Login Problems

A page with detailed login directions was one of the few available to students outside Blackboard from the beginning of the course.  We had a great deal of difficulty with Blackboard in the beginning of the semester at USC, and many students were initially unable to log into their courses.  The login directions were rather complicated, and even if followed correctly (and they often weren't), some students would still not be able to access their courses because of a software bug.  These problems were compounded for this class by the fact that students never met me in person, so my directions as a rule were conveyed on paper in the initial course materials mailed to students by Distance Education when they enrolled in the course, or by what I posted on the web (my URL was included in those materials).

A week after the course began, eleven of the more than thirty students enrolled at that time had not yet attended the course at all (I measured attendance by checking course statistics through Blackboard, which allowed me to see exactly how many times a student had hit the course website in Blackboard—one reason that I wanted all the course materials posted in Blackboard rather than on the internet at large).  I was quite anxious about the difficulties with student access, and I ended up trying to call each of those eleven.

Four of those students ultimately withdrew from the course, I believe because of the initial difficulties accessing their course materials.