eClass Support
Knowledgebase: eClass
eClass Known Issues
Last modified on 13 March 2024 08:48 PM

This article lists the current known issues and technical problems in eClass that have already been added to our product backlog for repairs or for which there is already development underway or completed by Moodle core.

Known issues for other tools:

eClass Known Issues:

Issue/Problem Summary Known Workarounds

Student assignment files are not downloadable (broken links)

Intermittent issue affecting student assignment submissions. Graders will reach a broken link when trying to download files submitted in eClass assignment activities.

This issue will also impact operations using "Download all submissions" as the zip file created will attempt to include such file references but produced an incomplete zip file which cannot be opened.

Affected students should resubmit their assignments through eClass or agree upon an alternate method to submit their work for grading.

The eClass team is currently investigating the issue. 

Cannot enter/override grade values above maximum grade value. Users are unable to enter grade values from the Grader Report for values beyond the maximum grade setting. Moodle HQ has classified issue as 'Wont fix' and prescribed the workaround to use Single View which will still allow grades higher than maximum to be entered in that interface.
Group overrides in assignments and quizzes do not display correctly in student's calendars If Group override has a close date for an  assignment or quiz set to a different month than in the activity's settings, students see both the original and their group's close times in their calendar, their timeline view, and course calendar or upcoming events blocks (if enabled). This issue has been reported to the Moodle tracker. Currently, the only workaround is to set the original close date earlier before the start of term, and apply group overrides to all students, not just one group. This way students will only see the correct one as "upcoming". 
Students with a period (.) only as either first name or last name, will not be included in Assignment zip downloads. The special character causes issues with the zip compression/extraction and these are excluded from the zip file when downloading assignments as a zip. Student should use Bear Tracks to change their preferred name from using a period to something else, i.e. (-) (dash)
Files uploaded into eClass throw error Filenames using certain reserved characters or special characters will create issues during upload and give an error message. Avoid use of reserved characters in filenames fed into eClass.
Respondus won't connect to eClass If you use the Respondus Quiz Authoring Tool, and you try connecting to eClass to publish exams or pull questions, it will say "Connection Failed".

Direct quiz publishing from Respondus into an eClass course doesn't work.

There is a workaround where you can import the questions into your question bank by changing the personality from Moodle to Blackboard, and saving a file that you can manually import into back into the question bank.

Quiz close dates sometimes do not display in calendars In rare cases, quiz close dates that are restored or imported into a course do not appear in the calendar block. Instructors can save the assignment settings with the due date turned off, then re-enter the due dates, and they will then be displayed in the calendar.
Course completion certificates saved as PDF files do not display all elements when submitted If users upload PDF certificates from courses as the file submissions for assignments, some elements of of the certificate are not displayed in the assignment grading view. PDF certificates can be downloaded to view all information.
Display issues in the DemoStudent block view Certain HTML/CSS syntax or styles do not appear when switched to the Demo Student view. This issue is related to an underlying moodle bug and has been reported to the tracker. As a workaround, instructors can also use the 'Switch role to...' functionality to view content if they notice any discrepancies.
The ExamVis external tool integration does not function The process ExamVis uses to pull questions from courses was broken by changes in the underlying question bank architecture changes. Any users accessing an ExamVis tool link will see a spinning 'Loading' icon indefinitely. None at this time. Work is underway to repair the tool. Resolved.
Files with semi-colons in their names cause editing problems in content sections  Any files with names containing semi-colons will produce an error that says "error/filereferenceproblem" and will prevent any content edits to that section. Instructors should avoid uploading files with semi-colons in their names. If one has been uploaded, please contact eClass support for a manual fix. 
Instructors displayed in Card/List course format The Card/List course format will show a preview of names of enrolled staff in the order of alphabetical First Name. i.e. it is possible that a TA may be displayed before the primary instructor, or instructors may not be displayed at all, etc.

None. Work has been completed to limit the display to only instructors enrolled in the course. This will be released during our next outage.

Completion progress bar in Card/List course format The completion bar will always display when using the Card/List course format, regardless of the course's Completion Tracking state.

None. Work has been completed to only display the completion progress bar if completion tracking is enabled in the course. This will be released during our next outage.

Custom Certificate does not generate date information Dates are not printed on certificates generated when using full Course Completion as a trigger.

Use another activity-based trigger within the course instead.

This issue has been reported to the plug-in's developers:
https://github.com/mdjnelson/moodle-mod_customcert/issues/484

Anonymous forums create a duplicate activity description Regardless of whether the activity description is set not to show on the course page, the activity description is duplicated when the activity is clicked on to open.

No workarounds at this time.

PDF submissions in assignments show a blank page, or are missing substantial blocks of text in the assignment grader There is a standing Moodle bug involving PDFs saved from Microsoft Word, if the document uses either Times New Roman or Arial fonts. The PDF can be downloaded but will not display in the grading interface for markup.

Students should be advised to enable the "ISO 19005-1 compliant (PDF/A)" setting as shown in this article.

Large question banks load slowly Users encounter slow load times when accessing large and/or shared question banks.

A temporary fix has been put in place to resolve this issue by disabling question statistic calculations. The underlying bug has been repaired by moodle and will be released August 26th - question statistics will be re-enabled at that time. Update: the issue was not resolved by the moodle fix.

Can only "Move right" or indent once. In a Topics course format, the "Move right" indent is now limited to one indent. In the Collapsed Topics with Collapsed Labels course format there can no longer be nested labels within nested labels.

No workarounds at this time.

Moodle HQ is planning a long term solution for hierarchies

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-76892

Importing multiple columns from a spreadsheet is no longer possible When importing grades from a spreadsheet, if multiple columns are selected to create 'New grade items', the system throws an error 'Mapping collision detected...'. 

This issue has been reported to the Moodle tracker. As a workaround, instructors must import one column at a time.

A Collapsed Label in the last topic of a course will not collapse. If your course is in the Collapsed Topics with Collapsed Labels course format, and you try to add a Collapsed Label to the last topic of a course, it will not render as collapsible.

Creating another topic at the bottom of the course should let the Collapsed Label display. The new topic can be blank and hidden from students. This bug will be repaired for the next upgrade of the course format.

The participant's page in older courses throws an error Some older courses display an error when accessing the participant's page.

Instructors should contact eClass support if they need to make enrollment changes in older courses. The bug will be repaired in the August scheduled eClass outage. Resolved.

PDF exports from the syllabus tool cannot split session tables page Selecting 'Split session tables on type' when exporting a syllabus PDF will return an error.

The only workaround is to leave this setting unchecked. This issue will be repaired during the August scheduled eClass outage.

File icons no longer display file type The new icon for files on a course page looks the same no matter what the file type is.

It is possible to toggle 'Show type' in the appearance settings of a file so that will appear on the course page as more information for students. eClass support is working on a fix for this issue. https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-79188

Bear Tracks Grade export navigation problem The Bear Tracks grade export functions but the navigation dropdown box is empty and does not display any other export types.

Instructors must navigate back to the grades main page of the course and re-enter the export area to use a different export type. This issue will be repaired during the August scheduled eClass outage.

Access restrictions using activity completion display issue On narrow displays when selecting activities to restrict access with, the dropdown box overlaps the bounding box. 

Awaiting core fix: MDL-77082

Rubric display issue Text heavy rubrics will escape the modal and no scrollbars are produced.

Users can use the browser to zoom out until text is visible. Unfortunately, this may result in very small text until Moodle HQ resolves issue.

MDL-75717

Zero scores in cloze questions cause scoring errors for quiz attempts If a zero is added inside the cloze syntax as the score for a question, the entire quiz attempt receives a zero score. 

Moodle's cloze documentation states that scores must be positive integers. If a cloze question needs to have no correct answer, the question can be zeroed out on the edit quiz page.

.png files are not converted into online grading format When students submit .png files into assignments, these are not compatible with the online grader and will display the message 'Some of the files in this assignment can only be accessed by direct download.'

Instructors can download the submitted files and grade them offline or require that their students submit in other formats.

Smart Exam Monitor appears to work correctly for student, but records a black screen Sometimes, instructors report receiving proctoring data showing black screens, and the exam video/screen recording are blank

According to the vendor, this is due to network/firewall conditions. In the past, using VPNs, guest wifi networks, or connecting from some countries have been the cause. Students should be directed to use a different wifi network or reach out to eClass support for further troubleshooting. If on a UofA campus, students should always connect to UWS to avoid troubles. 

Chart and graph data for student course logs are displayed 1 day too early after DST ends Instructors viewing student logs through Participants > Student profile > All logs will see activity listed one day too early if they are accessing after DST ends.  

The list of logs below the graph and chart are correct so they should be used instead. This bug has been reported to moodle HQ. MDL-60839.

Revising a matching question (and regrading a quiz) results in student answers showing 'deleted choice' If a quiz needs to be revised, and a Matching question is involved, the revision and regrade will result in a score deduction due to the revision showing 'deleted choice' as chosen by students. There is no current way to correct the issue. Reverting the change and regrading will restore the answers and grades. The only option is to manually grade students who have been impacted.

Requesting a second Non-Credit course in a row causes the screen to go blank.

If you request a non-credit course in the Course Creation Request System, and you submit the request, if you click on "New Request" and try to request another non-credit course, the screen is blank with no information to add.

When you are requesting a second non-credit course, choose "Credit Course" first, and then go back to the previous screen, and then you should be able to choose "Non-Credit Course" with the fields to fill out there.

HTML tags in topic titles stalls course creation requests

A rare bug where accidental inclusion of html tags in a topic title will cause course creation to fail.

Remove the HTML tags from the topic headers.

Student image file submissions in assignments appear cropped in the PDF annotator for instructors.

Image file submissions taller than 2:3 ratio will be cropped, resulting in some lost image data which may prevent the grader from grading everything visible.

Download the files and view them off eClass.

A better solution would be to advise students to send images that are within the 2:3 ratio. The simplest suggestion would be at request for square image files (i.e. 1:1 ratio).

Issue has been submitted to Moodle HQ: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-73150

Certificate does not render - no text (border only - if applicable) Certificates containing broken image URLs automatically results in rendering blank. This was recently discovered during the Google Drive privacy update. Many image URLs became broken, resulting in certificates that do not render.

Remove the broken URL or link to a working URL in your certificate embed code.

 eClass sometimes freezes for students when they have the Proctorio extension is enabled in Google Chrome  Sometimes when students are taking quizzes or other activities in eClass and they have the Proctorio browser extension enabled, eClass will entirely freeze.

 We have seen this happen predominantly when courses have a large question bank, such as 15+ pages worth of categories in the question banks.

For students: Disable the Proctorio extension entirely when not using Proctorio.

If you change an answer in one part of a Matching Question, then that answer will be removed everywhere in the question. If you have a question that is in the Matching question type, and you edit one of the answers (say it is originally "True" and it's meant to be "False"), then the original answer will be removed from the question, even if it's used elsewhere (so any answer that's set to "True" will be saved as "[Deleted answer]".

 Unfortunately, this has been reported to Moodle HQ, and this issue looks unlikely to be fixed.

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-5560

You will either have to manually grade the question or regrade the question so that it is out of zero.

Special characters not displaying as desired for some users. Certain characters, including Latin, may not display display properly for some users depending on their browser font settings. e.g. /ɪ/

It is recommended to do a display test for students prior to using special characters in exams, assignments, etc.

For user configurations, e.g. chrome://settings/fonts - ensure that the sans-serif font is NOT set to Verdana as it has been known to impact the display of Latin characters.

Exported gradebook spreadsheets don't match Bear Tracks Spreadsheets exported from eClass and Bear Tracks show slight differences in the sort of order of names including spaces, hyphens, and apostrophes. Instructors should take care if trying to merge grades in spreadsheets exported from the 2 systems and/or use the eClass gradebook to calculate grades then export these in the Bear Tracks format for direct upload.
New course creations fail when based on courses containing Cloze questions. eClass has detected the failure of courses created based on imports from courses containing Cloze questions. (Re)Request courses excluding the import of quizzes/question banks and then rebuild quizzes in new target course. Issue affects previously built Cloze questions pre-upgrade.

Group Peer Assessment Report does not include comments during the export to spreadsheet.

The exported data from a Group Peer Assessment Report contains responses except the comments left by users.

Data would have to be manually transferred if need be. Issue has been placed in eClass backlog for development. 121444 PPP-213

Whole forum grading gives JSON error or fails to load (spins).

When accessing Whole Forum Grading, the interface spins and loads and/or gives a JSON error when accessing a non-student. This may be caused by special characters (including tab-characters, etc) in the subject of the post.

Removing the special character should resolve the issue. Moodle is aware of the issue: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-68694 

Multiple quiz attempt windows can lose data

If students have multiple windows, tabs, or devices open on the same quiz attempt, the automatic submission at the quiz deadline or time limit may not submit their answers.

Keep online one view of a quiz open at a time and/or ensure that you submit the attempt manually from the attempt window that contains the saved answers.

NM Cloze questions ignore symbols or special characters and anything typed after in answer

Numeric Cloze questions will ignore inputs following a special character in a student response.

Communicate to test takers not to input such characters in their answers.

Issue identified by Moodle HQ:

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-60711 

Correct Answer tool-tip displays backslash in Quiz answers using special characters.

Quiz questions using reserved system characters may be used when preceded by a backslash (escaping character). However, if the upon reviewing quiz results, if enabled, the Correct Answer tool-tip will show the backslash which may cause confusion for students.

None currently. Instructors are to be aware of this issue and communicate this to students if they experience this scenario.

Issue submitted to Moodle HQ: 

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-71155

Some .rtf files won't display in assignment grading interface

When students use the google file repository to automatically pull files larger than 5MB from their drive into eClass as assignment submissions, the assignment grading page shows an error.

This issue is on the moodle tracker; students can download the file from their drive to their machine first and then drag-drop it into their assignment submission.

Malformed Cloze Questions/Answers

Making modifications to Cloze Questions results in broken questions/answers and/or corrupts order/answer data.

 

 Do not:
  • add or delete questions
  • change the questions order in the text
  • change their question type (numerical, shortanswer, multiple choice)

We recommend that you make changes using the HTML text editor instead of the RTF editor in eClass to ensure that you do not accidentally inject new formats or behaviours into the Cloze question that you are modifying.

Unable to use ratings or grade Anonymous Forum activity. 

The Anonymous Forum settings show functionality for Ratings and Grades, but when trying to rate or grade, there are no options available.

None - this is a misnomer. Anonymous Forums are fully anonymous and thus have no mechanism for receiving ratings or grades. These settings are to be ignored.

DemoStudents cannot see embedded videos.

When instructors log in as their DemoStudent, they are unable to see embedded content (i.e. YouTube, etc).

Switch role to Student from the user profile menu to see a more accurate representation.

PDF does not properly convert document - appears misformatted

Some student-submitted files become misformatted and appear shifted after conversion by the PDF annotator. 

No workarounds. Please send examples to eClass SUP-592 126065

PDF's captured from some 3rd party apps are unloadable by the inline-grader's document converter. 

Students sometimes use 3rd party image-capture (document scanner) apps to produce PDF files that they submit for assignments in eClass. The document converter in eClass will sometime stall on these files and prevent further activity in the same window.

Download the student's assignment file, and grade from the quick grading (view all submissions) screen. If an instructor encounters a file that stalls their session they should log out and then use the workaround above to access the problem file. This item is under investigation.

Some assignment submissions not viewable by inline-grader - document converter does not load and locks up browser session.

Some student-submitted files lock up the document converter in eClass when trying to view it using the inline-grader in the Assignment activity.

Download the student's assignment file, and grade from the quick grading (view all submissions) screen.

Clear cookies and restart your browser if your session is locked. This issue has sometimes been associated with using the eClass Confetti Chrome extension.

Word limits and word counts are missing from quiz essay questions. Users have reported the word count and limit tools are missing from quiz essay questions. The word count feature exists in essay quiz questions when the standard text (ATTO) editor is selected, ie. students can see how many words they have written, but there is no option to limit essay submissions to a specific length. Instructors must use an assignment activity if they need to limit online submissions to a particular word count.
Student responses are unreadable if tables are used in the response template. Essay questions using tables in their response templates cause visual issues for graders. During the grading process, student answers with the tables, become shifted and rows and columns no longer align to how they originally were presented. There is no fix for this issue and complex tables should be avoided at all costs. Some users have copied and pasted answers into Word, Google Docs, etc, and have partially legible results.
Use group or secondary CCIDs to access eClass. Users have requested the ability to send forum announcements within eClass using secondary or group email addresses. Only primary CCIDs can access eClass due the user account requirements of the application. Group mailing and email management is possible using gmail.
Gradebook setting 'Show totals excluding hidden items' setting displays incorrect calculated grade items for students

Calculated grade items render incorrect values for students in the gradebook user report when the 'Hide totals if they contain hidden items' course grade setting is set to 'Show totals excluding hidden items'.

If you need to have calculated grade items, it is recommended to not use the 'Show totals excluding hidden items' setting at this time.

Quiz Calculated Questions - dataset settings ignored

Datasets generated for Calculated Questions in Quizzes will continue to produce values with decimal places despite setting values to contain no decimals.

Bug has been reported to Moodle HQ:

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-44495

No option to preview letter grades.

Provide an option to show letter grades to instructors but not to students when finalizing course assessments.

It is possible to hide the course total from students and set its display to 'Real (letter)' to have side-by-side view of the raw scores and resulting letters.

Badges require a unique name

Users cannot create a badge that has the same name as any other badge currently available on the site (each badge name must be unique).

We recommend appending your course name and the term/year to your badges to ensure that each name is unique. For example, a badge named 'Merit Badge' should instead be 'MATH 100 Merit Badge 2017'.

Grades are not displayed to students after disabling marking workflow filter

If students' assignment submissions have been graded with the marking workflow filter enabled, disabling the marking workflow filter will make feedback comments visible but not grades.

Rather than disabling the marking workflow filter to display grades, set the marking workflow state to Released to make grades visible to students. For more details, see Controlling Release of Grades to Students using the Assignment activity.

Errors when importing grades over 100

Spreadsheet uploads into the gradebook do not function when any scores are over 100.

Grades over 100 can be manually added to the eClass gradebook.

This is a known issue at Moodle HQ. (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-50650)

PDF files set with the 'Embed' display setting do not render on iOS devices

If an instructor uploads a PDF file and changes the Display setting to 'Embed', the file will not embed or display properly on iOS devices.

This appears to be an issue with iOS devices being unable to display the embedded file.

Instructors are advised to not use the 'Embed' display setting for their PDF files. If using the embed setting is required, you may need to advise students that accessing the embedded files will only be possible on non-iOS devices.

Duplicating rubric criteria containing 2 levels introduces a 3rd 'undefined' level

Using the duplicate mechanism for rubric criteria does not function cleanly when rubrics are set up with only 2 levels.

The only workaround is to delete the unwanted 3rd level.

This issue has been reported to Moodle HQ.

(https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-62000)

Greater duration for forum edits.

Provide more than 30 minutes for students to make changes to forum posts.

The forum editing time limit is required since forum posts can be submitted for assessment. Replies with corrections are possible after the editing deadline has passed and it is also possible for students to compose their posts in a separate tool, for example google docs, and post them to eClass after drafting.

Images within labels in the Collapsed Labels course format.

Images and longer blocks of text are not displayed in labels in the Collapsed Topics with Collapsed Labels course format.

This is expected function of the Collapsed Topics with Collapsed Labels course format. This format is a locally-developed custom tool that only operates under very specific conditions - please see here for instructions for how to use the Collapsed Topics with Collapsed Labels course format.

Videos embedded with the Google File Embed activity aren't carried over when transferred from one course to another.

When transferring content from one course to another, the videos added to a Google File Embed activity do not transfer over, leaving an empty Google File Embed that needs to have a video added to it again.

Either add the video again, or avoid this by sharing the URL for the video hosted on Google Drive, as per the last note in this article.

Students cannot see Marking Guide criterion descriptions when used with Whole Forum Grading

When using a Marking Guide with Whole Forum Grading in a Forum activity students are not able to view the Criterion descriptions before or after being graded. 

Bug has been reported to Moodle HQ:
https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-70008

Include a PDF file with the criterion and descriptions in the Forum description or on the main eClass page so students are aware of what the criteria for the forum post are - please see here for instructions on adding a file. 

You can also post the criterion and descriptions in the description of the Forum. 

Instructors cannot (or can only partially) publish quizzes from Respondus that use Random Blocks

Instructors may receive error messages such as:
- "Errors, unrecognized response"
- "Errors, unable to complete"

Upload your quiz without Random Blocks. Then, create/organize your question bank categories accordingly and build the randomized questions in your eClass quiz.

See Using the Question Bank at this link.
See Adding quizzes at this link.
See Add a random question at this link. (Part 3)

 

 Whole Forum Grading doesn't save grades if you are using both an advanced grading method like a Rubric or Marking Guide and a Grade scale at the same time  If, when setting up the grades for Whole Forum Grading, you use both a scale, such as the Improved Letter Grade Scale, and an advanced grading method such as a rubric or scale, then the grades will not save.

 You have to choose whether you want an advanced grading method or a scale. If you want to use a scale, you have to use Simple direct grading. If you want to use a rubric or a marking guide, you have to use point grading, not a scale.

 A Random Question made from a category of Descriptions will not pull any of the descriptions into the quiz  If you have a category that is entirely made up of the Description question type, a random question in a quiz based on that category won't pull any of the descriptions, and if there is only descriptions in that category, will cause an error.  Instead of using the Description question type, use another question type, such as the Essay question type. You could then set the random question to be out of 0 marks. 
Whole Forum Grading doesn't save the grade when you grade with decimals If you try to grade a student in Whole Forum Grading with a mark that has a decimal in it (e.g. 5.5, 75.25), then the grade won't save  Either adjust your grading so that you only grade with whole integers (e.g. 100, 10), or override the grades for the Whole Forum grading in the Gradebook.
Specific quizzes won't download excel or .csv reports when viewing results- the downloaded file has a broken filetype and a name ending in "amp." If a quiz has an ampersand (&) in the title, chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge) will rename the downloaded file, resulting in a file that doesn't seem to open. The resulting file will open if you append ".csv" or ".xlsx" to the file name, as appropriate. You can also just rename the quiz without using an ampersand. 
When creating an assignment, selecting the "AutoCAD" file types as accepted file types on the settings screen gives an "unknown file type" error For most file types, selecting the category will select all of the file types contained within. In the case of "Autocad", the word autocad is counted as a file extension and is invalid. Instead, when choosing from the list, click "expand" and manually select the .dwt and .dwg extensions without checking off "autocad" itself. Alternately, you can type the extensions into the field manually. 
Feedback activity gives an error screen when trying to download .csv or excel reports of responses Similar to quiz reports, ampersands or commas in the activity's title trigger an error in Chromium based browsers (Chrome, Edge) Edit the activity's title to remove commas, ampersands, or other special characters 

 

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