Maple T.A. 6.1 Issues and Workarounds Web‐Based Assessment • wba@unl.edu • 472‐9305 1. Manually­edited grades and grades of force­graded assignments are not posted automatically If any part of an assignment needed to be manually graded, or if any assignment attempts had to be force‐graded, instructors will need to: a. Go to the Maple T.A. Gradebook b. Select the assignment c. Click the Submit button d. Click the Export button e. See #4 below 2. Gradebook exports fail if rosters don't match The fix for this is to remove the students from Maple T.A. who are no longer enrolled in the Blackboard class. 3. Maple T.A. assignment entries in BB are not updated automatically when assignments are modified in Maple T.A. This is likely always to be the case. If you change a Maple T.A. assignment (i.e., changing the dates of availability, changing the time limit, etc.) and that change needs to be reflected in the link to that assignment in Blackboard, you can do one of two things: a. Delete the link from Blackboard and create a new link b. Edit the link in Blackboard and make the changes manually 4. Renaming or copying an assignment with maximum number of attempts will “break” the assignment Fixed when renaming, not fixed when copying. After an assignment has been copied: a. Edit the new assignment in Maple T.A. b. Click the Set Policies tab c. Look to see if the Maximum Number of Attempts is still set to the appropriate value – if it is, there is no need for further action, otherwise continue to the next step d. Click the Advanced button (back up near the top of the page, under the tabs) e. If any criteria specify the wrong assignment, remove them, then click the Back button (the one on the web page, not the browser's Back button) and re‐set the Maximum Number of Attempts on the main Set Policies page 5. Error when attempting to add a Maple T.A. assignment to a folder in a BB content area Unknown. The solution is to delete the folder and then create a new one with the same name. (Hopefully this doesn't occur with a folder that contains a lot of items, as all would have to be re‐
created.)
6. Copying and pasting from MS Word can cause an error when using non­IE browsers In the Question Repository, click the Preview button for a question that is suspected to have this problem. If this results in an error message, edit the question and click the Edit Source button. Look at the source code to see if it contains Word formatting. If it does, that formatting will need to be removed. Maple T.A. attempts to intercept content copied from MS Word and give the user the opportunity to remove formatting. However… The safest way to copy and paste text into Maple T.A. is to save the Microsoft Word document as a plain text file, then open the text file in Notepad (or some other plain text editor). This ensures that the text will be pasted into Maple T.A. without any extraneous formatting. 7. If no correct answer is selected for a Multiple Choice question, the user is not told and the question can be saved – the question will not display when the assignment is taken, and then the question is edited an error message will be displayed and there will be no option for editing the question to fix the problem This is still a problem. However, 6.1 does provide a simple fix. Export (select it and click the Export button) and edit the question to correct the problem (add the desired value to the qu.#.#.answer=@ line, between the = and the @), then use Question > Import Question Bank to import the repaired question. This will overwrite the existing question and fix it in all assignments that use it. 8. Question values in the Assignment Editor can only be modified using buttons that increment the value by one and decrement the value by one – this makes it difficult to make large changes in the default value as it can only be done with lots and lots of clicking Here's a workaround for this: Questions in groups share a single point value, so if you have a large number of questions added as items that should have the same point value (and so would require a lot of clicking to set their values), instead merge them into a group and set the point value of the entire group , then set the group to select all questions. (If you unmerged the questions after setting the point value on the group, the point values of the individual questions will revert to one, so you'll need to keep the questions in a group.) 9. The format of the new Question Repository (introduced in version 5), which allows for multiple levels of nested question groups, has not been accounted for in Course Modules – when Course Modules (containing "non­standard" question groups) are created, exported, and imported, the structure of the question groups is altered When existing question groups do not follow the structure described below, it would be best to
reorganize your questions into this structure BEFORE exporting to a new course. (This will not
cause any problems for your assignments, as questions are referenced by an ID and not by their
location within groups and sub-groups.)
When creating new question groups, they should always be organized in such a way that their
structure mimics the structure of Maple T.A. 4 and EDU. That structure is:
CONTAINING GROUP (do not put questions in this group)
SUB-GROUP 1 (contains questions)
SUB-GROUP 2 (contains questions)
SUB-GROUP 3 (contains questions)
Do NOT make sub-groups of sub-groups.
The CONTAINING GROUP is like the question banks of Maple T.A. 4 and EDU, and the SUBGROUPS are like topics within the question banks. If you use this structure, exporting and
importing course modules will work correctly.
10. Importing qu code creates new versions of questions and does not overwrite existing questions – this makes it difficult to edit questions offline 11. Maplesoft has added ID numbers to questions to avoid this problem. However, if you are working
with question banks that have been downloaded in the past they will not contain these ID
numbers. Therefore, if you like to work with question banks offline, you should download new
copies that do contain the ID numbers. This way, when you upload them, the new versions of
questions will overwrite the old versions, instead of creating new copies.
12. Clicking a Maple T.A. assignment link in Blackboard causes the assignment window to be intercepted by pop­up blockers Old links will still have this problem (links created before May 15, 2010), but new links will not.
13. Clicking a Maple T.A. assignment link in Blackboard causes the main window to reload to outside of the Blackboard course when using Internet Explorer Old links will still have this problem (links created before May 15, 2010), but new links will not. To
avoid this annoyance, use a browser other than Internet Explorer. Or, delete old links and create
new links, which will solve both this problem and the pop-up blocker problem.
14. Assignments won't work properly if the right version of Java is not installed The symptoms of this problem are:
 The timer doesn’t work
 Answers can't be clicked
 Can't navigate to next question
Users who experience this problem should go to www.java.com and install the latest version of
Java.
15. "User Exists" error If a student tries to access a Maple T.A. assignment from a Blackboard account that has the same email address as another Blackboard account that has used Maple T.A., the student will get this error.
If the student has gotten a new Blackboard account, the solution is to edit their old account in Maple
T.A. and add "_deleted" to their e-mail address.
If the student is using the same e-mail address that is being used by someone else (i.e., their sibling),
one of these people should change the e-mail address used by their Blackboard account.
16. A user exports a course module from Maple T.A. and imports it into another class, but now some of the assignments contain questions that no longer exist If a user exports only the question groups at one time and then exports the assignments at another,
the assignments will no longer link to the questions.
Similarly, if an assignment uses questions that are in the "trash," those questions will not be exported
even if all question groups are added to the course module.
Instructors should look in "Questions Not in Groups" and "My Deleted Questions" in the Question
Repository and select the Assignments textbox so they can see if any of these questions are being
used by any assignments. If so, they should Undelete or Modify Groups of these to put them into
question groups so they can be added to the course module.
When mistakes like this are made when exporting/importing course modules, the best thing to do is to
wipe the new class clean of all questions and assignments – assuming no new content has been
created in the new class – and re-import the new and improved course module.
17. Question Designer problems: Multiple Choice response area doesn't work Fixed.
18. Question Designer problems: List response area displays "%MenuDisplay.ClickForList%" instead of "(Click For List)" Fixed.
19. Apostrophes, quotes, and the number sign (', ", #) in assignment names can prevent access to those assignments Using these characters will prevent students from being able to access the assignments.
20. Greater than and less than symbols can break a question Maple T.A. allows HTML formatting in questions. HTML uses tags that look like this: <b>, <br />
<table>, etc. So when Maple T.A. encounters a greater than or less than sign, it tries to interpret it as
HTML, which isn't always what people want. The easiest way to avoid problems with greater than
and less than symbols is to uses spaces around them. E.g., "a<b" will cause problems but "a < b" will
not. (Using the HTML code for the symbols will not help — &lt; will be treated the same as <.)