For the last year, Blackboard has supported a new feature for people accessing the system via Apple devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad using wi-fi (by wi-fi, not by cellular connection) and by Sprint Android (only by Sprint network, not by wi-fi). We occasionally get reports from members of the UR community that opening the application on their devices returns a message that the University of Richmond has not enabled the service. This is not true as we first enabled this service Spring 2010 and have not made any changes. When trying to access UR Blackboard through Blackboard Mobile learn app, mobile devices actually go through a corporate Blackboard server before accessing our UR servers. As best as we can tell, there are two frequent causes of the aforementioned error:
(1) Blackboard seems to frequently update the mobile device apps and the recently outdated version often loses compatibility.
(2) Blackboard’s servers temporarily lose the ability to mediate the connection between the mobile device and the person’s institution’s Blackboard.
To best minimize these issues, people who want to use their mobile devices with UR Blackboard need to keep their Blackboard Mobile Learn applications as frequently updated as possible, and they should have a contingency such as using their device’s web browser with UR Blackboard if that is practical.