Assignments

The Assignment feature in Blackboard is a great improvement over the "Digital Dropbox" feature. Blackboard Assignments address some of the shortcomings of the Digital Dropbox. Some are listed below:

1. Ties documents submitted by students to the actual assignment (Instructors no longer have to determine which assignment the submitted work belongs to by referring to the filename).
2. Displays submitted assignments via the gradebook.
3. Allows the instructor to view, grade, and give feedback regarding the assignment directly within the gradebook.
4. Ability to download all student work for a given assignment (download file in a convenient zip format).
5. The ability to batch remove assignments from students with one click!

Adding An Online Assignment

Start at the control panel.

Click on the content area that you wish to post content to (this will most likely be the Assignments area of your course.)

On the 'Add' bar, select Assignment from the drop down menu. Click Go.

Set the information for the assignment - Name, Points Possible, and Instructions.

Set the assignment options - availability, views, and restrictions.

You may attach a file to this assignment before submitting.
i.e. Word File, Spreadsheet, or image (great for illustrations or examples).

After submitting; the assignment will show in the corresponding content area. You will also notice the new assignment posted in your gradebook.

Opening, Grading, and Cleaning assignments

Open your gradebook

Any assignment that has been submitted will show an '!'. This means that the assignment is waiting to be graded. To begin grading the student's assignment, simply click on the corresponding ! mark.

After clicking on the '!', the student information will come up. Click the 'view' button.

After clicking the view button, you will be brought to a new window that will show thre assignment/test and allow you to:

• Clear the user's attempt
• Give points for a question
• Provide feedback to the user

Clicking submit will submit the score into the gradebook

To download/remove assignments, follow the below steps.

From the gradebook, click the assignment name. You should see this -

Clicking 'Item Download' will let you select which assignments you wish to open on your computer to grade. The download file will be in a .zip file format for easy archiving.

Clicking 'Item File Clean' Up will allow you to delete out-dated assignments. If you wish to remove all assignments easily, click on the "Check All" link.