An online course management
system used by hundreds of
Bucks students recently malfunctioned,
deleting all student work
for an entire week.
In what one Bucks official
described as a “perfect storm” of
a breakdown, the course management
program CE6 experienced
a severe hardware malfunction
between midnight on
Saturday, April 12 and 7 a.m.
Friday, April 18. All information
submitted to the ‘course space’ in
that time period was erased
without any chance of recovery.
Officials said the server that
supports the CE6 program experienced
a disc-drive failure. A
backup mechanism that might
have been used to recover lost
work failed as well.
“We’re all working with technology
every day, and at times
hardware will fail and software
will break,” said Assistant Vice
President and Chief Information
Technology Officer Debbie
Noble. “The key is to be prepared
and react in a timely and
effective way.”
In close to 15 years of working
with the learning management
system, this is the structure’s
first failure.
In response to the malfunction,
representatives from
Information Network Services
(INS) and Online Learning
have expressed assurances
that CE6 has been moved to
the front of the nightly system
back-up protocol and will consistently
be reviewed to
ensure the backups have run
completely and successfully.
“We are continuously
reviewing and revising our
backup and recovery procedures
to address current and
planned systems requirements,
and to support the
growing needs for and
reliance on technology at the
college,” said Noble.
The breakdown affected
dozens of classes and potentially
hundreds of students. In an
internal internet memo Bucks
officials wrote, “To the extent
that is reasonable in each class,
faculty will need to reconstruct
the CE6 activities of the past
week. Students may have to
resubmit assignments or re-take
tests. Faculty should prepare
either to offer alternative means
of assessing this past week’s
activities or to recalculate grades
without the missing work. The
Provost has indicated that students
must not be penalized for
this loss.”
That was little comfort to
Bucks professors, like Dr. Steve
Sullivan, who uses CE6 exclusively,
and to students, like
Janine Logue, who had just successfully
completed a difficult
exam in CE6.
Mark Bennett, 20 from
Levittown, lost work for his
Integration to Knowledge class,
among other issues. “I couldn’t
get in contact with my group
members for my class project,
which really put us behind,” said
Bennett. “It was only a week
before the project was due.”
Ironically, the breakdown also
may have been beneficial for
some. Bucks student Chris Boop,
23, may have ruined his perfect
grade in one of his many science
classes with an awful performance
on a CE6 exam, but that test
was apparently lost. “It was the
hardest test I ever took, now I
can just retake it,” he said.
“We cannot undo what has
occurred,” said Dr. Maureen
McCreadie, dean of learning
resources, “but we will use what
we have learned from this experience
to improve the system
moving forward.”
Any questions concerning the
system failure should first be
directed to the CE6 professors; if
seeking further guidance contact
INS at (215) 968-8400.