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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 Jun 25, 2018 by axelle.noiret

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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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dmartin May 30, 2018 7:30 PM
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There is a JS hack that puts up an indicator that something is happening, not a progress bar but better than nothing. It's not mine but was posted by Ester Muñoz Aparicio in another forum.

https://github.com/eLearningMedia/Progress-jsHack@
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kirafine Jun 1, 2018 1:14 PM
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I am not very computer savvy, but I know how to do my work. I have experienced problems where my professor thought that I had not uploaded my assignments, or it comes up blank. I have been uploading my assignment and copy and pasting it in the comment section just to be sure they get the information. May not be the best solution, but it has worked.
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kevinoconnor Jun 1, 2018 10:04 AM
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Kind of a quick & easy fix but I added this text to the file upload screen:

"Recommended File Formats & Upload Details Please ensure you upload your assignment in a format your instructor will be able to access. Typically for essays, Word or PDF formats are recommended unless otherwise specified. When you are ready to submit, please click Submit once - your browser may not show the upload progress so you may need to wait a moment for the file to upload."

I added it to the end of the do.submit_msg= in the bb-assignment.properties section of the language pack. Haven't had any queries on it since touch wood.
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- katherine.williams @ kevinoconnor on Jun 1, 2018 10:07 AM
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  Kevin, this text appears as part of the "page help", right? We are thinking of editing the language pack as well but are a little nervous since up till now it's been our policy not to make those kinds of changes. I'm a little worried that a lot of users may have turned off the page help and won't see the message. Is that something you have noticed?
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  - emunoz @ katherine.williams on Jun 1, 2018 11:07 AM
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    Kathy, I think it depends where you add it.
    Modifying the langpack you can change any chain of text on the screen, not only the help part that users can hide if they wish. I don't know if that sentence Kevin mentions is part of the help or not, can be that is always visible to users....
    
    Anyway, as this is mostly problematic in assignments, you could also ask your faculty to add that sentence (or similar) to the instructions of the assignment.
    
    HTH,
    Ester
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  - kevinoconnor @ katherine.williams on Jun 5, 2018 5:49 AM
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    Sorry, it's not part of the Help page; it appears just above the Submit button on the file upload screen itself; I also added text relating to our university's plagiarism policy too. It's a useful spot for that kind of info since I don't think it can be turned off by the user:
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    - katherine.williams @ kevinoconnor on Jun 5, 2018 9:24 AM
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      Thanks Kevin! That's what I was hoping for, something they can't turn off.
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chrisboon Jun 8, 2018 7:26 AM
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For video submissions, we use our streaming server, Planet eStream, which integrates very well with Blackboard, and has an excellent Building Block which adds a Mash-Up tool similar to the Youtube one allowing users to embed videos in the VTBE. You can also upload videos to eStream via the Blackboard Mashup, eliminating the need to upload to eStream, wait to encode, and then embed in Blackboard.

I did a presentation at the 2014 Durham Blackboard Users Conference on our use of Planet eStream with Blackboard for video assignments; here's the presentation:
Video assignments - managing large submission files using Blackboard …
The ability to upload directly to eStream from Blackboard has been added since I did this presentation.
Here's the help sheet for students showing them how to submit their videos:
Submitting Work to Blackboard.docx - Google Drive
I'm sure something similar could be done with other streaming server systems...
Obviously, this only works for video files, and not other large files, such as Photoshop documents, Autocad drawings etc...
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axelle.noiret Jun 25, 2018 6:18 AM
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Hello, haven't read all comments, but submitted this 'idea' ( Loading bar for students submissions ) few mont ago
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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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