Provide sanity checking or meaningful error information in assignment submissions.

When students upload files (submit assignments) to the BBK12 LMS, they often get errors because they have illegal characters in the filename (The colon being the prevalent example for our students.) Since the error is not informative, our students struggle, make uninformed guesses at how to resolve the issue, and end up not being able to submit their homework in a timely fashion. If the submission process could perform sanity checking and provide feedback, or minimally provide on screen submission guidelines, our students could be relieved of this extra stressor. We do our best at user education and help the faculty and students as issues arise, but if the user experience could be enhanced, we would be immensely grateful.

  • Kevin Harig
  • Oct 12 2020
  • Planned
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  • Guest commented
    13 Dec, 2022 02:30pm

    The same is true for our school, and it becomes a big issue when files have to be unsubmitted and resubmitted. It is wasted time, and we try to emphasize with our students the importance of writing correctly, with all of the diacritical marks in place. The ñ seems to be the most problematic for Spanish students.

  • Chiara Shah commented
    6 Oct, 2022 10:12pm

    This is still an issue with students from China, Japan, etc who are studying at our boarding school.

  • Troy Yochelson commented
    6 Apr, 2022 05:03pm

    This is STILL an issue: Blackbaud Case ID 018803068.

    Trying to "train the users" is of limited use, as full understanding by non-technical users is limited ("If macOS can use these characters in a filename, why can't Blackbaud?" is the most common reasoning I've encountered).

  • Ben Taylor commented
    15 Oct, 2021 12:54pm

    The problem has big implications - students in language classes are barred from turning in work with accent marks or Mandarin letters in the title (or at least were last I checked). This is both tough for high level language teachers who expect proper writing in submissions and pretty bad on the inclusivity front.

  • Ben Leddy commented
    27 Apr, 2021 12:33pm

    Just updating that we'll take a look at this -- thank you!

  • Laszlo Bardos commented
    26 Apr, 2021 09:22pm

    Update on earlier comment: the file with an illegal character in its name can be accessed by selecting "Download all files" so the file is submitted successfully and the error (bug) is when you try to access it.

  • Laszlo Bardos commented
    26 Apr, 2021 06:55pm

    Students can successfully upload files with illegal characters in the filename that I cannot download. Students report that they don't get an error message on upload when they use Chinese characters, for example. They think that their submission has been successful, but I get the error below when I try to access their file.

  • Kevin Harig commented
    12 Oct, 2020 04:04pm

    I have attached one of the screenshots provided by a student that shows the generic file transfer error.

  • Chad Nielsen commented
    12 Oct, 2020 03:38pm

    Agreed. The lack of sanity checking is creating reactionary support requests from students and teachers that are already stressed due to hybrid learning.

  • Andrew Grabowski commented
    12 Oct, 2020 03:29pm

    Yes! This would be extremely helpful.