Numbas/Blackboard error

[David Wishart]

I suspect that this is possibly a Blackboard issue more than a Numbas one (I have contacted our eLerning team as well to that purpose) but I was wondering if anyone could shed any light as to what causes the following error? We have a test on Blackboard (imported via a Numbas generated SCORM package) which gives the following error when it is run (in preview mode at least).

There isn't a variable 'a' in the specified question and the question itself runs fine in Numbas. 

If the test is run outside of preview mode then it's fine and importing the test elsewhere also lets it run without error. I don't want to simply replace the existing one yet though as there is student data attached to it and I'd rather know more about what is happening before doing so.

[Christian Lawson-Perfect]

Can you send me your .zip file, please?

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[David Wishart]

Hello Christian,

Thanks you should have it now. Our eLearning team have been looking at this too and it seems to work fine for some users but not for others.

[David Wishart]

Similar has happened with another test yesterday. It doesn't seem to be consistent as this test worked fine with a group of students on Monday but yesterday it only worked for about half of a group. This was from exactly the same Blackboard module and the test was untouched between the 2 days. The symptoms were the same in that Numbas failed due to not finding a variable that was neither in a question nor supposed to be there.

I've come across a different issue with uploading another SCORM based test to Blackboard today. I get the error message shown below and it won't upload. I've tried downloading the test a couple of times. Again this query has also gone to our eLearning team who look after Blackboard.

[Christian Lawson-Perfect]

David,

I never received your zip file. Can you send a link to the exam's editor page to christia...@ncl.ac.uk please?

[David Wishart]

Emailed this morning. 

The error message preventing me uploading SCORM packages to Blackboard has been identified as a Blackboard issue and fixed,

[Christian Lawson-Perfect]

Super! For the benefit of others, do you know what the problem, and solution, were?

On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 at 15:04 David Wishart <d.wi...@tees.ac.uk> wrote:

Emailed this morning. 

The error message preventing me uploading SCORM packages to Blackboard has been identified as a Blackboard issue and fixed,

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[David Wishart]

On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 3:07:08 PM UTC+1, Christian Lawson-Perfect wrote:

Super! For the benefit of others, do you know what the problem, and solution, were?

I asked our experts that fixed this, it's this....

"The Blackboard SCORM player interacts with a module’s Grade Centre using a SOAP web service. When new SCORM content is added to a module and a Grade Centre column to record SCORM completion or score is requested, the web service “Gradebook.WS” is called to complete these tasks. Blackboard has a feature which allows administrators to allow or deny certain hosts from accessing the web services, as well as adding remote hosts to this list, the local host loopback address should also be added so that services running on the Blackboard server have access to the SOAP web service. The remote hosts that we needed to allow access to the web service were on the list, but due to a misunderstanding 127.0.0.1 was removed, stopping the local SCORM player from accessing the web service." 

[Christian Lawson-Perfect]

Thanks!

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[Ben Brawn]

So did that fix both problems?

[David Wishart]

No, just the one with uploading tests.

The issue with tests failing due to variables not being defined is still there.

[Christian Lawson-Perfect]

Ah! I should've asked. I'll look at that on Monday.

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 at 09:19 David Wishart <d.wi...@tees.ac.uk> wrote:

No, just the one with uploading tests.

The issue with tests failing due to variables not being defined is still there.

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[David Wishart]

Thanks Christian,

We are also still investigating possibilities with Blackboard at our side as there have been a few issues (not connected to Numbas) this week which may or may not be related.

[Christian Lawson-Perfect]

It looks like this was a bug with the way that 'expression' values are saved to the SCORM suspend data. I've made a fix - if you re-download the SCORM package, it should fix the "variable not defined" problem.

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 at 13:56 David Wishart <d.wi...@tees.ac.uk> wrote:

Thanks Christian,

We are also still investigating possibilities with Blackboard at our side as there have been a few issues (not connected to Numbas) this week which may or may not be related.

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[David Wishart]

Thank you for this. I've downloaded them again today so the team can deploy tomorrow.

[David Wishart]

Just to hopefully close this off properly now, we've had another round of students go through the revised tests with the bug fix and things seem to be all working so it looks like the fix has been successful.

Thanks again

David

P.S. It looks like I have some more tests to start writing next week so be prepared for the next barrage of questions!

[Christian Lawson-Perfect]

Glad to hear it!

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