Instructors can now print assessments. Printing provides a convenient solution for a variety of use cases:
Accommodating students with specific needs or limited technology access
Providing a printed assessment for testing in designated locations
Backup and record keeping
Conducting offline assessment
Documentation and compliance
Maintaining security and integrity
The print option is available in Forms, Tests, and Assignments with questions. Printing also provides the option to save as PDF.
To print an assessment, from Content and Settings, select Print.
Note: Blackboard plan to support printing answer keys and question pools in upcoming releases.
Image below: Print option from a test
Image below: Select desired print options
Filter out graded responses when grading by question
The Needs Grading filter now filters out graded student responses by default. Filtering this way helps instructors to focus on any remaining ungraded responses for a given question. It also provides instructors with an improved view of their outstanding grading workload. If instructors want to include graded responses, they can select Show graded responses. This selection preference is now stored per course and it persists across assessments in each course.
Image below: Grading by question option with the grading status of Needs Grading filter selected
Image below: Grading by question view with the grading status filter of Needs Grading and Show graded responses options selected
Post immediately when creating announcements
Instructors can now post announcements as part of the drafting and editing processes. This makes the process of creating and posting announcements simpler.
Instructors can still post from the announcements page.
Image below: When creating or editing an announcement, there is now an option to post
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit would like to highlight five enhancements for Instructors from the November Blackboard Learn Ultra Update. These enhancements are in three areas:
Making your content more visual using Images.
Updates to Tests.
Managing your Gradebook.
Making your content more visual using images:
1. Image insertion option for Ultra Documents, Journals, Discussions, Assessment attempts, and Courses
Images play an important role in a student’s education experience. Images help to enhance comprehension of and engagement with course content. To help instructors more easily identify high-quality images, Blackboard have added a new image button in the content editor in the following places:
Ultra Documents
Journal prompts
Discussions
Course Messages
Image below: Instructor view – New image button on content editor for Ultra Documents.
When selected, the instructor has the following options:
Upload an image through selection or drag and drop.
Select a royalty-free, high-quality image from Unsplash.
Students can also access the new image button on the content editor in the following areas:
Discussion responses.
Assessments and test question inputs.
Course Messages.
Image below: Student view – New image button on content editor for discussion response.
Image below: Student view – Drag and drop or upload an image file.
After selecting the image, instructors and students can reposition the focus and zoom of the image. There’s also an option to alter the aspect ratio of the image.
Image below: Modify the zoom and focus of the image; set the aspect ratio.
Users can rename the image. It is important always to consider the accessibility of course content. The user should mark the image as decorative or provide suitable alternative text.
Instructors can also set the view and download file options for the image. After the image is inserted, the instructor can resize the image.
Updates to Tests:
2. Edit/Regrade in Questions
Instructors may spot a mistake in a test question when grading a test submission. For example, instructors may have found a typo, chosen a wrong answer, or wanted to adjust points.
In the past, the “Edit/Regrade Questions” option was only available when grading submissions by “Student.” Now, instructors can also access the Edit/Regrade workflow when grading by question.
Image below: Instructor view – Edit/Regrade option when grading a test by question.
Image below: Instructor view – editing a question using the Edit/Regrade option.
3. Matching question updates: partial credit auto-distribution and other updates
Matching questions are useful for testing a student’s skill in making accurate connections between related concepts. This question type also checks students’ understanding in a structured format.
To reward students who show partial understanding, some instructors wish to award partial and/or negative credit for matching questions.
In the past, instructors selected a scoring option:
allow partial credit.
all or nothing.
subtract points for incorrect matches, but question score can’t be negative.
or allow negative question scores.
These options were exclusive and, at times, created confusion for instructors.
Now, partial and negative credit is turned on by default. Blackboard auto-distributes partial credit as a percentage across the matching pairs. The auto-distribution of credit saves instructors time. Instructors can edit the partial credit values if needed to grant some pairs more or less credit. Values for partial credit must sum to 100%.
If desired, instructors may also specify a negative credit percentage to any pair. Negative credit is only assessed when applied and when a student mismatches a pair. If desired, instructors may choose to allow an overall negative score for the question.
We also made a few other improvements to this question:
Blackboard re-worded the question construction guidance and moved it to an info bubble.
In the past, the “reuse an answer” and “delete pair” options were behind the three-dot menu. Now, these options appear on the right side of the answer for each pair.
Before reused answers appeared as “Reused answer from pair #” in the answer field. Now, the answer itself is displayed in the answer field. “Reused answer” appears beneath the answer for the pair.
“Additional answers” renamed to “Distractors.”
Image below: New Matching question layout.
Managing your Gradebook:
4. Gradebook grid view performance improvements
Some instructors prefer to work in the gradebook grid view. To improve the user experience, we made several improvements to this view. These improvements address overall performance and reduce the load time.
Performance tested scenarios:
25K student enrolments and 400 gradable items: Load time reduced from 108 s (about 2 minutes) to 14s (87% performance improvement)
2000 student enrolments and 400 gradable items: Load time reduced from 19s to 8s (57% performance improvement)
40 students and 400 gradable items: Load time reduced from 8s to 6.8s (14.75% performance improvement)
5. Sorting controls for Student Name, Overall Grade, Assessments, and Manual Columns in grid view.
To use the grid view click the toggle grid and list view button:
Sorting options in the gradebook provide a more efficient grading experience.
Now instructors can sort the following gradebook grid view columns:
Student Name
Overall Grade
Tests and Assignments
Manual columns
Instructors can sort records in ascending or descending and remove any applied sorting. A purple highlight in the column header helps instructors identify where sorting is applied.
Any sorting applied yields a temporary change to the sort order of all columns in the gradebook grid view.
Image below: Sorting an assessment in the grid view with filters applied.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit would like to highlight four enhancements to Instructors from the October Blackboard Learn Ultra.
1. Partial credit auto-distribution for correct answers for Multiple Choice questions
Multiple-choice questions with more than one correct answer are valuable assessment tools. Also known as multiple-answer or multiple-select questions, these questions assess comprehensive understanding. They also promote deeper learning and higher-order thinking skills.
Some instructors wish to award partial credit for these question types. This practice awards students who have a partial understanding. It also fosters a positive learning experience.
In the past, instructors had to enter a value for partial credit percentage for each option. Now, Blackboard will auto-distribute partial credit across correct answer choices. This distribution provides efficiency and saves instructors’ time. If desired, instructors can edit the values if some correct answer options warrant more or less credit. Values for correct answers must sum to 100%.
Image below: Question credit auto-distributes across correct answer options; values can be edited.
2. Send reminder from gradebook list and grid views
Instructors may want to send a reminder to students or groups who haven’t yet made a submission for an assessment. To make this easy, Blackboard have added a “Send Reminder” option to items in the Gradebook.
There are two views of the Gradebook that can be toggled between using the button. List view and grid view.
Image below: Use the list view and grid view button to toggle between views.
From the Gradebook list view, the option to send a reminder is in the overflow menu (three dots).
Image below: Send Reminder option from list view
Instructors may access the “Send Reminder” option in the grid view by selecting the gradebook column header.
Image below: Send Reminder option from grid view
3. Delegated grading distribution by group membership
Instructors sometimes distribute the grading workload for an assessment to multiple graders. This is a popular practice in larger classes. Instructors can assign graders to groups of students with the new delegated grading option. Each grader will only see the submissions made by students in the group(s) assigned to them.
Delegated Grading can be used with all available group types. This first release of Delegated Grading supports assignment submissions from individual students. Tests, group assessments, and anonymous submissions are not supported at this time. These will be released at a later date.
After selecting the Delegated Grading option, select the appropriate Group Set. Instructors can assign one or more graders to each group in the group set. If multiple graders are assigned to the same group, they will share the grading responsibility for the group members.
Graders assigned to a group of students will only see submissions for those students on the assignment’s submission page. They can only post grades for their assigned group members. Any unassigned instructors enrolled in the course will see all student submissions on the assignment’s submission page. They also post grades for all students.
Note: At least one Group Set complete with Groups must be present in the course before using the Delegated Grading option.
Image below: Instructor view of the assessment Settings panel with the Delegated Grading option enabled.
4. Sorting for manually added gradable items.
Sorting controls help instructors organize and find information in the gradebook. Instructors can now use sorting controls on the grades page for manually created items. The sorting controls enable sorting in both ascending and descending order. Instructors can sort the following information:
Student name
Grade
Feedback
Post status
The applied sorting order is temporary and resets when you leave the page.
Note: Sorting controls can be applied to one column at a time. When you sort another column, items will order according to the selected column.
Image below: Instructor view of sorting controls on the grades page for a manually added gradable item
In our previous blogpost we outlined some of the changes to Panopto with our move to Blackboard Learn Ultra.
In this blogpost we’ll outline the changes to using Panopto for Assignments. Panopto Assignments are used for students to submit a recording or presentation.
As part of this change, we recommend that you:
Create a Blackboard Assignment
Students submit via Blackboard Assignment and upload via the Panopto submission tool
The advantages to this new workflow are that:
The workflow for submission and marking is easier
Marks and feedback automatically go into the Gradebook
Students receive an email receipt for their submission
We’re the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit. Based in Information Services, we work with staff across the university to support and develop learning and teaching. We run a wide range of activities to do this.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce our first external speaker as part of this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.
Michael Webb from Jisc will discuss Artificial Intelligence in the session Navigating the Opportunities and Challenges of AI in Education.
Since the introduction of Chat GPT, colleagues have been finding ways in which the power of artificial intelligence might be used in Higher Education alongside the challenges that it poses.
Jisc’s national centre for artificial intelligence in tertiary education aims to help institutions adopt AI in a responsible and ethical way. We are working across the sector to help institutions navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by generative AI. In this session we’ll review the strengths and weakness of generative AI, the practices and approaches we see emerging, and take a look at how technologies and practices are developing as ever more generative AI applications are released.
Michael Webb is the director of technology and analytics at Jisc – the UK digital, data and technology agency focused on tertiary education, research, and innovation. He is co-lead of Jisc’s national centre for AI in tertiary education, supporting the responsible and effective adoption of artificial intelligence across the tertiary education sector. As well as artificial intelligence, he has worked on projects around the internet of things, virtual reality, and learning analytics. Before joining Jisc, Michael worked in the higher education sector, leading IT and learning technology.
This session will be of interest for colleagues who would like to add AI into their teaching and learning activities, as well as explore ways in which it can be used productively.
On Wednesday 10 May, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit welcomed Dr James Wood from Bangor University to give some ideas around student feedback design and engagement.
The recording from the session is on Panopto and the PowerPoint slides can be downloaded below:
The changes to the feedback NSS questions for 2023
The purpose of feedback
The move away from feedback transmission to one of action
Barriers to student feedback engagement
Screencasting your feedback
The next big event for LTEU is our annual Learning and Teaching Conference which is taking place between 4 and 6 July. Bookings for this are already open.
If you have any external speakers that you would like LTEU to invite to next year’s series then please email lteu@aber.ac.uk with your suggestion.
In summer 2022 we moved to a new version of Turnitin. As support for our previous version of Turnitin has now ceased, the historical version (known as Turnitin Building Block) will be retired on 31 August 2023.
This means that any marked assignments will no longer be accessible to staff and students.
Staff should contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk) if they still need to access Turnitin assignments in the Building Block for marking purposes.
Even though access will be removed, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit will still be able to request marked assignments via Turnitin support. If you require this after 31 August 2023, please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (elearning@aber.ac.uk).