Blackboard Down???

Red Alert · 08-11-2007 10:00am

Do, because I think if the SU rolled in on this one it might also deal with some of the SU-apathy that's around the place.

Fact is, they screwed up a 'mission critical' system right when it was needed. Of course the lazy bums wouldn't give up their christmas holidays to do the upgrade that might break and affect everyone.

irlrobins · 08-11-2007 10:07am

But the key thing is not to turn this into a "villagers baying for the witch's blood" campaign. A better approach from the SU would be to get the administration to:

a) provide an account of what happened and what went wrong
b) how this will be prevented from reoccurring
c) and most importantly to agree to put in place a policy or procedure whereby upgrades on a scale like this are not carried out at critical points in the year and to examine the potential impact of any IT change on the student/staff population.

delta_bravo · 08-11-2007 10:11am

Blackboard is back

Red Alert · 08-11-2007 10:17am

Look irlrobins, I agree with what you're saying - but that should go without saying. Surely somebody on the salaries they are paid should have figured out what you and I instinctively know. Sadly, somebody needs to be seen to be fired (i.e. lose their job, no reference, all the rest) for confidence to be restored in IT services.

Imagine if next thing the staff or student e-mail decides to be upgraded in a similar fashion?

Dori Duz · 08-11-2007 10:44am

delta_bravo wrote: »

Blackboard is back

It wont work for me yet....:mad:

Jonny Arson · 08-11-2007 10:48am

ronanp wrote: »

This is not the premiership. It takes a lot to fire someone. Either some gross, gross, misconduct or a long history of failing to perform duties. Everybody cocks up, you have before, probably often, and you will again. Shocking stuff I know.

There are consequences to firing people. Firing someone will not bring back the 2 days of electronic notes you've missed. It may impact someones family and future employment prospects. And yes, i'm afraid their livelihood IS more important than your two days of notes. Whatever your parents may have told you about you being the most special little boy in the whole world is bo11ocks i'm afraid.

For all we know, and in all probability, the person or persons responsible for this failure are highly capable individuals who've overlooked something this once. It happens. Get over it. And get a job.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

so not matter how much someone grossly neglects the duty of their job we should guarantee them their job no matter what because a sure they've got their poor livelihoods to look after

pure and utter stinking bullsh!t

this wasn't a standard straight forward cock up. this is clearly about individuals recklessly failing and neglecting their duties and procedures. we are not talking about people's f**king livelihoods, we're talking about our education and because of these incompetent morons without brain cells i can't access the material I NEED to complete a project delaying and reducing my timeframe to complete the project. i know others students who depend on access to Blackboard as have been f**ked this week. There is unquestionably going to be students affected by this that it could mean the difference between them getting an honours or pass in their finals. Is that not possibly going to affect student's future livelihoods?

snap out of your utopian world where there is no consequences and no one should be held accountable for failing to do their job.

Jonny Arson · 08-11-2007 10:50am

Dori Duz wrote: »

It wont work for me yet....:mad:

it's not available through connect

go through this link http://elearning.ucd.ie/webapps/login/

and chuck in your username and password and ye should be grand

dajaffa · 08-11-2007 10:58am

It's only partially back:

UCD staff email wrote:

Dear colleagues,

Following work on the Blackboard environment, the service today ( Thurs. 8th
) has now been extended to students at specific loactions - James Joyce
Library, Daedalus IT Services student labs, Blackrock Campus, Health
Sciences Library and student labs. The service may be extended to other
areas later in the day as greater system capacity is brought on-line.

UCD IT Services.

ronanp · 08-11-2007 11:02am

I'm amazed at the notion many of ye have that someone in the private sector would be fired for something like this. I'm sure you'll all have wonderful examples of how some foreign chap you worked with on your part time summer job for your dads company got fired for spilling his expresso on the photocopier or some such drivel, but I can assure ye, its not that easy fire someone.

Now, if ye can put down ye'r cappucinos and pitchforks for a minute, do any of ye know what went wrong, why it went wrong, and whos fault it was? And do you know if that person being fired would reduce the chances of this or similar event happening again? In fact, do ye know anything about this other than that ye want someone fired?

Look at breaking news. Theres kids being buggered sideways up and down the country, random people finding out they're terminally ill having been assured they were all clear, a dead body or two turning up every morning in suspicious circumstances. Ye had no ELECTRONIC notes for 3 days. According to that itcommunicate mail its already back in some places. Get a bit of perspective for f*ck sake, and stop furthering the perception that UCD students are just spoiled little middle class ****. We dont know what happened and having a hissy fit insisting someone gets fired for it is pathetic.

dajaffa · 08-11-2007 11:23am

ronanp wrote: »

had no ELECTRONIC notes for 3 days. According to that itcommunicate mail its already back in some places. Get a bit of perspective for f*ck sake, and stop furthering the perception that UCD students are just spoiled little middle class ****.

Well it's nearly a week now and we're only starting to get limited access. Whatever about the weekend unavailability, there clearly should have been a backup. I work in IT in a county council in the summers. Tbh they aren't great with a lot of things, but for EVERYTHING they have a test environment + a live environment on separate servers. Period of unavailability for 6000+ people would only ever be a few hours outside of normal working time. Blackboard which is used by far more people should have had a similar setup so that situations like this wouldn't happen.

nellybelly · 08-11-2007 11:40am

back up now...for me anyway.

Stepherunie · 08-11-2007 12:08pm

Yep it's up though a lot of the annoucements seem to have been lost from the server.

Cannibal Ox · 08-11-2007 1:40pm

@ronanp,
I think you're missing the point. It isn't just that IT failed toupgrade BB, or that students were without electronic notes. If tech support had failed to upgrade BB6 to BB7, but had provided an alternative service while they figured out what went wrong, then there'd be little to argue about. They didn't, in fact, they managed to erase BB6. That is incredibly incompetent for a group of people who are being paid for their expertise in IT.

Theres also the issue of who decided this would be a good time to upgrade BB. Afaik, there was no pressing need to upgrade it. Surely it must have dawned on someone, somewhere, that any upgrade of BB might run into difficulties, and could result in outage for 20K + students just before exam time, and with essay deadlines coming in.

Lastly, I'd guess that most people on this forum weren't hugely surprised by the outage. Hugh Brady is supposedly trying to turn UCD into one of the premier universities in Europe. Surely he has a vested interest in seeing that the student, and staff, body have confidence in services.

Do I think someone should be fired over this? First and foremost, I'd like to see IT services come out and give a detailed explanation to students and staff about exactly why they decided to do the upgrade now, and exactly, point by point, what went wrong. Then we can talk about pitchforks.

Umaro · 08-11-2007 1:54pm

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/2448/blackboardtoolsdy9.jpg (See 'Tools')

Well blow me down (literally) - it WAS worth it after all.

woop · 08-11-2007 1:57pm

its back!
you have to admit it was stupidly timed though ............its not like we dont have a month break in a few weeks when it could have been done

Dori Duz · 08-11-2007 2:02pm

Jonny Arson wrote: »

it's not available through connect

go through this link http://elearning.ucd.ie/webapps/login/

and chuck in your username and password and ye should be grand

Thanks!!

Dave! · 08-11-2007 2:07pm

Umaro wrote: »

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/2448/blackboardtoolsdy9.jpg (See 'Tools')

Well blow me down (literally) - it WAS worth it after all.

lol

Pride Fighter · 08-11-2007 2:19pm

Umaro wrote: »

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/2448/blackboardtoolsdy9.jpg (See 'Tools')

Well blow me down (literally) - it WAS worth it after all.

It looks the exact same. LOL, what a waste.

Stepherunie · 08-11-2007 2:49pm

Mainly because it is the exact same...

Ah BB6 How i missed you....

Blut · 08-11-2007 6:16pm

ronanp wrote: »

UCD students are just spoiled little middle class ****.

I have to say I do love the impression that this ronanp chap is giving off; that all UCD's support staff are harboring an intense irrational dislike of students. It does go some way to explaining why all the services provided by the college are so piss poor though - good old passive aggressive petty revenge! If you hate students so much might I ask why you continue to work in a university?

ronanp · 08-11-2007 7:49pm

Blut wrote: »

I have to say I do love the impression that this ronanp chap is giving off; that all UCD's support staff are harboring an intense irrational dislike of students. It does go some way to explaining why all the services provided by the college are so piss poor though - good old passive aggressive petty revenge!

I didnt say that. If you're going to quote, quote the full sentence, not from midway. I said that suggesting someone be fired when we don't know the facts only promoted that view of students here. So apart from that sh*te up there, what is your point? I've said nothing about this blackboard business not being a cock up. How could I when I dont know anything about it? My only point has been that firing someone for making a mistake is very ****ing stupid.

If you hate students so much might I ask why you continue to work in a university?

There are so many inaccuracies in that sentence I couldn't begin to correct them.

mloc · 08-11-2007 8:17pm

ronanp wrote: »

How could I when I dont know anything about it?

Best keep the mouth closed and fingers off the keyboard so, generally not a good idea to argue about something you have no idea bout.

Just a thought.

ronanp · 08-11-2007 8:26pm

mloc wrote: »

Best keep the mouth closed and fingers off the keyboard so, generally not a good idea to argue about something you have no idea bout.

Just a thought.

Agreed. But the point is that none of us know anything about it.

Sarn · 08-11-2007 9:13pm

I have to say it was a very poor time to decide to upgrade the system. As pointed out above Summer, Christmas etc would have been more appropriate to ensure continuity of service.

What I would say though is that people should not be so dependent on last minute access to BB. Don't wait until the week before your exams to get all your notes off it. The whole idea of BB is that you get the material before the lecture so that you can look over it ensuring you get the most out of it.

A few days disruption is annoying, online assignments can be rescheduled, announcements can be given in lectures or tutorials and it is possible to write down your lecture notes in the lecture. Remember UCD was run for years without BB (some would say better run).