No outages after recent work, TESS ‘knocks on wood’
By: Ashley Higginbotham
-News Editor-
During the first four weeks of the 2011-2012 academic year, STLCC-Meramec submitted 17 service tickets to Blackboard. One hundred and twenty-two service tickets were sent during the first four weeks of this academic year. Issue tickets are problems that the Meramec TESS (Technology & Educational Support Services) cannot solve without the help of Blackboard Inc., so Meramec sends a detailed report of what is wrong with Blackboard.
“Before the semester started,” said Vice Chancellor of TESS, Craig Klimczak, “we implemented an upgrade that injected unexpected challenges.”
Most of the service tickets were due to outages, pages partially loading and certain aspects of the website not being displayed.
“The outages lasted no longer than 10 minutes,” said Klimczak.
Klimczak said issues that are major or causing global instability are the issues sent to Blackboard.
“We had trouble finding out which problems were individual and which were global,” Klimczak said.
When troubles were first arising, Klimczak said that he realized it was “affecting enough people to do something,” and found that Blackboard was “not functioning at a level we needed.”
Faculty members such as Communications teacher Ellen McCloskey teach online classes and need Blackboard as a daily tool.
“I had to extend deadlines so students had a chance to turn assignments in,” McCloskey said.
McCloskey eventually went to the Board of Trustees meeting on Sept. 27, and spoke to the board. Board member Hattie Jackson agreed, and board member Libby Fitzgerald stated that the issue “has already been addressed.”
“The Blackboard system has technical issues this semester,” McCloskey said. “So I needed to tell the board about it.”
She suggested moving maintenance times from 5-11 a.m. on Sundays to 12-5 a.m. on Saturdays.
“I feel like it will give students more time to work on Sunday mornings rather than late at night on Saturday,” McCloskey said.
“Blackboard is our most heavily used system,” Klimczak said. “We have anywhere from 500 to 1,000 users in five minutes.”
They recently placed hot fixes to fix the graphical errors some were experiencing and placed patches over the more troubled spots.
Klimczak compares finding a problem within the system to a car problem.
“You know you hear a rattle,” Klimczak said. “But you just cannot put a finger on it. You just have to tweak a little here and tweak a little there.”
“I know our goal is to get the system running consistently,” McCloskey said.
A week ago, three patches were put onto Blackboard, and an outage has not yet happened.
“I personally have not had a problem, nor have my students.” McCloskey said.
“We’re very very positive,” Klimczak said while laughing, “but I still knock on wood.”
