By: Justin Humphries
Algonquin students living on residence were surprised to see they were not able to access Blackboard in their dorms after their winter vacation.
The issue happened when students accessed the log in interface through your residence computer, which caused your browser system to not respond. Many people believed this was an issue with Blackboard itself, since they were able to use the other programs on the Student Portal, such as ACSIS.
According to Blackboard managers Paul Schieman and David Loignon, the issue had to do with the networking between residence and the College. An unknown glitch within the firewall software caused some services to be disallowed.
“A few people emailed us about issues surrounding Blackboard in residence,” Schieman said. “All we needed to do was restart the software on our firewalls. There have been no problems since then.”
“People here are very passionate about Blackboard stability,” Loignon said. “We’re also working to make Blackboard more accessible for Algonquin students and increase system security.”
When issues happen with Blackboard or any system on the campus, the most common fix is to do a system restart. Often, the glitch or issue is never determined.
Nkurunziza Walter, a computer programming student who lives in residence, had experienced similar problems with Blackboard in his dorm.
“I was a little worried going into my course,” Walter said, “My course relies on Blackboard being available to me at all times. Sometimes people in customer service will take a while to fix these issues, so I was happy to see it being solved so quickly.”
For now, the software reset has fixed all issues in residence. Blackboard employees are confident in their systems stability and are looking forward to fulfill their New Year’s resolution by increasing stability and making it more accessible.