Creating and Managing Groups and Assignments

Creating and Managing Groups & Assignments

Blackboard Learning System™ - Release 8

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Table of Contents

Workshop Overview......

Roadmap......

The Student Experience......

About Assignments......

Viewing & Submitting Assignments......

Viewing Assignment Grades & Feedback......

About Groups......

Using Group Communication Tools......

Collaboration......

File Exchange......

Email......

Group Discussion Board......

Spotlight on Groups & Assignments......

Creating & Managing Assignments......

The Big Picture......

Creating Assignments......

Best Practice: Key Elements for Success......

Modifying & Managing Assignments......

Focus on Design: Presenting Assignments......

Reviewing and Grading Assignments......

Reviewing Assignments Offline......

Spotlight on Groups & Assignments......

Creating & Organizing Groups......

The Big Picture......

Adding Groups......

Adding Users to Groups......

Focus on Design: Presenting Groups......

Best Practice: Provide Support......

Spotlight on Your Course......

Resources......

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

This workshop provides a hands-on introduction to the Assignments and Group Collaboration tools.

With the Assignments tool, you can efficiently create, manage, and grade assignments that assess students in a variety of meaningful ways beyond traditional objective tests.The Assignments tool allows instructors to exchange files with students, and it combines this ability with the organization and management functionality of the Grade Center. In this workshop, you’ll experience the entire assignment process and discover some tips for creating successful online assignments.

Next, you’ll learn to encourage and facilitate collaboration among students by setting up groups with the Manage Groups tool. In Blackboard®, groups can have their own Discussion Board, use a live chat feature, exchange documents, and send email to group members.

/ WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

roadmap

Getting Started as a Student / Explore assignments: Learn to access, view, and submit assignments
View grades: Use the My Grades tool to receive feedback and view grades for assignments
Explore group pages: Communicate and share files with group members
Creating & Managing Assignments / Add assignments: Create, modify, and manage assignments
Key elements: Identify what makes up a successful online assignment
Focus on design: Determine the best way to add assignments to Content Areas
Grade assignments: Review and grade assignments or return ungraded with feedback
Review assignments offline: Learn to download assignments, review them offline, and add grades to the Grade Center
Creating & Organizing Groups / Add groups: Create groups and select appropriate collaboration tools
Assign students: Learn to add students to groups
Manage groups: Explore ways to organize and use groups in your course
Group tips: Explore ways to help you use technology to teach small groups

THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

In this section, you’ll use both the Groups and Assignments tools as a student to familiarize yourself with how they will appear to your own students. You’ll view assignment instructions, learn to submit them, and check grades in the My Grades tool. You’ll explore how a student uses groups to complete collaborative assignments.
The student point of view may help you make choices about the assignments you choose, how you organize your groups, and how you provide assignments and instructions to these groups.

/ Learning Outcomes

After completing this section, you’ll be able to:

access, view, and submit assignments

view assignment grades from My Grades

access feedback and returned assignments

view group pages

communicate and share files with group members

/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

about assignments

The Assignments tool is used to present a variety of learning activities to students, allowing them to view and submit assignments from one location. Assignments can be submitted as:

text entered on the assignment screen

attached files

a combination of both text and attached files

Students can benefit from the Assignments tool in several ways. For example, the Assignments tool:

improves time-on-task by providing an efficient way to view and submit assignments

allows submissions to be returned with feedback, allowing students to improve their work before resubmitting for a grade

is often used in conjunction with alternative assessment techniques, some of which actively involve students in the process. Rubrics and examples may be provided to let students know how they will be evaluated.

/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

viewing submitting assignments

Students access assignments from the Content Area by clicking the title of the assignment.
From the assignments screen, students can:
view assignment instructions and access files attached by the instructor
complete their submissions by entering text or attaching files
submit assignments for feedback or grading / To submit an assignment

From the Content Area, click the View/Complete Assignment link (Figure 1.1).
Under Assignment information, review the instructions and any attached files (Figure 1.2).
Per assignment instructions, enter text in the Comments text box or click Browse to attach files as your submission(Figure 1.2).
Click Submit.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

viewing assignment grades & feedback

Students can view their assignment grades from theMy Gradestool.
Students see a spreadsheet showing their grades for the course.
If the assignment has been submitted and graded, the points will be displayed. Otherwise, a symbol will show in the grade column. / To view grades and feedback

From the Course Menu, click Course Tools.

Click My Grades.
Click the:

grade to see any feedback (Figure 2.1).
exclamation mark to see if your submission has been returned for further work (Figure 2.1).

Symbols in My Grades

Symbol / Description
/ Submitted; waiting to be reviewed by the instructor
OR
Submitted; reviewed by the instructor and returned ungraded, with comments
- (dash) / No information
/ Not submitted; item is in progress

Figure 2.1

Figure 2.2 – Student View of Submitted Assignment Results

/ hands-on activity
From the Student Course:
 Go to the Assignments Content Area and submit the Introduction assignment.
/ student course
/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

about groups

The Groups tool allows instructors to organize students into groups of any size and give them access to tools that only group members can access. The tools allow students to easily communicate and collaborate with their group.

Accessing Groups

Although group links can be added to any Content Area, students typically access their groups from Group Pages, available from Communication under Tools. /
Figure 3.1 /

From Group Pages, students see a list of all the groups. They can only access the group if they are a member. / Figure 3.2
/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

using group communication tools

You can add any or all of the following tools to a group.

Group Discussion Board

Collaboration

File Exchange

Email

We will look very briefly at these tools; they are covered in more detail in other workshops.

Figure 4

/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

collaboration

Students can use the Virtual Classroom or Chat tool to collaborate with their group members in “real-time.” Any group member can add collaboration sessions.
Students might want to meet in real-time for kick-off meetings, division of tasks, and progress updates.
They can post the session time on the group’s Discussion Board or send an email to group members. / To create a collaboration session

From Group Pages, click the group name.
Click Collaboration.
Click Add Collaboration Session (Figure 5.1).
Enter a name for the session(Figure 5.2).
Select the date and time for the session(Figure 5.2).
Select availability (Figure 5.2).
Select the tool(Figure 5.2).
Click Submit.

Figure 5.1

Figure 5.2

/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

file exchange

The File Exchange tool allows group members to share files. For example, group members could use File Exchange to share meeting notes, task distribution and checklist documents, and images.
All group members and the instructor can add files. They can also remove files, regardless of who added them. / To add files to the File Exchange area

From Group Pages, click the group name.

Click File Exchange.
Click Add File(Figure 6).
Enter a name that describes the file.
Click Browse to select the file.

Click Submit.

Figure 6

/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

email

The group Email tool allows students to send emails to members of their group. Emails are sent to students’ external email addresses. / To send an email to group members

From Group Pages, click the group name.

Click Send Email.
Select recipients and click the right-pointing arrow (Figure 7).
Enter a subject and message(Figure 7).
To attach a file, click Attach a file and click Browse to select it.
Click Submit.

The names of all group membersare listed on the left.
Click the right-arrow to move chosen recipients to the Selected list on the right. /
Figure 7

Note: If groups prefer to send internal mail, they can use Messages, the internal mail tool for the course. Since Messages is not available as a group tool, students will have to select their group members from the list of all course members.

/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

group discussion board

Only group members and the instructor can access the group’s Discussion Board. One forum is created by default. If required, the instructor can add more forums.

Figure 8.1

/ hands-on activity
You have been assigned to Group A, B, C, or D. Access your group page and use group tools to complete the following activities:
To share a resource with your group, add a file to the File Exchange area.
To set up a group meeting to assign tasks, create a Collaboration Session using Chat. Schedule the chat for Tuesday and make it available all day.
Post a message to the Group Discussion Board inviting members of your group to attend the Tuesday collaboration session, asking what time is best for everyone. / student course
/ THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

spotlight on groups & assignments

You’ve experienced a simple individual assignment and completed several group activities. Now let’s take a look at how groups and assignments can be used together to create a collaborative learning experience for students.

In a teacher education course, online students are creating lesson plans incorporating a unifying theme across different subject areas. The instructor has divided students into groups, each with a designated country as the theme. Each student within the group will develop a lesson plan in one subject area, and then combine the lesson plans into one themed unit of study as their final product.

Let’s walk through the group work process:

After creating groups and adding students to them, the instructor sends an email message to each group indicating how to begin. The instructor can simply select the group as a recipient, rather than choose individual group members from a list.

Tammy, a student in the teacher education course, reads her instructor’s email message about the group projects.

Tammy goes to Assignments in the Course Menu to obtain assignment instructions. Because the instructor used adaptive release, only the assignment pertaining to her group is visible. She also sees a group etiquette handout, and a grading rubric the instructor will use to evaluate the lesson plans.

Next, Tammy goes to Group Pages and accesses her Egypt group. She investigates the links to the Group Discussion Board, a Collaboration area (Chat), File Exchange, and Email. When investigating the File Exchange, Tammy notices the instructor has uploaded a document containing links to useful websites for their project, to which the group will add their own resources as well.

Tammy and her group immediately begin to use the Group Discussion Board to divide the project tasks. They agree to have weekly Chat sessions and share drafts of their lesson plans for peer review in the File Exchange.

After the group has collaborated on their lesson plans and combined them into one unit of study, they return to Assignments where they submit their document to the instructor for grading. The instructor has made a new Content Area named “Welcome to my Country” where all units will be added after they are graded so all students can benefit from the hard work of each group.

CREATING MANAGING ASSIGNMENTS

The Assignments tool allows you to easily create, collect, view, and grade submissions. You can use the Assignments tool for a variety of assignment types, including:

journals

case studies

problem-based learning exercises

essays and research papers

group projects

The Assignments tool also enhances the learning process by offering an efficient way for students to request feedback, and for you to return submissions with suggestions for improvement before assigning final grades.

In this section, you’ll experience the entire assignment process as you learn to create assignments, and then review and grade assignment submissions. You’ll also discover some tips for creatingsuccessful online assignments and questions to ask yourself about the assignments you have chosen.

/ Learning Outcomes

After completing this section, you’ll be able to:

create assignments

modify and manage assignments

explain the options for presenting assignments in Content Areas

review and grade assignment submissions

download submissions to review offline

identify key elements of a successful online assignment

/ Creating & managing assignments

the big picture

/ Creating & managing assignments

creating assignments

To create an assignment, go to the Content Area where you want the assignment to appear.
Note: You can also add assignments to learning units. / To add an assignment to a Content Area

From the Control Panel, access the Content Area.

From theSelect drop-down list, choose Assignment and click Go (Figure 1.1).
Enter aname, maximum point value, and instructions for the assignment (Figure 1.2).
Attach file(s), if needed (Figure 1.3).
Select availability (Figure 1.3).
Click Submit.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3

/ creating & managing assignments
ask Dr. C
Process
Q:My students seem to be confused at times by their online assignments. How can I make the assignment process more clear to students? / / A:Effective online assignments provide clear expectations and detailed directions.Include the following elements:
Submission deadline
Grading criteria
Accepted file formats (e.g., .doc, .rtf, .txt, .ppt, .xls, .jpg, .gif, .pdf)
Required length or size of submission
File naming conventions
Suggested resources
Preference for source citation (e.g., MLA, APA, CBE)
How the assignment ties into the goals and objectives for the course
A model or example of a successful assignment
Advantages
Q: I’ve been using the Digital Dropbox to collect weekly writing samples. What are the advantages of using the Assignments tool instead? / / A: The Digital Dropbox is a great tool if you simply want a place for you and your students to exchange files. For example, you could use the Digital Dropbox if your students submit regular writing samples.
However, if the writing samplesubmissionswill be graded, the Assignments tool will save you significant time. Submissions can be viewed and graded directly from the Grade Center, and Grade Center columnsare automatically created.
/ CREATING managing assignments

best practice: key elements for success

Students in any course, online or face-to-face, have similar questions. Consider these questions as you create your assignments.

What do you want me to learn?
(Objective) / State exactly what it is you want them to learn from the assignment
If possible, provide an example or model of a successful assignment
Why am I learning this?
(Rationale) / Students want to see the relevance of an assignment to their learning and their course grades
Clearly state how this assignment will help them achieve one or more of the course objectives
What do I need to know/do to complete the assignment?
(Clear Directions) / The following elements should always be considered when creating your directions:
Clear deadlines
Format type
Identifying information
How the assignment is to be completed – individually or in groups
How they should submit their work
How and when they will receive feedback
How will I be graded?
(Grading Criteria) / Answer this question in a way that clearly states the type of thinking you want to see
State the value of the assignment so students know exactly what it will contribute to their course grade
List grading elements in the assignment instructions, or include a rubric listing the criteria and assigning points for increasing levels of sophistication