[Justin]

All-
I’m not entirely sure this is where I should raise this issue. In fact, I’m not even sure it’s an issue at this point. Just humor me.

I’ve been using the CUNY Commons site to pilot some assignments I’ll have students complete this upcoming fall. One of the assignments is going to the course website, and clicking on a hyperlink so they can review the video of their speech.

Some of the students mentioned a problem when attempting to open the files from the computers in the Library; when asking for assistance, they were told that the CUNY Academic Commons wasn’t recognized as a Trusted Site.

I’m hoping that we won’t run into a similar problem with Open Lab. And, to the extent that it may become an issue down the road, we can go ahead and do whatever we need to do now so Open Lab is recognized in the Library (and any other computer labs on campus) as a “Trusted Site.”

Again, here I’m relying on the feedback from my students, who (according to them) experienced the problem. Has anyone else had similar feedback from students?

[Prof. Gold]

This is a tough one to answer, Justin, since there are so many variables at play. Typically, that kind of error message is sent via the browser and depends upon the level of security that the user has set. Some browsers pop up warnings when people try to download files, but it may be that the library has removed the ability of users to bypass those standard security measures.

The best thing to do to troubleshoot cases like this is to try to reproduce the error. Is it happening on all library computers, or just a few? On all browsers (IE, Firefox, and Chrome) or just one? Just the Commons or also on the OpenLab?

Of course, the more detailed the bug report, the easier it is to test and reproduce the conditions of the original issue.

So, I’d say that the first step would be to see if we can find out any additional info from the students. Then we should test with both the Commons and the OpenLab. Once we have a better sense of the problem, we can decide the best way to go about fixing it.

Best,

Matt

[Maura A. Smale]

Hi Justin, that is not good at all! I’m not sure what’s going on there–as Matt notes, there are lots of moving parts to a problem like this. But I do know that the library’s CLT spends much of the summer working on the computers in our labs and classrooms, so it’s hopefully a temporary problem while he reconfigures those machines.

With any computer issues in the library please let your students know to come to the Reference Desk and let the librarian there know. I’ll give our CLT and my colleagues a heads up about this, too. And if it happens again, please feel free to ask your students to contact me directly with details about the problem: msmale@citytech.cuny.edu (they can also ask for me at the Ref Desk in case I’m available).

Thanks!
Maura