Tech Tip Tuesday - Copy and Paste

We wanted to bring to your attention an issue that many are facing in their courses.  While the timing is perfect, with the recent BlackBoard update, it actually isn't a BlackBoard issue.  Many of us (including myself) have developed the bad habit of copying and pasting into Blackboard.  In the past this hasn't been a big deal, with the exception of occasional crazy formatting and characters it would give us.

The government is trying to crack down on plagiarism and copy write issues by having web browsers lock down their copy and paste ability.  Firefox, our preferred browser, is especially taking steps to prevent this.  We have seen issues with this mainly in the discussion board area so far.  

Some issues we have seen:

• The initial discussion board post is copied in and looks fine but any responses are 'blank' even though they typed something
• A discussion board response is pasted in and becomes 'blank' when saved

This weeks video tutorial, by Nadine Edwards, explains how to correctly insert text into Blackboard to avoid this issue.

If you have already fallen victim to this issue then you are able to fix it yourself with these steps.

1. When you hover over a 'blank' discussion board post you will see the options to 'Reply, Quote, Edit and Delete' 
   
2. Click 'Edit'  *NOTE: Student's, for good reason, do not have the ability to edit a post, only instructors
3. Copy the post and paste it into Word or an external source
4. Using the steps in the video tutorial above use the html button in the content editor to paste back in the content

Please feel free to share this with other instructors and your students.  We all need to follow best practices when it comes to copy and paste.

Important Blackboard Information for Students and Faculty

There have been some issues in the past few days regarding the Java program that all computers need to run many different programs and websites - including Blackboard.  If you haven't already, you will be receiving an email from the university regarding this issue.

Any older versions of Java are continually being blocked on different web browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari to protect and prevent users from experiencing any security issues.  This can cause your browser to freeze and/or shut down - including Blackboard.  Cyber security is a major US threat and the federal government and homeland security are also involved.

To keep you protected and to keep Blackboard working properly Java has been updating very frequently.  Many of us are not used to having to update our computer manually but this is a frequent and crucial step we must take in the upcoming weeks until this issue has been sorted out.

The purpose of this post is to give a tutorial walk-through to make sure you always have the most current Java update on your computer so there are no issues.

Link to do a Java test.