Neat perl trick, and certainly suitable to perl ninjas, but for techno-weenies like myself there’s a much easier solution: Downthemall!, an easy to use plugin for Firefox.

Install it, navigate to blackboard, right click. Easy as pie.

[quote comment=”9053″]Is there any problem with deleting the subdirectories under the drop box? Are there any references to these links in the database that will be hosed once the directory and file are deleted?[/quote]

I’m sure we would. But rolling out a new service on my own, while the university as a whole is committed to blackboard and students already know how to use it, is probably counterproductive.

Take a look at moving over to Moodle or Sakai. Both Open Source and free. Will save your university a ton of money. Lots of 3rd party integrations. I have been using Moodle for years. check it out.

Is there any problem with deleting the subdirectories under the drop box? Are there any references to these links in the database that will be hosed once the directory and file are deleted?

[quote comment=”7981″]We used to host it, didn’t we?[/quote]
…and hopefully we will again very soon.

[quote comment=”7981″]Btw, I really think you guys should register cms.montclair.edu and point it at montclair.blackboard.com. In fact I’m surprised it hasn’t been done yet. :)[/quote]
you and I both. Btw, it’s an OIT “controlled” service. :(

[quote comment=”7981″]Btw – out of curiosity: how much storage space do we actually have with blackboard?[/quote]
As far as I know, it’s incremental, not fixed, so it increases as we need it as long as it is reasonable.

We used to host it, didn’t we? I remember that at one point the url was blackboard.montclair.edu. That was long time ago when I was a sophomore (or something like that). I do not remember using blackboard my freshman year.

Btw, I really think you guys should register cms.montclair.edu and point it at montclair.blackboard.com. In fact I’m surprised it hasn’t been done yet. :)

Btw – out of curiosity: how much storage space do we actually have with blackboard? I’m pretty sure it would be much cheaper to set up a local server with twice the amount of storage including backup and maintenance costs. It would be pile of money up front, but it would pay for itself in few semesters probably. And, you know – put it behind SSL for example. But then again, what do I know. :mrgreen:

I agree with all of the assessments made above. Sadly this is another example of being “first” to market and acquiring your biggest competitor (WebCT) which was a much better product.

It looks like we might be stuck to it for a while. I mean look at the URL: montclair.blackboard.com. WTF! Why is it hosted by them (I know why sadly and that might change soon) and even if it was hosted internally why do we have their brand name in the URL…why not just something like cms.montclair.edu (CMS = Course Management System) so that we can change our vendor without impacting user community.

Blackboard is indeed pretty outdated and flawed. I still don’t know how they managed to become a sort of standard within course management system/ e-learning system? I remember TWT (from the ESB of Porto) was pretty ok, but I don’t know if they still develop it. I think the guys at Laval University in Montréal also designed something very nice.

Here is another one which is pretty good: http://www.threeships.com/ ; Too bad they don’t have an English version of the website though.

Yeah, I used downthemall before but I forgot about it. Thanks for spoiling my fun here. ;P

Actually a small modification to my script will allow me to delete the files from BB dropbox after I downloaded them which helps to keep that damn thing clean and managable. I don’t think downthemall can do this.

Perhaps you should look into this Firefox extension which and I believe does what you need more conveniently:
http://www.downthemall.net/

I strongly recommend the beta 1.0b2 — it works great.