We have been using BlackBoard on our campus for many years now. We see BlackBoard
improving in many areas of support and we appreciate your efforts.
However we are very concerned about the SafeAssign tool. SafeAssign had high load backlog
issues which resulted in submission reports taking days to receive which lasted from November
(we first noticed problems around the 28th) until December 22, 2011.
SafeAssign servers experienced processing delays due to high submission volumes that resulted
in the process taking 24 hours or more to return a report. This went on for several weeks, lasting
from November until the end of December. This period was the end of the semester when papers
were due and exams were being taken. This caused a high level of dissatisfaction among our
faculty as the service was most needed and was pretty much useless. When professors are trying
to grade assignments and tests that are dependent on SafeAssign , this much downtime adds
stress to them as well as the students. I understand that it was due to high load backlog, but this is
not acceptable. Many faculty on campus utilize this tool for plagiarism prevention. We hope that
you understand and expect that during the end of a semester or term there will be a higher
volume of usage. Although it is important all of the time this is a critical time.
Additionally:

On February 8, 2011, SafeAssign was down due to an expired SSL certificate.

On May 12, 2011, losing the up/down scroll bar from the DirectSubmit page was reported and
acknowledged as a software defect and is to be resolved in a future release.
Another complaint is that we don’t always receive announcements notifying us of an alert
(system maintenance, etc.). An example of that would be this past Sunday, January 29th. Please
provide adequate notice of any such down times. This is important to us as Administrators as
well as to our faculty and students. I hope you understand that these notifications will help us all
to plan our work accordingly. Course work schedules are very important and when we have
down time as we have experienced it affects that work schedule. And that affects our image on
campus. Although this was out of our control this kind of thing is still a reflection of the stability
of our systems here at UNCP. Help us to communicate effectively with SafeAssign downtimes
as well as making sure the tools the faculty need are available when they need them.
Your attention and any information you can provide to these matters mentioned above is greatly
and sincerely appreciated. I look forward to hearing from you.
Maureen Windmeyer
Director, IT Planning and Budget
Division of Information Technology
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
1 University Drive
Pembroke, NC 28372
maureen.windmeyer@uncp.edu
910-775-4355
Fax:910-775-4333