Blackboard Ultra: Create and Grade Assignments (Faculty)

Modified on Thu, Apr 9 at 3:27 PM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

About Blackboard Assignments
Create an Assignment
Manage Assignment Settings
Grade Assignments
Group Assignments
Create and Grade Peer Review Assignments

About Blackboard Assignments

You can easily create Assignments alongside other content in your course, allowing students to easily find and submit their work. Once students submit their Assignment, you may review their submissions, grade, and provide feedback.

For more information, refer to the Assignments support page or watch the Assignments Overview video tutorial.

Create an Assignment

To create an Assignment, click on the + button anywhere on your Course Content page, within a Learning Module, or within a Folder. Select Create and then select Assignment.

Give your Assignment a name, select the visibility, and enter the instructions. Use the Text/Content Editor to add any relevant links, images, attachments, and more. Click Save to save your instructions.

Need assistance coming up with an Assignment prompt? Utilize Blackboard AI Design Assistant to Auto-Generate Assignment Prompts based on your course content.

Once you have saved your assignment instructions, click on the Assignment Settings (gear icon) to open the Assignment Settings Panel. Here you can add a due date and points, set the number of attempts, attach a rubric, add a description (which will appear on the Course Content page), and more.

Once you have finished, click Save at the bottom of the Assignment Settings panel to save your changes.

Manage Assignment Settings

Click on the Assignment Settings (gear icon) when you are creating or editing an Assignment to open the Assignment Settings Panel. Here you can add a due date and points, set the number of attempts, attach a rubric, add a description (which will appear on the Course Content page), and more.

Once you have finished, click Save at the bottom of the Assignment Settings panel to save your changes.

Assignment Details & Information

The Details & Information section allows you to add a due date, select options around late work, and collect assignments offline.

Due Date: Assign a due date for your Assignment. The due dates will appear on your students' Activity Stream and in their myLesley Calendar. If students submit their assignments after the due date, their Assignment will have a Late label in the Gradebook.
Prohibit Late Submissions: If you prohibit late submissions, any In-progress and saved attempts will be auto-submitted at the due date. Refer to the Prohibit Late Submissions and New Attempts After Due Date support page for more information, use cases, and limitations.
Prohibit New Attempts After Due Date: Selecting this option will prevent students from beginning a new attempt after the due date. Students with accommodations or exceptions will not be affected.
Allow Class Conversations: Class Conversations allow students to have a conversation around a specific piece of course content. Refer to the Class Conversations support article for more information.

Submission Details

The Submission Details section allows you specify the assignment's submission method (online or offline) and the submission format.

Online Submissions: Students will submit their assignment online via the Assignment tool. You may select whether students upload a file or use the text/content editor.
- File Upload: Use this option when you want your students to upload a file (ex Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoint files, etc.). Do not use this option for media (audio/video) files.
- Text Entry: Use this option when you want your students to use the text/content editor for their submission (ex media content (audio/video), links, images, etc.)
Offline Submissions: Use this when you want your Assignment to appear in the course content area but do not require students to upload work (ex in-class assignments or presentations). Refer to the Collect Submissions Offline support page for more information.

Formative Assessment Tools

Use the Formative Assessment option to label an Assignment as Formative. Formative Assessments are included in the Gradebook calculations by default, but you can choose to edit the grade calculations to exclude them.

Refer to the Formative Assessments support article for more information.

Assessment Grading & Submissions Settings

The Grading & Submissions area allows you to select grading criteria, including the grade category, the number of attempts, points, and more.

Grade Category: By default, Assignments are given the Assignment category. You may select a different category or create a custom category in the Gradebook. Refer to the Grade Categories support page for more information.
Attempts Allowed: By default, students may submit one attempt. You may change this to allow multiple or unlimited attempts and choose which attempts you will grade.
Final Grade Calculation: If you allow multiple attempts you may decide which of the attempts will count as the assessment's final grade. Refer to the Selection for Multiple Attempts support page for more information.
Grade using: Select your grading schema (letter, points, percentage, or complete/incomplete). Refer to the Grading Schemas support page for more information.
Maximum Points. Add the number of points this assignment is worth (a numerical value between 0 and 99,999). If you leave this field blank, the number will default to 100.
Anonymous Grading: This will hide the students' name from view while you are grading. Refer to the Anonymous Grading support page for more information.
Parallel and Delegated Grading: If there is more than one grader in the course, you may enable parallel grading or delegated grading. Refer to the Parallel Grading support page for more information.
Peer Review: Peer review allows students to review their peers' work using criteria-based evaluation. Refer to the Self and Peer Assessment in Blackboard Ultra support articlefor more information.
Post Assessment Grades Automatically: Select this option to automatically post grades when you have graded the assessment.

Assessment Security

The Assessment Security allows you to add an extra layer of security to your Assessments and control when students and groups take an assessment. Access codes are generated randomly by the system. Refer to the Assessment Settings: Access Code support page for more information and examples.

Additional Tools

The Additional Tools area allows you to add additional options for your Assignment.

Use Grading Rubric: You can create a rubric or associate an existing rubric with your Assignment. For more information, watch the Create Rubrics tutorial video or refer to the Rubrics support article.
Goals & Standards: This feature is only in limited use at the university.
Assign to Groups: You may create an Assignment and assign it to one or more groups. By default, you assign a grade to each group as a whole, but you may change a student's individual grade. Refer to the Group Assignments section for more information.
Originality Report: You may use SafeAssign to check your students' submissions for plagiarism. Refer to the myLesley: SafeAssign support article for more information.

Assessment Description

Add a description that will appear along with the Assignment on the Course Content page. This provides students with more information about the Assignment before they open it. The description is limited to 750 characters and cannot contain formatting.

Grade Assignments

Blackboard Ultra features Flexible Grading, providing instructors with the flexibility to grade in their preferred style. With Flexible Grading you can easily find and review the status of your grading tasks, provide inline and/or multimedia feedback to your students, and easily access and grade with rubrics.

For more information, refer to the Grade Assessments with Flexible Grading support article or watch the Grade Assignments with Flexible Grading tutorial video.

Access Student Submissions

Once your students submit their assignments, you can begin grading. Assignments are graded from the Assignment's Submission page. You may access this page from three areas:

From Base Navigation: Click on Grades to access your Global Gradebook, locate your course, and select the assignment you want to grade.

From your course Gradebook: Click on the Gradebook tab in your course and locate your assignment. You may access it from the Overview, Gradable Items, or the Grades tab.

From within your assignment: Open your assignment and click on the Submissions tab.

Once you have arrived on the Submissions page, select a student's name.

This will open the grading page. your student's submission will appear in the middle of the page with panels on the left and right side. You may click on the arrows to expand or collapse the Students Panel and the Feedback and Rubrics Panel. If your student has submitted more than one file, they will appear on separate tabs above the Bb Annotate tools.

Did your student submit multiple attempts? Refer to the Grade Multiple Attempts support article for more information.

Review and Annotate a Submission

As you review your student's submission, you may use the Bb Annotate tools for inline grading. The Bb Annotate toolbar appears above the submission and offers robust inline grading features, including a sidebar summary view, drawing and highlighting tools, inline commenting, and more.

Refer to the Bb Annotate support article or watch the Annotate in Blackboard Learn tutorial video for more information and detailed instructions.

If you prefer to grade offline or provide inline grading and feedback using another tool (such as MS Word), click the Download button to download the original file.

Grade Using a Rubric

Expand the Feedback and Rubrics Panel to grade using a rubric.

You may either use the stacked-view rubric in the side panel or select the expand icon to open the grid-view rubric and Overall Feedback in a separate, moveable window.

For each criterion, click the grade pill to select the student's performance level. You may also provide text-based feedback for each criterion.

As you grade, the Rubric Score will update automatically.

Refer to the Grade with Rubrics support article for more information or watch the Grade Using Rubrics tutorial video.

Provide Feedback

Expand the Feedback and Rubrics Panel to provide your student with feedback.

You will provide feedback to your student in the Overall Feedback area. Use the text/content editor to enter and format text, upload a file, link to resources, record audio/video feedback, and more.

Enter and Post Grades

Click on the Grade Pill at the top of the page to enter your student's score. If you graded the assignment using a rubric, the score will be added to the Grade Pill automatically.

Once you have graded your student's submission, select the next student to grade. You may expand the Students Panel and select a student or click on the arrows at the top of the page to bring up the next submission.

Once you have finished grading you will need to post the grades so that students can review their grades and feedback.

From the Submissions page, open the Students Panel and click Post Grades.

Or, navigate to your course Gradebook, locate the Assignment, and click Post. This can be found in all Gradebook views.

Refer to the Post Grades support page for more information and detailed instructions.

Group Assignments

About Group Assignments

Group work can be beneficial for students, teaching them skills such as time management, sharing diverse perspectives, developing approaches to resolving differences, and more.

Group assignments are designed so that each group member can open the assignment, add work, save a draft, and let other members work on the assignment. When the group assignment is complete, only one student in the group needs to submit on behalf of the group.

By default, all group members will receive the same grade for their assignment. However, you can change individual group members' grades if you feel their contributions earned grades different from the group.

Watch the Group Assignments tutorial video for more information and detailed instructions.

Group Accommodations and Exceptions

You may set Assessment Accommodations for individual students to allow for extended due dates. When a group member has an extended due date accommodation, none of the students will be marked late if the assignment is submitted past the due date.

If a group needs an extended due date or extended access for the assignment, you may grant an exception. At this time you cannot allow multiple attempts on a group assignment.

Create a Group Assignment

You may assign an assessment to a group when you are creating or editing an Assignment. Click on the Assignment Settings (gear icon) to open the Assignment Settings Panel.

Scroll down to the Additional Tools section and select Assign to groups.

This will open the Groups page. In the Group Students menu, you may create a new group set specific to this Assignment or you may select an existing course group.

Refer to the Blackboard Ultra: Create and Manage Groups support article for more information and detailed instructions.

Once you have assigned your assessment to a group, click Save. You will be brought back to the Assignment Settings. Modify any additional settings and click Save to save your changes.

Grade Group Assignments

Once groups submit their assignments, you can access their work from the Gradebook or by opening the Assignment in the Course Content. You may assign the same grade to the whole group or grade each team member's contribution separately. You cannot change grade settings or group membership once you have started grading.

Refer to the Grade Group Assignments support page for more information and detailed instructions.

Create and Grade Peer Review Assignments

You can enable Peer Assessment from within the Assignment tool. After a student submits work, they are prompted to review their peers' work with a set deadline and number of reviewers.

Refer to the Self and Peer Assessment in Blackboard Ultra support article for more information and detailed instructions.