Thursday, February 01, 2007

How to use the Assignments feature to collect student work

Blackboard "Assignments" are a way to collect student documents and files in Blackboard.

Adding an Assignment item to a course allows an instructor to post instructions or a document, retrieve the completed assignment as another document or file from a student, and review and grade that assignment via the Grade Center. Blackboard also provides enhanced file management options, including bulk downloading and cleanup of these submitted items. The Assignment feature can accept any file type from students.


How to create an Assignment:

1. In your course, toggle Edit Mode at the top right to "On".



2. On the left of the course site, click on the name of the Content Area where you wish to add the Assignment, for example, "Assignments"


3. Click the "Assessments" button and then click "Assignment"




Give the Assignment a name, type or paste some instructions into the text box

You may add file attachments ("Assignment Files", such as lists of questions for students to answer, articles to read, presentations to review, maps or spreadsheets to analyze) using the "Browse My Computer" button.

Set options for Grading and Availability. You may set the "Number of Attempts" section to allow the students to submit more than once. The Grade Center will record and preserve all attempts.

4. Click the "Submit" button on the right to post the Assignment.


What the students see:

Students can view the assignment in the selected content area on the left side of the course.

They can look at the assignment and download any necessary documents the instructor has posted. After doing the work necessary to complete the assignment, students should click the assignment link (the name of the assignment is a link) to upload and submit their work. They may use the "Browse My Computer" button to find the files they want to submit, and they can also post comments about the Assignment in the text box. These comments will appear in your Grade Center. A student can submit multiple files for one assignment if desired, but students can only submit an Assignment once unless the instructor sets the assignment options to allow multiple submissions (see above, step 3).



How to view submitted Assignments (Grade Center):

Instructors retrieve and grade Assignments through the Grade Center, much like any other kind of assessment.

When a student submits an assignment, a green exclamation mark will appear in the student's cell in the Grade Center. Click the drop-down arrow and select "View Grade Details" or a particular attempt to review and grade the students attempt(s).


You may download all the students' papers at once by clicking the drop-down arrow to the right of the column heading at the top, and selecting "Assignment File Download":



Allowing Students to re-submit an Assignment

If a student needs to re-submit a single-attempt assignment, the instructor may manually reset the student's previous submission by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the exclamation mark that represents the student's submission in the Grade Center, and then clicking "View Grade Details" > "Clear Attempt" button.

3 comments:

Harry de Vries said...

Returning Assignments seems to be a lot more work than downloading them. This can only be done by clicking each individual student and repeating a series of actions over and over again. Isn't there a way to do this as easily as downloading them?

(To return a graded assignment to the student, click the individual entry from the Gradebook and then click View. In the Feedback to Student section, enter a grade, comments, and attach the graded assignment. Click Submit.)

Northeastern University ATS said...

There is not currently a way to "batch" return documents to students, due to the difficulty in matching the correct documents to the correct students in an automated fashion, however we have submitted this issue to Blackboard as a product enhancement request and hopefully it will be improved in a future version of Blackboard.

Northeastern University ATS said...

Blackboard Assignments can now be graded inline right in the Grade Center without having to download them. Click here for information.