Blackboard Vista

Two vendors.

Both think the problem must be the other’s fault. Because you know… Their product is perfect. They never have design issues. Ever. So it must be someone else’s fault.

Problem 1:

Upon loading the zip package into the CE/Vista SCORM module, the end user saw:

The SCORM package is not compliant with SCORM Ver 1.2 Conformance Requirements. All supporting schemas must be at the root of the package; the following schemas were not found at the root: [adlcp_rootv1p2.xsd, imscp_rootv1p1p2.xsd, imsmd_rootv1p2p1.xsd] As a result, the package may not perform as desired. Are you sure you want to continue?

I actually feel bad for not immediately recognizing this meant these XSD files needed to be in the zip file.  Blackboard ought to feel bad for having the response this means the imsmanifest.xml in the file was written for a more current version of SCORM than the rather ancient 1.2. I could understand that response if specific items in the file are only relevant in the current version. I don’t understand that response when the same file which works with Vista 3 (created about the same time as SCORM 1.2) works and Vista 8 doesn’t. Sounds more like something changed in Vista 8 to make it more strict.

Fixing the missing XSDs files resulted in a new error:

The SCORM package could not be imported because it does not comply with one or more specifications within the package. The following error was produced: **Parsing Error** Line: 7 Message: cvc-complex-type.2.4.c: The matching wildcard is strict, but no declaration can be found for element ‘lom’. Please inform the SCORM vendor and try again once the problem has been resolved.

Is it wrong to be excited about an error? Dropping the problematic items from the imsmanifest.xml file produces new errors. After five iterations, I don’t seem to be making much progress.

Problem 2:

This SCORM module simply passes to an HTML file with JavaScript some variables to send the user off to the QuestionMark site. It should not this big of a deal.

Somehow Vista 8 is calling the file where it doesn’t exist for the QuestionMark SCORM module but not other modules.

QuestionMark addres:

/webct/scorm/viewer/perceptionSCO.htm?call=scorm&
session=9999999999999999&
href=https://ondemand.questionmark.com/delivery/session.php&
lang=-&customerid=mcg

Known good SCORM module address:

/webct/RelativeResourceManager/999999999999/filename.html

The number after RelativeResourceManager typically can be found under “View File Information” in the file manager. The file name after the number is the name of a file in the zip. Copying the address for the known good let me view it. At this point it seemed logical I could just build the address to the QuestionMark zip manually and see it as a designer (maybe not as a student). Unfortunately, this gives me system exception errors.

Last Solutions:

In trying to solve two problems with one stone, I took the imsmanifest.xml for the known good SCORM module and just changed the href= for resource and file to use the perceptionSCO.html file name for QuestionMark. Still failed to find the file.

BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT…

I removed all the variables after the perceptionSCO.htm. Now Vista finds the file. It gives me errors about not having the values in those variables, but it found it.

This is stupid.

Apparently designers are embedding video from external sources in our Vista 8 environment. Internet Explorer complains when elements of a secure page reference non-secure elements. In this case, CE/Vista has the secure page. The embedded video is a non-secure element. At best the IE complaint is to prompt the user to pick whether to view the non-secure element. At worst, it just refuses to show the page and shows “Navigation cancelled”.

The possibilities are:

1. Browser: Use a different one which doesn’t complain.
2. Settings: When it comes to security settings, I’m hesitant to recommend thousands of users change them without being extremely sure doing so is safe. Seems to me having it ignore the issue exposes users to danger. Rumor is also Windows Updates can revert the settings back to defaults.
3. Content: Change how the content is delivered to avoid the issue.

The content is being put inside HTML files rather than using the Web Link tool to open a new window with the video. Even using a Web Link tool to show the content inside the same window causes the IE complaint.

All three will cause a ton of work to address the issues. In my opinion wrangling designers ought to require the least amount of work of the three. Though I guess that would depend on the popularity of IE and neediness of the users.

The CE/Vista error “Unable to locate the page you requested” is supposed to be a more user friendly error than the HTTP 404 Page Not Found. Okay, sure between the two, more users would understand the CE/Vista one than the generic HTTP one. The only suggestion for dealing with these is to contact the server administrator via a mailto link.

Say what? We had over 22,000 active sections last term? We have 40 institutions and dozens of professional designers and thousands of faculty designing their own classes. Cryptic emails about being frustrated with Vista means I have to contact the sender, find out what institution, class, problem happened and send that to an institution person who has to figure out which designer to direct it. I’m too far removed to be useful for these requests.

Solutions:

1. CE/Vista ought to keep a broken link report. It would record to a log in the Designer Tools reporting which addresses resulted in errors and a list of the referrers, how many times requests came from each referrer. This gives designers something they can use to address the problems. Maybe give the designers the ability to reset the log on a page when they think they have fixed it. Give them an icon in the class list to see when there are unhandled cases.
2. Assuming the above is too hard, this mailto link should be a form recording the learning context involved, referring page, browser, user, and file which failed the request. The message could go to the mail tool for the designers.

Saw this on Laura Gekeler’s blog:

Tip: Keep a ‘last known good’ config.xml file on your admin node.
Your Bb Vista cluster config.xml file | laura gekeler

Very good tip! We learned this lesson a couple months into hosting Vista 8 in pre-production.

She goes on to explain this file gets overwritten any time a change in Weblogic is made. Sometimes these changes are (un)intentionally made by an administrator using the console. Sometimes Weblogic detects problematic conditions and makes the change itself. When these changes create problematic conditions, then the last known good version saved us from having to go make the changes ourselves and potentially miss something.

In our cases of problems, a single node failing to shutdown after the JMS node was shutdown caused Weblogic to rewrite who should be the JMS node. It also caused a jumbling of the user preferred server stanzas. We now monitor for these problems and page ourselves to warn us about the problem so we can address it immediately rather than let our clients discover the problem a few days later. (I also somewhat mentioned this in the Forcing Weblogic’s Config.xml post.)

The times I’ve done this I didn’t go as far as Laura. I just…

1. Stop all the nodes in the cluster.
2. Copy the current version from $WEBLOGIC_DOMAIN/config/config.xml to /home/<user>.
3. Copy the last known version from /pathto/lastknownversion/config.xml to $WEBLOGIC_DOMAIN/config/.
4. Use “touch $WEBLOGIC_DOMAIN/REFRESH” on each managed node.

I am now curious about why she wanted new server directories or a new Vista_WLSstore database table?

A few weeks ago, we had a discussion with our clients about a rash of students submitting the wrong files for assignments. These files were all Windows shortcuts to the actual document. The instructors were unable to open the file. The students were unaware of the mistake. So confusion all around makes for unhappy situations.

In my opinion this situation arises because Microsoft makes it difficult to notice a shortcut file isn’t the actual file on Windows.

1. By default Windows XP and Vista (anyone know about Win 7?) have “Hide extensions for known file types” checked. So a student is unlikely to notice a shortcut has .lnk instead of .docx by looking at the file name. I think this situation was created to solve the issue of users renaming files to the wrong extension arbitrarily. Windows depends on the file extension for much software.
2. Most file icons have a set appearance. Shortcut icons look like the target file only with a small white box with an arrow. Most users are likely to miss this distinction in my opinion.

Our recommendation to students is to remove the setting mentioned in #1. This ought to better help students figure out which file they are going to submit. Let’s hope, anyway.