Question: Going under

 I hope someone may be able to help with some operational problems in moving from v2.5 to v3. Yes, I know .....but there is a case for not being totally up to date. I have ironed out any technical (ie mathematical) problems but the operation of such an expensive but poor piece of software is staggering. We have been using it for three years and know all the groans about 'early' versions

1.      I have noticed that the time set in the assignments editor does not appear the same on the class homepage. My supplier then told me to fix a the database to GMT+1 and everything seemed consistent. However, for some reason this then started behaving oddly again, being one hour out between the two readings after behaving OK!! Why is this behaving in this way? Surely, there must be a definitive setting? (I live in the UK). Perhaps it is the calendar facility setting that is fickle?

2.     The ‘assignments’ page for instructors – it is very slow in loading from whichever page I try to link to it in MapleTA. It may take in excess of half a minute. It is very strange as access and links to all other pages are fine and take place within seconds if not immediately. We carried out the vacuuming recommended by the supplier but no improvement. Why this page?

3.      I have had a handful of complaints from students that, when they have clicked on ‘grade’ on finishing an assignment, then they have been logged out and returned to the login page. When they have then logged in again, there is no record of that particular attempt at the assignment. This appears to be an intermittent, randomly occurring problem in a small minority of cases. We are sending log files to MapleTA as requested. Has anyone experienced such odd behaviour. We have rebooted but to no avail.

4.      We are not been able to receive emails from Mapleta. This means that, any student who has gone through the ‘forgot your password?” has found the Mapleta has changed it and it has not been sent in an email. Yes, we have checked all the addresses in the database for the relevant servers

 Many thanks,  Ian