CIRT, University of North Florida

What do I do if some or all of my students were taking an assessment when Blackboard experienced a service interruption?

Sometimes, the UNF Blackboard server experiences service interruptions. Some of these service interruptions are planned, including scheduled maintenance during the maintenance window each week and planned software and hardware upgrades. Some of these service interruptions are unplanned and are due to high levels of activity on Blackboard, power outages, and other unexpected factors.

It is important to keep yourself informed about scheduled service interruptions to insure that you do not plan to administer assessments during these times. It is also important to inform your students about scheduled Blackboard maintenance so that they don't attempt an assessment during scheduled maintenance.

The scheduled Blackboard maintenance window is daily from 2:00 am until 5:00 am and Sunday from 5:00 am until 9:00 am. It is important to notify students that they should not attempt an assessment during these times.

When a service interruption is required to perform hardware or software upgrades, the Blackboard Administrators communicate the planned maintenance and service interruption in several locations including: Campus Update, Student Update, System Announcements in Blackboard, All Blackboard instructor emails, All Faculty/All Adjunct emails, and notices on the Blackboard homepage, ITS homepage and CIRT Blackboard page.

However, sometimes service interruptions occur unexpectedly and students may lose their connection to Blackboard during an assessment. If this happens, there are several options available to faculty to allow students to successfully complete an assessment:

Clear a Student's Attempt - This option will clear the student's attempt on an assessment and all of the data associated with the assessment. The student will be able to retake the assessment.
Click here for more information

Allow Multiple Attempts - This option will allow students to attempt an assessment more than one time. A number of attempts may be designated or unlimited attempts may be allowed. The instructor may decide to score the first, last, highest, lowest, or average of all attempts.
Click here for more details
Click here for instructions on allowing multiple attempts on an assessment
Click here for instructions on scoring multiple attempts

Use Multiple Assessments - An instructor may wish to deploy an alternative assessment for students whom are unable to complete an assessment for any reason. This option may be used in conjunction with Adaptive Release if an instructor does not wish to make an alternative assessment available to all students in a course.
Click here for more information on Adaptive Release

Force Completion - Instructors may wish to uncheck the Force Completion box when deploying a test so that students may re-enter an assessment if they lose their Blackboard connection.
Modify the Test Options>Uncheck Force Completion