Blackboard Assignments

Create a Blackboard Learn Assignment

You can use assignments to present a variety of learning activities to students which they can view and submit from one location. Students can submit assignments as:

  • Text that students include on the Upload Assignment page.
  • Attached files.
  • A combination of both text and attached files.

 

 

View the video below on how to create a Bb assignment:

To add a Blackboard Assignment in your course follow the steps below:

  • Visit a content area i.e. Assignments in the course menu.
  • Make sure the Edit Mode is ON.
  • Roll over the Assessments button.
  • Click Assignment.
  • Fill in the Name and Color (required field) in the Create Assignment page.
  • Add instructions in the content editor (optional).

  • Attach a file from your computer by clicking Browse My Computer or the Files repository of the Control Panel by clicking Browse Course.

    You can drag one or more files from your computer to the highlighted Attachments area.
  • Save time by uploading documents directly from your preferred Cloud storage solution when authoring content or creating assignments. Your students can also upload assignments directly from their chosen solution.


    Keep in mind: Students can access their cloud storage files when they submit assignments and not in Blogs, Journals e.t.c.
  • Enter the Due Date for the assignment. After Due Date has passed the submitted assignments are graded as late.
  • Add the Points Possible so as to grade the assignment (required field). If you do not wish to grade the assignment add the 0 value.
  • In the Submission Details field, choose if this would be an assignment for each student to submit individually – choose Individual Submission radio button – or it would be assigned to a group of students you have already created in Blackboard – choose Group Submission radio button. Select the Number of Attempts for assignment submissions that will be allowed to the students.
  • In the Grading Options field you can enable Anonymous Grading, which hides the name of all students during the grading process. You can disable this option on a specific date or after all student submissions are graded. You can select Delegated Grading, which passes grading responsibilities to other graders. Once you have enabled this option, a field will appear below where you can select where to give grader privileges and which papers you want them to grade.
  • In the Display of Grades field, you can select how you want to grade the students and how these grades will appear . In the Primary Display option, you can select in what format you want to grade the students (ex. Score). In the Secondary Option you select in what format you want the grades to appear in the grade center.
  • Check Include in Grade Center grading calculations if you don’t want to include anonymous graded assignment in column calculations.
  • Check Show to students in My Grades, if you want to enable student to view the grade of this specific assignment.
  • Check Show Statistics if you want to show statistics of this specific assignment like the average of all the grades of the  students.
  • Define the availability of the assignment by checking the Make the Assignment Available check box and select the Number of Attempts for assignment submissions that will be allowed to the students. You can also choose the assignment to be available on a certain period of time by filling in the Limit Availability fields.
  • Check the Track Number of Views check-box so as to receive reports on submission and views of students for this assignment.
  • Click Submit to finish.

 

The Blackboard Learn assignment looks as follows:

The students will click on the link to submit their assignment.

View the submitted assignments via the Grade Center

Instructors are able to view the submitted files of the students, online. That is, view the submissions in the web browser without the need of other applications or plug-ins. The supported document types for assignment submission are MS Word (.doc, .docx), MS Powerpoint (.ppt, .pptx), MS Excel (.xls,.xlsx), and PDF (.pdf).

You can view the students’ assignments via the Grade Center of your course and the areas that follow:

Needs Grading

Click Needs Grading to view the assignments that need to be graded.

  • Click on the contextual menu next to the assignment’s name.
  • Click Grade All Users.
  • The Grade Assignment page appears. Here, you can view, download the User’s paper and provide feedback to the student. You can also attach files.
  • When you finish click Submit.

Download Attempt via Full Grade Center

  • While in the Grade Center >Full Grade Center, click the contextual menu of the column that contains the assignment you want to download.
  • From the contextual menu, click Assignment File Download.
  • While inside the Assignment Download page, select the student assignments you want to download and press Submit.
  • While on the next Download page, click Download Assignments now link.
  • In the pop-up window that will appear, select Save File and click OK.
  • Select the location in your computer that you want to download the file and click Save.

Clear Attempt(s) via Needs Grading

To clear a single student attempt:Grade Center - View Grade Details

  • Click on the contextual menu next to the student’s submitted assignment.
  • Click View Grade Details.
  • While on the Grade Details page, click Clear Attempt to clear a student’s attempt.

 

 

Grade Center - Clear Attempt

  • Additional attempts in Grade Center for specific users – You can grant additional Assignment attempts to students as needed. The Allow Additional Attempt only appears if a student has already submitted the maximum number of attempts allowed for that assignment.

Grade an Assignment

  • Navigate to Control Panel > Grade Center > Full Grade Center.
  • While inside the Full Grade Center, find the assignment column and locate the student’s submission that you want to grade. The submission is declared by an exclamation mark icon. Click on the contextual menu (arrow icon) next to the exclamation mark of the corresponding assignment to view it and grade it.
  • In the Grade Assignment page, you can:
    • Comment directly into the student document.
    • From the inline viewer toolbar, you can zoom in and out, comment, annotate and move from page to page.
  • Provide optional comments and a Grade.
  • Click Submit.

View Attempts in Grade Center

 

Provide Feedback to Assignments

Blackboard added a new way to preview submitted assignments which is called View Box.

There are some new features that offer you the ability to annotate submitted assignments, print them and download them.

  • In order first to access a submitted assignment you will need to go to Course Management, Grade Center and then select Full Grade Center.

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  • When you enter inside your Full Grade Center, you will need to find the column that has the specific Assignment and the user.
  • When you find it, there will be an exclamation mark in a green circle which means that it needs grading.

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  • Move your cursor inside the box area where the green circle with the exclamation mark is and then press the down arrow that will appear on the right of the box.

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  • When you open the drop-down list press Attempt in order to access the submitted Assignment of the specific user.

Once you enter inside the Assignment, Bb Annotate will load the preview of the assignment.

With the Bb Annotate you will be able to use a sidebar summary view, freehand drawing tools, comments, stamps, pictures, color selection and other.

Take a look at the video for more and read more information below:

Supported file types follow below:

  • Microsoft® Word (DOC, DOCX)
  • Microsoft® PowerPoint®(PPT, PPTX)
  • Microsoft® Excel®(XLS, XLSX)
  • OpenOffice® Documents (ODS, ODT, ODP)
  • Digital Images (JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIF, TIFF, TGA, BMP, HEIC)
  • Source code (Java, PY, C, CPP, etc)
  • Medical Images (DICOM, DICM, DCM)
  • PDF
  • PSD
  • RTF
  • TXT
  • WPD

Keep in mind the following:

⇒ Office Suite Macros, such as Visual Basic, aren’t supported.

⇒ Bb Annotate is supported on the current versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari.

⇒ A known issue with some browsers’ built-in PDF viewer may not display all your annotations. Please view annotated PDFs in a native PDF viewer such as Adobe Acrobat.

⇒A known issue about Bb Annotate. With the upload of a Word document, there might be a possibility for the formatting to change. We strongly advise you to use fonts such as Times New Roman, Ariel and Calibri.

⇒If a student submits an unsupported file, you’re prompted to download it to view it.

Bb Annotate Menu

Find a broad selection of features from the menu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sidebar View

The left Sidebar view reveals a thumbnail view of the submission, an outline, list of all annotations and bookmarks. You can show or hide the sidebar as well as resize it.

Highlight Tools

An additional highlighting menu pops up when you select text. With this menu you are able to highlight text, Strikethrough, Underline, Squiggle and comment.

Annotations

  • Drawing, Brush and Eraser – The drawing and brush tools allow you to freehand draw on the document using various colors, thickness, and opacity. You’ll have the option to either erase pieces of the freehand drawing or delete fully using the trash icon.
  • Image or Stamp – An image or stamp can be added to the document. There are a set of pre-loaded stamps or create your own customized stamp.
  • Comment – Comments can be added to the document to provide feedback and will appear to the right of the submission. You and other graders can add additional replies to a comment.
  • Text – You can add text directly on the page. There are additional options to move, edit and change the appearance of the text, including font, size, alignment and color.
  • Shapes – There are 6 options for adding shapes: Line, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon and Polyline. Each option has its own customization settings to change the color, width, opacity, and more.

Search

Use Search to find specific text.

Download/Print

You can either Print or Download the document with annotations.  When downloading, it is recommended to view annotated PDF’s in a native PDF viewer such as Adobe Acrobat.

Student View

After you provide the grade to the students, the students are able to access the annotated files but are not able to add any annotations to their submissions.

Grading

  • In order to grade an assignment you will need to go the right of the Assignment where it says Grade. Click on the pen that is inside the box area.

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  • Once you press it, enter the grade you want and then click on the x if you want to Cancel or click on the check if you want to Save the grade.
  • In case you want to change the grade just follow the same steps.

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Feedback

In order to give feedback to the student just press the down arrow under the Attempt grading.

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Tip: Use the Acrobat Reader to view the annotated files for a better experience. When opening the PDF file(s) with a web browser you might miss some annotations.