Wednesday, November 18, 2015

BOLT TIP: Submitting Work

Sometimes students contact BOLT Support to resolve issues related to submitting their work to instructors via BOLT. BOLT Support has a few tips that can really help Bloomsburg University students submit their assignments successfully.

Plan Ahead
Have a contingency plan in place in case you have difficulty submitting work. Know if and when BOLT will be unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check BOLT news items and the BOLT Students Blog for notifications about downtime.

Keep It Simple
Name your files without punctuation, spaces, or special characters. If you can, submit one document once rather than five separate documents several times. Simplify your submissions.

Keep a Backup
Always back up your work. Keep a digital copy handy. You can keep backups on storage media such as flash drives or external hard drives, on Microsoft One Drive, on other cloud storage solutions, or on your Bloomsburg University P drive.

Give Yourself Time
Give yourself enough time to submit work prior to the due date. If your assignment is due at 11:59pm, give yourself until 11:49pm to submit or post. If you wait until the last minute, taking time to click through BOLT to the submission area might make your submission late!

Check For Verification
BOLT sends submission receipts by email for dropbox submissions. It is good practice to check blogs, journals, wikis, and discussion topics after posting to ensure your work was submitted. If not, re-submit or contact your instructor and BOLT Support immediately.

BOLT TIP: Keep Your Filenames Simple

When you are submitting work to BOLT, keep things simple.

Don't use spaces, punctuation, or special characters in your filenames!



BOLT doesn't like those things in filenames and may not accept your file.


EXAMPLE:

Your professor wants you to submit a paper to the Paper#1 Dropbox. You create a document file called paper#1yourlastname.docx. When you go to submit the document to BOLT, you cannot upload your file.

Q: Why does this happen?

A: BOLT does not like the # sign in your filename. 

Q: How can you fix it?

A: Remove the special character from your filename (paper1yourlastname.docx for example) and make sure there are no spaces or other punctuation marks in your filename. Then try submitting the renamed file to BOLT.