Checklist for creating Blackboard Tests or Assignments - Staff Guide
Blackboard Tests/Assignments can be used for both formative and summative testing. When setting up a Blackboard Test or Blackboard Assignment, you'll find a range of settings to choose from - it can be easy to overlook a key setting. You may find it helpful to consult the checklist below before making your Test/Assignment available to students - it lists the key settings and their defaults.
1. Name of Test/Assignment - Please give your test or assignment a name, Minerva will assign a generic one based on the date you created the content, we recommend changing it as the default name may confuse students. We recommend including 'Test' or 'Assignment' in the name to help students identify what type of tool is being used to deliver the content, to make it easier for them to find the relevant help guides (on this site) if they need help.
You won't be prevented from creating a Test or Assignment with the same name as any previous Tests/Assignment you may have already created within your module - please give each Test/Assignment a unique name.
2. Grading - make sure your questions have been assigned the correct points. Check the total points available for the Assignment/Test - is this what you expect? If not, you'll need to review the points assigned to each question and adjust them.
3. Due Date - set the due date and time, Minerva will enter a default time (midnight) and day, remember to change this. Avoid due date end times after 4pm and on the weekend, for summative assessments. This will mitigate against the risk of school/IT staff being unavailable to help students with technical issues/questions.
4. Late submission - do you want to prevent students from submitting late? If so, change the default setting which allows late submissions. If you do want to allow students to submit in progress attempts late, but not start a new one after the due date, you can define this in this setting.
5. Attempts - do you want students to be able to attempt the work more than once? If so, define the number of attempts and which attempt will count towards the final grade (e.g. attempt with highest score).
6. Posting Grades - for Tests consisting of automatically graded questions, the default setting will post the grade as soon as the student submits their test. Turn this setting off if you don't want to post grades immediately upon a student's submission. For Assignments, the default setting is off (grades are not posted automatically).
7. Submission view - define when you want students to be able to see their submitted work, question scores and feedback - the default for reviewing submitted work is immediately after submission, however other options include: once grades are posted, after the due date, on a specified date.
8. Time limit - set this if you want students to have to complete their submission within a defined period of time, for example 60 minutes within a 24 hour window. Once a Test/Assignment is visible to your students and one of them opens it (they don't have to start answering questions), you will be unable to retrospectively change this setting. If a student starts a time limited assessment with less time remaining than the due date (e.g. a 60 minute test due at 4pm, but they start their attempt at 3:30pm, they will only get 30 minutes to complete the test and will be advised that their time allocation has been reduced because of the due date). You cannot set time limits for Assignments/Tests assigned to Groups.
9. Randomise questions - we recommend you randomise questions for summative assessments.
10. Randomise answers - you have the option to randomise answers (for multiple choice questions for example). Once a Test/Assignment is visible to your students and one of them opens it (they don't have to start answering questions), you will be unable to retrospectively change this setting.
11. Allowing students to add content to the bottom - by default, students have the option to add text and upload files to the bottom of an Assignment/Test, toggle this off, if you don't want to allow this for your Test/Assignment. Once a Test/Assignment is visible to your students and one of them opens it (they don't have to start answering questions), you will be unable to retrospectively change this setting.
12. Change the visibility of the Test/Assignment - by default content is hidden from students - when you are ready, make your Test/Assignment visible to students/use conditional availability.
Note: If you make a Blackboard Test or Assignment available to students and delete it for any reason, students will still be able to see that you made a Test/Assignment available when they look in their Activity Stream, (though the link to the deleted content will be disabled). This may result in queries - to avoid confusion, you may want to proactively communicate with your students to advise they should disregard the notification.