Problem of IE 7 and online Quiz                                                March 26, 2007

To: Faculty who use online QUIZ in WebCT

There are problems when RESIZING the online quiz window with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) if you use alternate questions or random ordering of answers in your quizzes. See the symptoms at the bottom of this message.

You and your students should use browsers other than IE7 (such as FireFox, Netscape or Safari), if you use alternate questions or random ordering of answers in your quizzes. FireFox and Safari are available in both ITS’ student computing facilities and ITS’ instructional computing facilities (http://www.uri.edu/ois/).

If IE7 is the only choice of browser for you and/or your students, then do not use alternate questions or random ordering of answers in your quizzes until the vendor (Blackboard/WebCT) provides a fix.

There are no reports of other problems using IE7 in WebCT.

Symptoms: 

1.    When quiz questions are set up with randomized answer order, both the order of the questions and the order of the answers can change when either the Maximize/Restore button or the window drag controls are used to resize the window.

Both Designer and Student users are affected.

2.    The content of quiz screens containing alternate questions may change to alternate question when a Designer user resizes the browser window with the upper-right Maximize/Restore button.

This happens only in Designer view; Student view is not affected.

These symptoms have been observed in IE7 only, and only with respect to quizzes containing alternate questions or randomized answer order.

Blackboard, the company that publishes WebCT, is aware of the problem, but a timeframe for any fix is not yet available.

Please email to webct@etal.uri.edu if you have any questions.