Using the Blackboard Assignment Feature
You can use Blackboard's assignment feature to add an assignment item to any content area. Using this item you may provide details of the assignment including its name, instructions, point value, and any required files. Students may upload their submissions when viewing the assignment. Submissions are linked with the Blackboard Grade Centre and may be downloaded en masse. It is also possible to setup a Group Assignment.
Note that we recommend students uploading an assignment from home may find that their internet connection is not fast enough to upload a particularly large file (over 10MB) before the upload process times out. Therefore we recommend that if students wish to submit a file of over 10MB in size that they do so from a public workstation on campus.
Edit Mode
1. Check that Edit Mode is turned ON. This can be switched by clicking ON or OFF.
Choose Content Area
2. Choose the Content Area into which you wish to add your assignment. All the content areas work in the same way, if you have renamed or added content areas to your Blackboard course the screenshot above may vary from what you see.
Drop Down Menu
3. Hover your mouse pointer over Create Assessment and then click on Assignment.
Assignment Information
4. In section 1 you are required to type in a Name for your assignment. Please do not use special characters such as # " ' / \ ! £ $ % ^ & * ( ) - = _ + [ ] { } ; : @ # ~ , . / < > ? \ | `¬ ¦ for the name. If you do this you will not be able to download student responses in batch.
You may also choose the colour in which which you wish the name of the assignment to be displayed. Remember that the background colour will always be white.
The final thing you may add is any extra Instructions such as how or when students are expected to submit their work.
Assignment Files
5. Scroll down to Section 2
6. Click Browse to add any attachments required for the assignment
7. In section 3, enter the maximum number of points possible to achieve with this assignment. This forms part of the detail for the Grade Centre entry for the assignment. If marks are recorded as percentages, set the points possible to 100.
Availability
8. Scroll down to Section 4.
9. Put a tick in the box to Make the Assignment Available to students.
10. Choose the number of attempts students are allowed:
Allow Single Attempt - Each student is allowed a single submission to this assignment.
Allow Unlimited Attempts - Each student may submit any number of times to this assignment. Each submission attempt will be recorded in the Grade Centre for you to review.
Number of Attempts - Each student may submit to this assignment any number of times up to the number of times you specify in the box.
11. Select Date and Time restrictions if you wish to. This will limit the time(s) at which the assignment link is visible (Available) to students. Ticking Display After will mean that the content will appear from the time and date you select. Ticking Display Until will mean that the content will no longer appear (disappear) after the date and time selected has passed. This only affects the way the assignment appears to students. As a course instructor you can change this setting at any time and the assignment will always be available to you. Note that this is not the same as Due Date (which is covered on the next slide), and should therefore be used carefully.
12. Put a tick in the box to Track Number of Views if you wish to.
Select Due Date
13. Select a Due Date and Time for the assignment. After this date and time submissions are not accepted, and are marked as Missed. You must also make sure to place a Tick in the tick box.
Create Individual Assignment
14. If you are setting up an Individual Assignment (e.g. an assignment for which each individual must submit work) then select All Students Individually in section 6.
Create Group Assignment
15. If you are setting up a Group Assignment (e.g. an assignment for which a submission must be made by selected groups on your course) then select Groups of Students. Note that in order to create a group assignment you will already need to have setup groups on your course.
16. Select the Groups which should be able to submit to this assignment, and then select the arrow (as highlighted in the screenshot) to move these groups to the selected items list.
Submit
17. Click on Submit to complete assignment setup, or click Cancel to abandon the process.
Students submit assignments through viewing the assignment item in your Blackboard course and then following the on screen instructions. Guidance is available for students on how to do this a link to the guide appears under "What's Related" on the right of this web page. Make sure your students know how to submit their assignment.
Viewing and Scoring Individual Submissions
Instructors may view and grade assignments from the Grade Centre. Assignments may be viewed and marked individually, or downloaded en masse.
1. Using the course Control Panel, click on Grade Centre to expand the selection, and then click on Assignments.
Within the Grade Centre
2. A column with the name of your assignment will be in the Grade Centre. Under this column a submission that has been submitted will be displayed as an exclamation mark (!), meaning that the assignment requires grading. To the right hand side of each (!) will be a 'modify' button. Note that your Grade Centre view may have more columns than shown in the screenshot, depending on what settings you have configured on your course.
Viewing Grade Details
3. To view grade details, click on the Modify button. This will then give you a number of links:
View Grade Details - Clicking this will give you a further breakdown of the submission(s) made (this is discussed in more detail in the next few slides)
Exempt Grade - Clicking this allows you to exempt an individual grade, which could be useful in situations where you would like to drop a low quiz score or for some reason do not want to factor that grade into the student’s total. You can subsequently clear the exemption if required.
Attempts - You will see listed each submission made by the selected student.
4. Click on View Grade Details.
View Attempt
5. The resulting screen will give you a plethora of information regarding the selected submission(s). To view an attempt, click on View Attempt on the right hand side of the screen next to the chosen attempt. You will then be able to add a score, feedback, and your own notes.
View Attempt Details
6. Sections 1 and 2 will show you some details about what you are looking at including which attempt you are reviewing, and a link to any file(s) submitted to the attempt.
Score and Feedback
7. In Section 3 you can enter a grade for the submission. Simply click into the Grade box and type in the desired grade. You can also use this section to add Feedback to the user, including uploading a file to send back to the student if you wish (using the Browse My Computer button).
Instructor Notes
8. Section 4 allows you to add your own notes regarding this submission, which will be private to course instructors, and not visible to the student.
Submit
9. Once you have completed everything you want to, you can either click Save as Draft (to save this without submitting it completely), Exit (to exit the page without saving your changes), or Submit to save your changes and submit them to the system (thus also making the applicable information available to the student). You can edit this at any time by clicking on View Attempt again.
Identifying a Late Submission (1)
1. If you wish to check whether a submission is marked as Late, you should click on View Grade Details for the selected student and then click on View Attempts.
Identifying a Late Submission (2)
2. Click on Assignment Information in order to see the date of submission for an attempt. Note that late submissions will be flagged in red with the words Late Submission.
Downloading Submissions
It is possible to download a number of student submissions at once. These are packaged into a compressed zip file. In order to help differentiate the different assignments Blackboard will include the student's username in the name of the file they have submitted.
1. Using the course Control Panel, click on Grade Centre to expand the selection, and then click on Assignments.
Select Column
2. Click on the modify button (double arrow) of the grade column for which you wish to download assignment submissions, and then click on Assignment File Download.
Select Assignments to Download
3. You will be presented with a list of submissions. Each student who has submitted will have a tick box to the left hand side of their name. You can tick the tick boxes for individual students if you wish to only download specific submissions. Alternatively place a tick in the box at the very top of the column (highlighted in red in the screenshot above) to Select All.
4. Once you have selected the appropriate tick boxes, click on Submit.
Download Package File
5. A message will appear stating that the assignments have been packaged. A link to a packaged zip file appears next to the message with details of the size of the packaged file. Right click on this link and choose either 'Save link as...' or 'Save Target as...' (Depending on your browser). This will then allow you to choose somewhere to save the file on your computer.
Group assignments can be downloaded in the same way.
Marking Group Assignments (1)
1. Group assignments can be marked either individually (giving each member a different score), or as a group (which gives all members the same mark). The easiest way to mark a group assignment is to mark the group as a whole, and you can always over-ride marks for an individual if you wish to do so later on.
2. To mark a group submission for a particular group, use the course Control Panel to click on and expand the Grade Centre option, and then click on Needs Marking.
Marking Group Assignments (2)
3. You will be presented with a list of anything in the Grade Centre requiring marking. This should include any group submissions that have been made but not marked. For example in the screenshot above we see a submission for Group 2.
4. Click on the Modify button for the group assignment in question, and then click on Grade All Users.
Marking Group Assignments (3)
5. You should see a breakdown of the submission details, along with a section for Grade Current Attempt. You should enter the group grade in this box.
Submit Grade Details
6. Once you have entered your grade details for the group, click on Submit.
Note that clicking on Delete will result in deletion of this group attempt and all grades associated with it. There is no way to reverse this process other than to ask the group to submit again. Clicking on Save as Draft will save the mark for you to revisit later before confirming it officially so that it appears in the Grade Centre, and to the student.
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