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Does anyone else have students complaining that when they upload a large file to Bb Assignments there is no progress bar and that some students think Bb has crashed?

Question asked by ts26901 on Mar 14, 2018
Latest reply on Mar 28, 2018 by jh0054576

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I had the following request from a member of teaching staff:

What bother me, and my students, much more is Bb sitting there doing nothing during the 5-10-15 mins it takes some large video files to be uploaded in a Blackboard Assignment by students for a piece of assessed work. It is very worrying and in fact it has caused problems because (stressed-out-by-deadlines) students think Bb ‘froze’ or ‘the assignment upload did not work’ when they only needed to wait long enough.

Any chance Blackboard can introduce a progress-bar when a file takes longer than a few seconds to upload? That would really help us.

Do others experience this on their installs or might be just be the size of files we are using are much bigger than others?

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dmartin Mar 14, 2018 7:18 PM
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Yes, we are having the same issue here with video files and large architectural or advertising images. I am using upload instructions that have a bold message that notifies the students of the lack of progress bar and the need for patience.

The upload progress bar should definitely be re-introduced.
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beyondtool Mar 14, 2018 9:02 PM
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Yes I've experienced the same problem with large video files. In end we suggested students use a different video platform and submit a link to the video. We offered students the option of using their YouTube account or Microsoft One Drive/Dropbox to submit.
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- burfordc @ beyondtool on Mar 15, 2018 7:08 AM
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  Christian, I was just curious about your student's integration with Microsoft OneDrive. Are you guys running Bb SaaS with the ability to use Microsoft OneDrive with your Bb environment? We're a self-hosted Bb customer and I've learned via one of the Bb Roadmap presentations that OneDrive integration might be coming along with one of the Q2 or Q4 2018 releases, so I was just curious how your student Microsoft OneDrive integration was working? Thank you.
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  - beyondtool @ burfordc on Mar 15, 2018 7:02 PM
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    We are migrating to SaaS this year but are self hosted at the moment. One drive software is integrated in all the PCs on campus and is the default home save location for PCs running Windows 10 (as in there is no home or user drive folder locally anymore everything in in the cloud or network drives). The long term IT plan is to have everything in the cloud, however I have had a lot of issues with one drive in the past when it fails to sync.
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emunoz Mar 15, 2018 1:36 AM
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We have had the same complaint, and ended up developing this:
https://github.com/eLearningMedia/Progress-jsHack
Nothing too fancy, just adds a little animated gif to the screen when you click "send" so, even you still have no progress bar (in the sense that it does not shows the % of the file), you get a visual hint of the button being pushed and the system doing something.

Ester
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- ts26901 @ emunoz on Mar 15, 2018 11:00 AM
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  Thank you - I will pass this on as a stop gap.
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- mw0046441 @ emunoz on Mar 22, 2018 11:29 AM
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  Thank you, I have added this to my list of things to research and possibly implement.
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plandrey Mar 15, 2018 10:40 AM
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We ask our undergrad students to upload to their YouTube account (unlisted) and share the link. In our ePortfolio system (Chalk&Wire), we give instructions on how to compress video files to meet the 200MB size limitation.
I've been experimenting with using Microsoft Stream as well.
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- ts26901 @ plandrey on Mar 15, 2018 11:02 AM
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  I'd considered recommending this but stopped short when I considered what would happen if the student then revoked access to the video during the assessment of it. I think we need to retain a copy of the "marked" work.
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  - emunoz @ ts26901 on Mar 19, 2018 9:48 AM
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    That is one of the concerns here.... the schools tells me that, if that is a work the student is sending, we should keep a copy within the course. The student could delete the file, and then there is no proof of their work in case of disputes for example.
    Ester
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katherine.williams Mar 27, 2018 2:56 PM
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We are definitely having the same problem. I would be ecstatic if they introduced a progress bar for assignment uploads.

The other issue we have complaints about is that the uploads are slower than expected, especially compared to google apps. I know it may be a little much to expect Bb to compare, but when a student is able to upload their 100 mb file to google drive on campus in a few seconds and then has to wait 15-20 minutes for it to upload into Bb (with no progress indicator!!) they aren't happy.
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jh0054576 Mar 28, 2018 11:56 PM
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Hi All,

It's a known issue.

Article reference https://blackboard.secure.force.com/btbb_articleview?id=kA339000000L4X

Targetted for a future fix no ETA, quite a frustrating issue for students submitting large files as there is no way to know if they are actually uploading the paper or if it's been interrupted for any reason.

Cheers
James
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Does anyone else have students complaining that when they upload a large file to Bb Assignments there is no progress bar and that some students think Bb has crashed?

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