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Getting started with Blackboard Assignment - Staff Guide

Blackboard Assignment can be used for both individual and group assessment, and offline assessments (e.g. to return grades and feedback for work where there is no submission to Minerva).

Blackboard Assignment has an integration with Turnitin Similarity Reports, so it can be used for text-based assessments (Similarity Reports must be enabled in the settings.) Reports are not available for group assignments, peer review, and parallel grading (where two graders mark the same paper at the same time).

Key features of Blackboard Assignments include:

  • an option to set individual due dates (via the exceptions feature), students can also be exempted from an assessment if they do not need to submit at all;
  • anonymous grading (note that student names cannot be revealed during the grading process);
  • group assessment where one member of the group submits, but all members of the group can see the submission and the feedback/grade;
  • parallel grading with two graders assigned per paper, and a third person reconciling grades;
  • video submission via Panopto;
  • any file type is accepted.

Tools to support grading and feedback include: Rubrics, inline annotation (using Annotate), and using the content editor to attach audio/video recordings, comments, or files.

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