Known Issues

Known customer issues with OWL are listed below. While we are working on a permanent fix, a current known issue may have a workaround available. Known issues that have been resolved are listed further down with the date each fix was released.

Current Known Issues

Contains the affected tool, the issue, and any available workarounds.
Tool Affected Roles Issue Workarounds

Assignments

Instructors, other site maintainers

Students are unable to peer review other submissions if any submissions have been submitted by the instructor on behalf of a student.

Avoid submitting on behalf of any students for peer review assignments.

Tests & Quizzes

Instructors, other site maintainers

Exporting an assessment as "" or "Content Packaging" results in an empty or broken export file.

Export as "Markup text" or export from Lessons using "IMS Common Cartridge".

Lessons

All roles

Subpages with these certain characters cause a "HTTP Status 400" error when clicked from the Lessons subpage menu in the left tool menu: [ ] \ |

Navigate to the subpage from the Lessons page instead of the left tool menu.

Instructors and site maintainers can disable "Lessons subpage navigation" from the Manage Tools page in Site Info.

Or avoid including square brackets, backslashes, and vertical pipe characters in subpage names: [ ] \ |

Lessons

All roles

Recent changes to Lessons may require updates to custom CSS (stylesheets).

Please read this ELT article about CSS changes for details.

Lessons

All roles

Recent changes to Lessons require updates to the styles for WTS's OWL Basic Template and OWL Advanced Template.

Please read this ELT article about updates to the templates for details.

Site Info

Instructors, other site maintainers

The "Add new group" button remains disabled when creating new groups.

Clear your browser cache and try again.

Tests & Quizzes

Instructors, other site maintainers

Some functions ("sign", "factorial", and "log") in the Calculated Question type changed in May 2021. These need to be updated in formulas to the new notation of "sgn", "!", and "log10", respectively.

Built-in constants like "pi" must be in lowercase.

Update questions using the old functions ("sign", "factorial", and "log") with the new notation of "sgn", "!", and "log10", respectively. Built-in constants like "pi" must be in lowercase.

Questions in questions pools will also need to be updated.

Assignments

Instructors, other site maintainer roles

When re-uploading feedback files via the bulk uploader after an initial upload, the files will show multiple times in the feedback area

Ensure that you have finished your grading before uploading your grades and feedback.

Lessons

Students Viewing Lessons

Students receive a 403 error when trying to access content created through the rich text editor

When lessons or subpages are created and content is added to them, a folder is automatically created in resources. The hide setting for these folders are automatically set to "Hide this folder and its contents" The file can still be accessed by students when the file is added to the lesson through the lesson tool's "Add content link" or "embed content" options. However, when added through the rich text editor or via a direct link to the file, the students will receive this error

To resolve this issue, go to the resources folder, find the relevant folders. Using the dropdown beside the folder, choose "Edit Details". Under Availability and Access, choose "Hide this folder but allow access to its contents.

Statistics

Instructors viewing Student activity

Some student activity events do not appear for the week of May 2nd-8th, 2020.

Students were not affected by this issue when submitting assignments or quizzes, or interacting with OWL in general. Their activity will still appear in those tools. The issue only affected the reporting of events in Statistics, which Instructors should consider when reviewing the Statistics reports for that week.

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Everyone

If you are sending an email to your instructor or someone from your class using a contact from your email address book, the display name of the recipient (in the "To" field) might be different than the recipient's actual email address. Therefore, you might send the message to an unchecked email address.

Always check the full email address of anyone you are emailing to ensure your message gets to the correct destination.

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Everyone

If you reply to an email originally sent to you by OWL, the display name of the recipient (in the "To" field) might be different than the recipient's actual email address. Therefore, you might send the message to an unchecked email address.

Always check the full email address of anyone you are emailing to ensure your message gets to the correct destination.

 

Resolved Issues

Contains a list of resolved issues, what tool it effected, details about the issue, and when it was resolved.
Tool Issue Status

Preferences

Sites starred across the top and all sites in the Sites drawer disappear when hiding more than 1000 sites using Preferences.

Resolved - January 2022

Lessons

Content embedded by students on a Student Content page prior to May 2nd, 2021 does not appear to others in the site.

Resolved - January 2022

Lessons

The "Transparent (no borders)" colour scheme in Column Properties does not remove the borders.

Resolved - January 2022

Gradebook

Large gradebooks containing lots of cells of students and columns can take a while to load.

Resolved - January 2022

Collaborate Ultra

When using Mac OS "Big Sur" 11.0 or "Catalina" 10.15 and Safari 14 with Collaborate Ultra the audio a user hears is breaking up or cracking.

No longer available - July 2021

Collaborate Ultra

Some users have reported receiving an error when attempting to join Blackboard Collaborate Ultra sessions using a Chromebook.

No longer available - July 2021

Tests & Quizzes

When grading calculated questions in Question view, student responses will display as being marked incorrectly. This is a display issue only. Students still receive the correct number of points.

Resolved - May 2021

Tests & Quizzes

The "Student Audio Response" question type does not work for students when the quiz is accessed using the published assessment URL.

Resolved - May 2021

Tests & Quizzes

When switching between "Highest Submission" and "All Submissions" while grading question responses, grades entered will appear to apply to students in the wrong order after the switch.

Resolved - May 2021

Tests & Quizzes

When switching between groups while grading question responses, grades entered will appear to apply to any subsequent group selected.

Resolved - May 2021

Sign-up

When creating a meeting, the "Meeting Coordinators" option shows the HTML code for a space character (" ") in front of coordinators' names.

Resolved - May 2021

Lessons

With the Inline Questions tool in Lessons, if the answers in your question are long, clicking "Show Poll" will create overlap in the text as the frame does not expand to accommodate the text enough

Resolved - May 2021

Lessons

Videos are downloaded on page load. This is a known issue on Chrome.

Resolved - May 2021

Lessons

Page icons appear as boxes.

Resolved - May 2021

Gradebook

When working in a Gradebook that uses categories, dragging items to change their order does not save in the new order.

Resolved - May 2021

Assignments

Students cannot resubmit to an anonymous assignment (after they have made an initial submission).

Resolved - May 2021

Assignments

When uploading an archive file (using the "Bulk Upload" option) to an assignment using Turnitin, the default pre-created inline submission text file (for text normally entered into the text editor on the submission page) is not submitted to Turnitin.

Resolved - May 2021

Assignments

Creating an assignment and then editing that assignment to turn it into a group-submission assignment, or creating a group-submission assignment and then editing that assignment to turn it into an individual assignment may cause unintentional and irreversible issues.

Resolved - May 2021

Zoom

Zoom is presenting a warning regarding Approved Domains in the LTI Pro configuration.

Resolved - September 2020

Statistics

Any graphs in Statistics just spin and never display

Resolved - August 2019

Gradebook

Viewing the statistics for a particular Gradebook item results in a blank page.

Resolved - August 2019

Tests & Quizzes

Setting a question's point value to be worth more than 999 points will cause grading issues.

Resolved - July 2019

Gradebook

Setting dates for items/columns in the Gradebook changes the date to another date when using non-US English.

Resolved - July 2019

Email Archive

Email Archive doesn't display attachments sent to the site's email archive address from Outlook.

Resolved - January 2019

Lessons

The "Add Question" option does not always record student answers.

Resolved - May 2018

Gradebook

Instructors and Grade Admins do not see the "Submit" and "Approve" buttons for their sections when they are not enrolled in the first section listed on the Final Grades page of a cross-listed course site.

Resolved - May 2018

Gradebook

Changes to the grade submission revision PDF file (linked from the Final Grades page) do not show in bold text.

Resolved - May 2018

Forums

Forum discussions do not wrap on mobile devices

Resolved - December 2017

Lessons

Embedded HTML modules and pages do not load content in Lessons

Resolved - October 2017