Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Rubrics

Rubrics are excellent assessment tools for any type of assignment or project.  Not only do they communicate clear expectations to students, but they also assist instructors when it comes time for evaluating student work.  "Rubrics can help ensure consistent and impartial grading. . . Students can use the rubric to organize their efforts to meet the requirements of an assignment, and [instructors] can use them to explain evaluations to students."  (taken from Blackboard Help's Rubrics page)

Learn more about creating Rubrics for Blackboard submissions . . . 

Anything within Blackboard that has points associated with it (assignments, discussion board, journals, blogs, etc.) can have a rubric linked to it.  By default, rubrics are not visible to students, but these settings can be easily changed.  When you allow students to view rubrics, they can preview the rubric before submitting an assignment and can view the scored rubric once you grade the submission to find out how many points they received for each portion of the assignment or project.  

Learn more about using Rubrics to grade Blackboard submissions . . . 


Instructors can customize any of the criteria and levels of achievement for any rubric.  Rubrics scores can be set based on points/percentages, as well as a range of either one.  A single rubric within a Blackboard course can be assigned to multiple assignments/projects, or each assignment/project can have its own rubric.  Rubrics can be created as part of the assignment creation process or can be created within the Course Tools > Rubrics area of the Blackboard Control Panel and later added to any assignment/project.

Visit Blackboard Help's official Rubrics page to learn more about creating, editing, and managing rubrics.  

There are some great online tools for building rubrics that can be helpful if you're looking for ideas for descriptions for each criteria.  You can gain ideas from these rubrics to use as you build your own within Blackboard.  Visit either of the following sites for rubric information and ideas (be sure to read and follow the terms of use / usage policy for each one):






For additional assistance with Blackboard Assignments, including inline grading and rubrics, contact the TLC at tlc@icc.edu or (309) 694-8908, or visit us in room 240A on the East Peoria campus.


Next week our Blackboard Users' Group will meet in the TLC on Wednesday, February 3 at 12noon or Thursday, February 4 at 3pm - participants may attend either session.

Our February blog series will focus on Tests & Pools and will include topics about building and deploying tests, as well as viewing test results and access logs.


Thursday, January 21, 2016

Inline Grading


Inline Grading is a Blackboard feature that allows instructors to comment directly on student submissions within the Blackboard environment, eliminating the need to download the assignments, comment on them, and then re-upload them to Blackboard.  Check out Blackboard TV's overview the Inline Grading features below:


In order for instructors to use the Inline Grading feature, students must upload files in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF formats.  This feature will not work with files uploaded in other word-processing formats.  Students who use a program other than word to type an assignment should save as PDF before uploading the assignment to Blackboard.

Inline grading allows you as the instructor to comment on certain words, sentences, paragraphs, or entire areas of a student submission.  You can highlight certain passages, place markers at certain points within the text, or draw boxes around areas within the document and then provide comments in the margin.  You can also strike out certain words and provide text comments directly on the paper as well.  Additionally, both instructors and students can download an annotated version of the paper with all instructor comments included.

For a more detailed overview of how the Inline Grading features work, check out the following video from Case Western Reserve University:


Additional Video Resources:




Visit us again next week when we cover using Rubrics with Blackboard Assignments.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Creating Assignments

Why create and have students submit assignments in Blackboard, rather than collecting them during class?  There are several advantages:

  • Maintain an electronic record of student submissions that can be accessed at any time, rather than collecting, maintaining, and returning actual papers.
  • Make it easy to track any late assignments by viewing the date/time stamp for any submission.
  • Have columns automatically generated within your Blackboard Grade Center whenever you create an assignment (or anything else that has points associated with it).
  • Automatically generate calendar items/reminders within Blackboard, allowing students to track upcoming deadlines and due dates.
  • Check student assignments for plagiarism using the Safe Assign option available when creating an assignment.
  • Use Inline Grading features to comment directly on student assignments, rather than having to download, comment, and re-upload submissions (continue to follow this month's blog to learn more about Inline Grading).
  • Use Blackboard Rubrics within the Grade Center to score and provide feedback on student submissions (continue to follow this month's blog to learn more about Rubrics).  
  • Maintain a record of student assignment submissions as part of the course archive once the course has ended.

Assignments can be created within any content area of a Blackboard course by selecting the Assignments option under the Assessments menu; learn more at the official Blackboard Help page Creating Assignments.  The only requirements are the assignment name and points possible, but there are several other options available as part of the assignment-creation process.

Assignment Files - Use this area to upload any files associated with the assignment, similar to the way you would upload an attachment within an email.  Remember . . . unless you need students to make changes to a file (such as a Word or PowerPoint file), always convert and upload files to Blackboard as PDFs.

Due Dates - A due date will display to students when they open an assignment.  It will also add the assignment to the Blackboard calendar view, where students can click on the calendar item to go directly to that assignment.  When you grade a student assignment, you will be notified if the assignment was submitted after the due date/time.

Grading - Under the Submission Details option, we recommend allowing students two attempts for each assignment, rather than keeping the single attempt default setting.  Let students know that you will grade their last attempt and will ignore the first one if they submit two; this avoids the need to clear assignments and then communicate with students about resubmitting.  Learn more about Multiple Assignment Attempts.

Within the same area, instructors can check any of the boxes in the Plagiarism Tools area.  Checking a paper using SafeAssign will check a student's paper against several databases and can be used as a great teaching tool as well.  Learn more about Using SafeAssign in Assignments, and check out the Quick Hit video below: