Due to corrupt data in the statewide database Blackboard Vista, the system shut down, causing thousands of faculty and students at USU to lose all information submitted between Tuesday, Nov. 13 and Friday, Nov. 16.
Any data entered during its shutdown has been permanently lost, said Mike Petersen, executive director of Utah Education Network. Blackboard is hosted by UEN and is used by schools across the state.
In an issued apology, Petersen said UEN "deeply regrets" the problems caused for schools, faculty and students statewide.
"The staff at UEN sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience this outage caused for USU students and faculty. We are doing everything we can to make sure that it doesn't happen again," he said.
Stacie Gomm, associate vice president for Information Technology Services, said it was USU that first reported the problem to UEN.
"We do know Utah State was the one that found the problem and alerted UEN. Kudos for Utah State," she said.
Petersen said UEN is working to find the cause of the problem, prevent any reoccurrence and provide greater security for data.
"We are working with vendors to determine what caused the corruption of the database to prevent any similar occurrence in the future," he said. "We are also taking the necessary steps to have a mirrored backup site in place before spring term, which will give us the ability to immediately switch to that backup site if a similar problem were to occur in the future."
Gomm said IT has been in contact with UEN to make sure they secure an off-site storage location for the data entered on Blackboard.
Gomm said it is hard to estimate the magnitude of the effects of the shutdown at USU. She said every faculty member has access to Blackboard but whether or not they use it is up to them. She said she doesn't know the number of users or the amount of information lost on Blackboard.
Tom Peterson, professor of creative arts at USU, uses Blackboard in his classes.
Peterson said, "Stuff like this is just annoying."
As a result of the incident, Peterson said he will have to re-enter thousands of grades for his classes. Many of his students will have to resubmit assignments, and he will have to grade several hundred papers again, he said.
During the shutdown of Blackboard, Peterson said students in his classes had papers due. Because the system wasn't working, he said his students received notices of submission failure. By the time they were able to successfully submit their work, it was marked as late on Blackboard. Peterson said he is unsure of how to handle grades now, considering he isn't sure of which students attempted to turn their work in on time or those who really missed the due date.
"We're still working that out," he said. "I'm probably not going to jeopardize students. It is an inconvenience more on my end than the students. They will probably be OK."
Raymond Coward, executive vice president and provost at USU, said it is important that faculty members be reasonable with students and that they proceed in a way "that is fair for the students and appropriate for the particular situation of each course."
Peterson said now it is a matter of ensuring this never happens again.
"What can you do?" he said. "Now it's what IT Services thinks that faculty and students should be prepared with in case this happens again."
-arie.k@aggiemail.usu.edu
