Dear Faculty & Staff

As communicated in our earlier ‘Tech Bulletin: 2024WI Exam Support - Extended Support Hours’, the IT team will be expanding our hours of operation to assist with online exam issues. We wanted to communicate to you now regarding how our team will respond to issues with Blackboard administered final exams. Our team recognizes that final exam issues can often lead to academic issues that require the inclusion of the faculty member to determine next steps. We have designed the following processes to maximize our ability to support students and ensure the integrity of the exam process.  
   
Processes and Important Notes:  

• All issues reported to our team related to final exams will be recorded in our ticketing system. When necessary, we will forward or include information enclosed in a ticket to the faculty member teaching the course to aid in the resolution of academic issues.  
• When students are unable to access an exam that is listed on the university exam schedule, the exam availability setting on Blackboard will be updated by our team to the times listed on the university exam schedule.  Our team will not make changes to exception settings, or timer settings.  
• We recommend that faculty members not enable the force complete option for exams created in the Blackboard system. This option causes considerable difficulty to students if a connection or browser issue occurs during an exam.  
• The IT service desk will not reset test attempts for students who have successfully begun a final exam. These requests will be referred to the faculty member teaching the course for resolution.  
• Our team has limited ability to troubleshoot test issues with 3rd party publisher integrations (such as McGraw-Hill, Pearson and Wiley Plus).  While we will always do everything possible to support our students, we may refer some issues with publisher integrations back to the faculty member or direct a faculty member to the support services offered by the 3rd party publishers for resolution.    

For more information on Blackboard resources for Faculty please see the latest news items in the Service Hub: 

• Blackboard Final Exam Resources for Faculty 
• Tests: Avoiding Issues with Tests in Blackboard 

Thank you,

Information Technology  
Trent University  
www.trentu.ca/it
705-748-101