Teaching Online at UTAS

This article discusses common technical problems with MyLO and associated software and some handy ways to help!

Students can’t hear me in online room? (Blackboard Collaborate)

• While the Online Rooms are generally reliable the more common issues encountered with Online Rooms are around audio not working (lecturer or student).
• I have personally found that when a USB headset has worked in the past but is not working suddenly – unplug it from the USB port and plug back in. That sometimes fixes the issue.
• Consider having a ‘test and see’ session before the official start of Online Tutorials so that you and your students can test your equipment/browser etc.
• If one browser is not loading the room, try another. You may find particular browsers more reliable than others. Chrome is recommended however I have personally also found Firefox to be very reliable.
• Ensure your browser and any associated software (ie, Flash player) are up to date.
• It is hard to diagnose student audio problems, each set up is quite different – consider having some useful guides set up in your unit so that they can do some troubleshooting before contacting you or ITR. Ask your Ed-Tech to help set some up! (these are in the TSBE template by default).

Students can’t get to Grademark Feedback to view comments?

• Students won’t see their Grademark Feedback until the assignment is set to “published”.
• Students may have trouble getting into Grademark for Units that have gone past their End Date. (ie past the end of semester). This is a known issue for which the solution is, currently, for staff to go into the assignment & download the Grademark comments as PDF. For this reason it is useful to remind students to download any feedback they wish to keep before classes end.

Student can’t submit subsequent assignment files to a submission area?

• Occasionally staff may have students who have submitted one file to the Assignment Submission area then state they can’t submit again.
• Sometimes this is because they are not sure how to go back to do so.
• Sometimes it because the assignment settings only allow one submission.
• Sometimes it is because the ‘end-date’ has been reached.
• Check settings for submission and/or consider providing some help files. For students who are re-submitting files they need to click on the assignment name as they did the first time, many get lost when they click the link under ‘submissions’ instead.

Student’s file didn’t go through Turnitin?

• This is one of the most common staff questions regarding Turnitin.
• When a file does not go through the system it will show as a triangle icon with ! where the report icon would normally be.
• Hover your mouse over this icon for a small explanation of the issue.
• If the issue is “File does not contain valid text” it means the file cannot be read as text by the system. For example a PDF that has been created by scanning text with a scanner, or a scanned hand-written document. Your student will need to submit a file with electronic text – like a word document.
• Issues like “Could not contact server” can sometimes be resolved by clicking the small icon to the right of the ! This will resubmit the file to Turnitin.
• If you see “Invalid File type” or similar – it means the file is not the required type of file (ie, it might be a Zip or Video). Your student will need to resubmit an appropriate file.
• If the file shows a score of 0% and doesn’t load up the report in Turnitin you will need to lodge a service desk ticket.

Student states their Quiz crashed halfway through?

• By far and away the most common technical issue with quizzes is working out whether the students claim of the quiz crash is accurate and how to allow them another go.
• There is a way to view the “event log” in any quiz attempt. This shows when the quiz was entered, when each question was saved and whether the quiz was exited normally. Get to know how to access and interpret this log. [Click here for more information]
• You can resolve issues with attempts that are ‘stuck’ by following the instructions here [PDF].
• When allowing another attempt of a quiz the ‘Special Access’ now allows you to keep any original attempts by over-riding the maximum attempts allowed. [PDF]