32 pm
Impact to Mason: 

Faculty and students were unable to see their fall 2019 courses in Blackboard.

Affected Services: 
Blackboard Courses
ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS
Cause: 

Fall 2019 is the first time we are using a new method to enroll students in Blackboard – unlike the previous method the data source key from the Banner enrollment must always stay the same. It also appears Blackboard made a slight change to the way they process Banner course enrollment files. While trying to update the enrollment file to meet this change, all enrollments (student and faculty) for Fall courses were inadvertently disabled.

Resolution: 

We immediately fixed and uploaded a new enrollments file, but it takes around one hour to process. Once the file finished processing, all students and instructors could see and access courses again.

Prevention: 

Update method for enrolling students in Blackboard from Banner.

STATISTICS
Service Team: 
Online Learning Resources