Bb - Assignments & Grading Papers

Instructional Development

Bb - Assignments & Grading Papers
These notes reflect the Language & Literature Division Bb Retreat and Editing Workshop.
Get organized
File management is a big issue in both preparing an online class and working with the multiple student papers for that class. Do not save documents to your desktop! Create a class folder in My Documents and then subfolders for assignments or essays.
Why use File > Save As ...
There are three reasons. To rename a file, to change the format of a file and to change the location of a file.
Create instructions on how students should save their documents before submitting them in Blackboard or via email attachments. For example, ENGW300-essay1-green.rtf as a file name includes the course, the learning activity and the student name. It also includes an extension to demonstrate the file is saved in Rich Text Format not just a Word .doc or a text file .txt.

Assignment-Locked Icon in Gradebook
Sometimes students will try submitting assignments and the system will show a locked icon in the gradebook. You can reset the assignment so they can complete it or maybe it just needs a kick start.
From the Gradebook View Spreadsheet where you can see the lock icons, click a lock then click the View button on the right side to open up the Grade Assignment detail page for your comments and returning the marked up document.
According to the documentation there will be a "Clear Attempt" button section 1 of this page. However, on a locked document, you will get this message: "The student has not completed this assignment." No option to clear the attempt so the student can submit the assignment.
The workaround is to give a temporary grade, like "1" and then use the View button to reset the assignment with the "Clear Attempt" button. Before you Clear the attempt, if there are attached document, then maybe the student did finish and you can just download the assignments.
Ask Students - Get Students Involved
In all the examples here we are making best guesses. Be sure to ask your students for feedback for ideas on how to improve the delivery of assignments and feedback. You want to know what software students have on their computers to be sure your comments will show up to them.
Assignments vs Digital Drop Box
When SCC faculty were introduced to Bb, the Digital Drop box was a great feature for students to submit work. With the update to Bb v6, a better feature was added (in an obscure place) called Assignments. Assignments are "hard wired" to the Gradebook -- create an assignment and a column is automatically inserted in the Gradebook! Assignments require students to add a comment and they can attach one or more documents before submitting. For instructors, Assignments can be downloaded in bulk as a .zip archive for easy reading offline. One feature of Assignments that I really appreciate is that any file students submit will automatically have their userid appended to the file name! Keep your Assignment titles short so the columns in the Gradebook are narrow. When preparing assignments, use the Information field to post the entire assignment or a summary of the activity because this will appear to students in their Gradebook view. Assignments also allow the instructor to add comments as feedback to the student and to add comments just for the instructor. (This might be used when you have a grader/TA and an instructor.)
Control Panel > content area > look for a pull down menu on the right, select Assignment > Click Go button
Links related to Assignments and Digital Drop Box:

Assignment Feature
http://www.blackboard.com/docs/r6/6_1/instructor/bbls_r6_1_instructor/add_assignment.htm#_Overview_99
Downloading Assignments
http://www.blackboard.com/docs/r6/6_1/instructor/bbls_r6_1_instructor/download_assignment_assignment_name.htm#_Overview_149
Marking Grades for Assignments
http://www.blackboard.com/docs/r6/6_1/instructor/bbls_r6_1_instructor/modify_grades_assignment.htm#_Overview_43
Digital Drop Box
http://www.blackboard.com/docs/r6/6_1/instructor/bbls_r6_1_instructor/digital_drop_box.htm
Send File Digital Drop Box
http://www.blackboard.com/docs/r6/6_1/instructor/bbls_r6_1_instructor/digital_drop_box_send_file.htm

Editing documents for feedback
There are three features that were covered: simple (highlight text and change the font color), add comments (part of the Reviewing toolbar), and track changes (also part of the Reviewing toobar). In any case, it would be good to create several sample documents and then try out the techniques on computers students would use on campus -- the open access labs and in the Library. You want to know early if your assignment strategy will work on campus. You will have less control and access for students working from home, but you can test out the procedures and write instructions based on this experience. Windows users - be sure to try this on a Macintosh! And Mac users need to try accessing course materials from a Windows computer. Again, you will be writing instructions to accomodiate both types of computer users.

Simple - highlight text and change the font color. Be sure to add a color key at the top of the document to remind students of the meaning for color. ADA issues - some colors are hard to see -- be sure you use high contrasting colors to mark up your text.

Comments - turn on the Reviewing toolbar. Highlight text and insert a comment. The Comment pane appears at the bottom of your screen with a number reference. Type your feedback. Comments appear to students as highlighted text (mouse over to read the comment) and do not disrupt the layout of the document. Office/Word XP/2003 shows Comments differently than Office/Word 2000.

Track Changes - turn on the Reviewing toolbar and click the button to enable Tack Changes. Now Word will use strikeout to indicate deletions and underline indicated added text. Word might show a vertical bar in the margin where changes have occurred. To change the color of revisions, Tools > Track Changes ... select new colors. Office/Word XP/2003 shows Tracked Changes differently than Office/Word 2000.
Autotext
If you find yourself typing the same type of feedback you can create autotext that will appear in the document or in Comments. I suggest creating a master document with personalized AutoText entries formatted as you want them to appear to students. AutoText labels must be 5 characters or more. We practiced creating AutoText in the workshop here are some examples:
grcomma grverb praisestart >> better choice >> prstart praiseeffort >> better choice >> preffort
The definitions for labels can be a phrase, a paragraph or pages. (Think legal contract and the common clauses used.) I advocate being verbose in the definations ... you can easily delete added text and further customize the feedback.
Ann Lewis offered this quick overview of how she processes student papers:

Download the files to her hard drive (Assignment folder inside Class folder inside My Documents)
Open one document and read it all the way through
Read the introduction section and add comments
Read each paragraph and review/comment
Correct grammer on first page only because revisions are encouraged
Save the document with a revised file name
Cycle through other student papers
Log into Blackboard class > Control Panel
...
Ann uses the Digital Drop Box to download student work and upload any corrected files. The Assignment feature will simplify this task in the future.
Return corrected papers
With corrected documents on your hard drive, log into Blackboard, go to your class and the Control Panel > Gradebook. Find the column and link for the Assignment you have graded. Scroll down the list for the name of the student you will post a grade/comment/return paper. Click the ! indicator, click the View button and type comments, type the grade and Browse to attach a the document with your feedback.
Think of how students will view your feedback. I advocate that adding detailed comments in the document and copying them to the Comment field while submitting the grade will remind students of the goals they are seeking.