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Blackboard Exam Problems and How to Avoid Them

  1. For Questions Adding Math Notation to Blackboard, see this page.
  2. Avoid Force Completion!
    1. 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’t 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’s 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—as such—will close and submit the user’s attempt; regardless of how far into the exam they are and how much time is remaining. This often results in panicked users with “completed” exams that they still had time left on and that were not finished, emailing their instructor for help to reopen their exam.
    2. Important to note: an attempt—once submitted—cannot 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.
  3. All Users: Avoid Internet Explorer!
    1. Internet Explorer is—unfortunately—the default browser on a number of computers both at WSU and on many users’ 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’s 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.
      1. Exam answers stop saving when users click on the individual “save answer” button associated with each question. When the “save answer” button is used—especially in conjunction with Internet Explorer—answers 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 “Ignore” the test attempt inside of Blackboard and open a new attempt for the impacted student.
      2. 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—either by the student or because of a test setting—a new attempt will need to be opened for the student to allow them to properly attempt the test.
    2. 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, 
  4. Don’t Use Exam Passwords!
    1. Passwords are often thought to provide an extra security measure to prevent unauthorized users from accessing an exam; but this simply isn’t 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.
    2. This will result in panicked emails from the student, who—in many cases—has 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.
  5. Double Check Your Exam Dates!
    1. One of the biggest errors that we see with exams stems from incorrect availability—or display—dates. 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.
    2. 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 “due dates” you have written into your item descriptions or marked in assessment settings.
  6. Make Your Exam Available To Students!
    1. When you set up an exam in Blackboard, you will need to ensure that you have selected the “Yes” option for the “Make available to students” 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 “No” 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.
    2. 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.