Create an Assignment | View and Grade A Single Student's Assignment | Download Multiple Students' Assignments for Grading | Enter Grades for Multiple Students' Assignments | How Students Use Assignments

The Assignment tool lets you create an assignment for your students to complete. It automatically creates an item in your Grade Center . When your students finish and upload their assignment, the Grade Center will update the student's Completion Status and will have a link to their uploaded file. You can download, view and grade the assignment directly from the Grade book and give your students detailed feedback about their assignment.

Create an Assignment

From the Control Panel

1. Go to the Content Area where you want to set up the assignment. Assignments can be created on any "Content Area" page (e.g. Assignments or Course Documents....).

2. Click on the Learning Unit drop-down menu, select Assignment, and click the GO button.

3. Enter a Name for the Assignment and choose a color for the text.

4. Assign a number of points to the Assignment. This is the maximum number of points that will be used in the Grade Center .

5. Provide instructions as to the process for assignment completion into the Instructions Text Box. You can enter text manually or copy and paste it from another file. Use the formatting tools on the text box tool bar to format the instructions.

Choose your options. You can make the folder available by clicking the Yes radio button or by setting date restrictions. Note: You can't set date restrictions and use the Yes/No radio buttons.

6. If your students will need to download a file to complete the assignment, attach the file in the Assignment Files section. Click the Browse button, find the file and double-click the file. Don't forget to enter text that will serve as the link to the file.
7. Click Submit.

Grade Assignments

Instructor's access completed assignments from the Grade Center . You can view and grade assignments one at a time from the Grade Center , or you can download the completed assignments, including any files that the students have attached to your computer.

View and Grade a Single Assignment:

From Control Panel

1. Go to the Grade Center in the Assessment Area.

2. Find the name of the student whose Assignment you wish to grade.

3. Look in the appropriate Grade Center column. If the assignment has been completed and is ready to grade, you will see a small, green exclamation point. Click on the green exclamation point ! (needs grading icon). Put your cursor in the cell that has the exclamation point and click on the chevron that will appear in the right hand side of the cell. Select “grade details”.

4. Click on the View Attempt button to the right and correct the students assignment, assign and file in a grade and provide feedback for both yourself and the student.

5. To grade the assignment without viewing it, click in the Current Grade text box and enter the grade. To add additional feedback, enter your comments directly in the Comments box or you may attach a file containing your comments, by clicking Browse in the Attach local file section. The Instructor Notes section is optional and can be used to make internal notes and attach files which are not visible to students.

6. Click OK.

Download Multiple Assignments for Grading (Assignment File Download)

Although it’s possible to view each student’s submitted assignment individually using
the above previous process, it may save time to wait until all students have submitted
the assignment and then download all the papers at once.

1. Open your course and go to the Control Panel. Open the Grade Center.

2. Locate the assignment column containing the students’ completed assignments. (If all students have submitted the assignment, all the cells in the column should contain exclamation marks). Click the drop-down menu icon at the right side of the column heading and select Assignment File Download.

3. On the Download Assignment page, click Select All (or you can choose multiple student names), then choose Submit.

4. Click the Download Assignments Now link, and when prompted to open or save the file, choose Save.

5. Select a location on your computer for the zip file, then click Save again to begin the download
process.

6. Once complete, click Close to exit the File Download screen, then OK to exit the Download
Assignment page.

7. Open the saved zip file on your computer to view the students' individual files.

Note: Once the downloaded files are saved to your desktop, you can remove the files
from the Grade Center by selecting “Assignment File Cleanup” from the column
heading’s drop-down menu. An option to remove all student files or an individual
student’s files is available.

Best Practices

• Ask students to only submit files to you in an .rtf (rich text format) it is compatible with MACs and PCs. It also does not require having a certain word processing software, which will eliminate the confusion between Office 2007 and 2003 and not having the correct file compatibility.
• Also be sure to have a file naming convention, when downloading assignments, such as xassignmentnamex_xstudent first or last namex.rtf
• Be sure to have a policy in place for accepting late papers, technical difficulties, etc.
  

How Students Use the Assignment Tool

Once you have created an Assignment and made it available to your students, it will appear in the students' course sites. When students click on the Assignment to open it, they will see your instructions and links to any files you have included. In addition, there is a space for them to enter their comments and a box where students can link files to send back to you.

For example, if the assignment is to write an essay in response to an assigned question, the professor types the question into the Instructions. The student opens the Assignment, reads the question and begins an essay in MS Word. The student can upload his or her Word file to Blackboard. If the Assignment is finished, the student clicks Submit and the Assignment, including the student's Word file, is returned to you for grading. If the student is not finished, he or she can click Save instead. When a student clicks Save, he or she can return to the Assignment later to continue working on it.