Blackboard crashes during test

450 students were left confused and frustrated after Blackboard crashed during a Business Economics online test last Thursday. The test was scheduled to start at 18:00, and within ten minutes, students started reporting issues with their tests, such as images and formulae not loading as expected. Shortly afterwards, Blackboard went down.

Course Lecturer Dr Ralf Martin emailed students immediately afterwards, telling them he was "super furious". He told students they had received "multiple assurances" that Blackboard would be able to handle the number of students running the test simultaneously. Dr Martin made his opinions very clear to students, telling them in another email "I can only speculate that their [College ICT's] server is so badly managed that it cannot handle 450 students."

Speaking to _Felix _about the incident, he said, “I wasn’t personally promised that someone from ICT would be present but it took them a long time to respond, we still haven’t had a formal response. We couldn’t reach anybody until reach anybody until several days after."

Dr Martin was also unimpressed with apparent issues with Web Browser compatibility, citing other tests that had issues due to students using Google Chrome instead of Firefox or Internet Explorer, leading him to tell students, "Chrome is not some weird exotic browser. Almost every lecture I would spend saying not to use chrome but maybe that was not the reason." The lack of contact from ICT with Dr Martin has left him confused and still trying to understand why it had failed. He speculated that smaller courses have used Blackboard successfully with Chrome, so it was more likely an issue with the total number of students taking the test.

In an email to Directors of Undergraduate Studies who have students enrolled on the course, Edina Hamzic-Maguire of the Business School told colleagues that the outage did in fact not register on College ICT systems. The Business School were also told by ICT that the "test will be recorded in the team calendar and someone may be available out of hours to trouble shoot". When it came to the evening, a phone call to ICT was made, but it went straight to a standard out of hours message. ICT later told the Business School that no staff were available to be on standby past 18:00.

Students found the cancellation and subsequent rescheduling of the test inconvenient, one saying, "It is extremely inconvenient for me as I both have interviews and a funeral abroad in the coming weeks, meaning that I will not have much time at all to refresh everything which I studied for the test." and another adding "It's all very well saying that all we did is “study the material of a module you signed up for,” but the fact is that if there hadn’t been the blackboard test I would not have chosen to prioritise my time towards this module. The fact that I did so at the detriment of my other modules, job applications, and extra-curricular activities, only to find the test cancelled, is extremely inconvenient."

The Business School have received praise for taking students' views into account when deciding how best to proceed, something most students believe is unique to the Business School. "The business school have done a good job in considering what’s best for students. An online survey for the best way to deal with the situation is something most departments wouldn’t do, and giving two different dates to do a test isn’t something I’ve heard of before."

An Imperial College Spokesperson was keen to point out Blackboard's track record of reliability, issuing the statement: "The College regrets that an online Business Economics test scheduled for the evening of 13 November had to be terminated due to a technical problem with Blackboard – the College’s virtual learning environment – through which the test was being administered. Affected students were polled on when the test should be re-run and, to minimise inconvenience, two alternative dates will be offered.

“Advance checks showed no issues with Blackboard, which has proven a reliable system for the College, with 99.99% service availability between Oct 2013 and Oct 2014. Unfortunately on this occasion, an unforeseen problem occurred.

“ICT is working closely with the Business School and the supplier of Blackboard Learn to determine the cause of the issue and to reduce the risk of a future outage to the e-Learning System. The College is grateful for the input of affected students who have been invited to share what they experienced when attempting to use the system during the test."

Planning for the test to be done again is underway. In order to reduce the stress and inconvenience to students, two different times will be available: one before Christmas, and the other after. The Business School have decided not to use Blackboard for the retests, instead load testing alternative software.