The COVID-19 Pandemic, which started last year, is still in place. CBNU has been conducting online classes through the Blackboard system since 2020. There are advantages of being able to take classes conveniently and listening to them regardless of time and place, but if there are any advantages, there are also disadvantages. Actually, after conducting online classes on Blackboard, hundreds of Blackboard errors were reported. In this article, a CBT reporter would like to learn more about errors related to using Blackboards and listen to students’opinions.
  Last April, there was a situation in which some information of students was removed from the information section of CBNU’s Blackboard system because the student’s information got out. About this, the CROSS student council received an answer that Blackboard was being updated through inquiries from the Creative Convergence Education Headquarters, and requested rapid restoration and continuous management to guarantee students’ right to study. Showing due diligence, they sent a group notification message to each department’s student council, affirming that our CROSS student council will always work hard to ensure the right of students to study.

  About the error, Blackboard said, “Recently, there were some problems in interlocking Kaltura(CMS) and online attendance inquiry. This happened because of policy changes by Chrome’s recent update related to their enhanced security policy changes, and it will take a while to resolve it. We will solve the problem of attendance error in week 9 as soon as possible. We apologize for causing any inconvenience while using e-campus, and we ask for your patience. Now and forever, we will try to support a stable e-campus environment.”

  Unfortunately, there are a lot of additional complaints about inconvenience because some of the classes disappear or miscellaneous errors occur. These include not being able to confirm attendance even though the lecture is completed. A related survey was conducted from May 10 to May 14 to find out whether or not students have experienced Blackboard errors and to list the detailed reasons for them. A total of 128 students responded and 82.4% of students experienced Blackboard errors. As you can clearly see, it is a considerably high numerical value. Among the inconveniences 71.9 % was attendance-related problems, 9.4% was downloading lecture materials glitches, 6.3% was notification-related failures, and 12.5% was other snags.

  In an interview with our school student, Jang Seo-yoon(a sophomore in the Dept. of Korean Language Education), she complained about the inconvenience of using the Blackboard and shared her thoughts on what to improve. She said, “The system itself slows down and often fails. First, I often feel uncomfortable listening to lectures or downloading materials. Especially, when I download lecture material, it takes too much time to do and sometimes it even takes a few days. Furthermore, servers often don’t work smoothly late at night or at dawn. Another problem is that sometimes attendance isn’t recognized completely. I’m sure I took all the lectures, but if I check them later, it often doesn’t recognize me, so I complained of inconvenience. Finally, the fact that attendance can only be checked the next day is also one of the major inconveniences. It is extremely inconvenient to check our attendance one day after listening to a lecture. Mostly, it’s not a big inconvenience to be admitted to attendance, but I wish a slight improvement can be made in the rate of attendance recognition for convenient use of Blackboards.”

  Also, Baek Gun-hwan(a sophomore in the department of Korean Language and Literature), said, “In the case of mobile Blackboard, sometimes notifications don’t come right away or it comes too late when lecture material is uploaded. In this case, I feel inconvenienced since I can check assignments or video lectures late. Also, from time to time, an examination paper uploads too late in the examination period.”

  About these kinds of inconveniences, Kim Won-hee, an action officer of an online center for teaching and learning commented, “We apologize for causing inconvenience in studying because of unexpected errors.  Regarding the use of the Blackboard, if you contact the center in case of an error, we will solve it as soon as possible,” she said, expressing her intention to make efforts to guarantee students’ right to study.

  People are slowly getting used to COVID-19, but they have not fully adapted, and still have many inconveniences. CBT reporter hopes that the COVID-19 situation will calm down as soon as possible, so that students can take classes in physical classrooms, not in Blackboard classes or non-face-to-face video conferences.

By Kim Ji-min l jimin41@cbnu.ac.kr