Monroe Community College - Blackboard Migration Training - Part 2

Blackboard MigrationMigration Training Blackboard

Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Assignments

Discussions

Tests

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning

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Blackboard Migration Training Assignments An “Assignment” is the Blackboard equivalent of the Dropbox in ANGEL. You can create an Assignment in any content area. Admittedly, the term “Assignment” is slightly misleading because in the parlance of a classroom, an assignment typically refers to anything that is due. In Blackboard, an Assignment is exclusively anything that needs to be submitted.

One of the upsides of an Assignment is the improved workflow for grading. In ANGEL, you would have to download each file, hope that the student submissions were in your required file format (sometimes students submitted OpenOffice documents in lieu of Microsoft Word, for instance), and then develop a process for reviewing, uploading, and then grading. As you’ll see, the entire process in Blackboard is much more streamlined.

CREATING AN ASSIGNMENT To create an Assignment, go to the “Assessments” tab in the top of the content area you want the Assignment to be in.

Use the chevron to select “Assignment”. If you have an Assignment (Dropbox) that already exists, use the chevron next to the item and select “Edit”.

Adjacent are steps one, two, and three (of seven) for configuring an Assignment. Most of the steps are similar to ANGEL. Note that it is easier to attach a document to the Assignment in Blackboard. For instance, if there is a file to be referenced (a PowerPoint or a PDF, for instance), it can be added directly to the Assignment instead of as a disparate item in the folder.

Enter the name of the Assignment

Enter the description of the Assignment – be as clear and concise as possible

Choose a file to attach, if any

Enter the number of points this Assignment is worth Page 2

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training Steps four through seven are also very similar to ANGEL. Note that the “Due Dates� (step five) will automatically populate onto the Calendar. You can change the Due Date by editing the properties of this Assignment, or by dragging and dropping the date on the Calendar.

Also, by virtue of creating an Assignment, it will automatically be put into the Gradebook.

Adjust this field for the number of attempts If enabled, this will limit when the student can see the Assignment Note that you may want to leave the boxes unchecked for this setting, so that students can see their work after it has been graded

This date will populate on the calendar

Once created, this is how the Assignment will appear to an Instructor (the next page shows the perspective from the student, which is radically different).

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training It’s important to note that the way an Assignment appears to you, the instructor, is different than how it appears to the student. For this reason, we suggest that you view all course content when logged in to the student account (consult notes from Session I: Navigating and Creating Content to do this).

The following diagram demonstrates how students will see an Assignment (which can be emulated in the instructor view by clicking on the Assignment). Note that to edit the Assignment, you need to choose “Edit” from the drop-down chevron adjacent to the Assignment title:

Note that Blackboard, unlike ANGEL, will not prohibit students from writing in a textbox; the option “Write Submission” is always visible to the student, so you will have to clearly articulate your preferred method of Assignment submission.

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training GRADING AN ASSIGNMENT Although the actual construction and maintenance of the Gradebook is the main topic for Session III, now is an appropriate time to discuss the procedure for grading Assignments.

The easiest way to grade Assignments (or any outstanding submissions) is to use the “Grade Center” link to “Needs Grading”. This will give a global snapshot for all content that needs to be graded in the course.

The inline grading and markup system in Blackboard is very robust. It is easier to use than “Track Changs” in Microsoft Word.

Merely markup the document, and students will see the comments and score.

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training Notes on Grading Assignments

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training Discussions The notion of where Discussions reside (and Tests, for that matter) is different than in ANGEL. One problem with ANGEL is that you can put Discussion Forums and Exams anywhere you want - which makes it hard to keep track of where all the interactive content is. It’s conceivable that students might have access to multiple versions of Exams because of an organizational oversight.

Blackboard mitigates this by sequestering all Discussions and Tests into respective containers. The vernacular we will use is that all Tests are stored in a garage, and all Discussions are stored in a woodshed. No matter what, Blackboard will not let you move them from their respective abodes. However, you can “deploy” a Discussion or Test wherever you want.

In this modality, it is easy to manage all Discussions from one screen (so you can see activity on a course-wide basis).

Note that this organization does not affect your course design - Discussions and Tests can be “deployed” wherever you’d like; they live in a centralized location, but can be linked to from anywhere.

To access the Discussions, go to the Course Tools menu in the Control Panel, and click on “Discussion Board”. This will bring you to the receptacle for Discussions. You will have a link with your course name displayed. Click on that (note that If you have Groups in your course, you will see more than just one item here - click on the appropriate one).

This is the “Woodshed” where all Forums reside. It is best to create your Discussions from this screen (see the next page for instructions). It is possible to create a Discussion directly in the content area you want, but it will end up back here in the Woodshed (you’ll just have a link to the Discussion in the content area).

To prevent confusion, create all Discussions here and deploy them in a content area.

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training CREATING A DISCUSSION To create a Discussion, head over to the “Woodshed” and click “Create Forum”. There are six steps to creating a Discussion. The diagram below illustrates the steps. Most of the configurations are similar to Discussion Forums in ANGEL. By default, Discussions are not graded, so change that option in step 3. Also note that grading a Discussion is different than grading a Discussion in ANGEL. An overview of grading is provided in the pages to follow.

One interesting difference between Discussions in ANGEL and Discussions in Blackboard is where they reside. All Discussions live in the aforementioned “Woodshed”. Links to each Discussion can be “deployed” throughout the course, but know that all Discussions will be in one, centralized spot.

Tests behave this way, too (they are aggregated in the “Garage”, which is accessed by clicking on “Course Tools” and then “Tests, Surveys, and Pools”. This will be discussed later on. Although both Tests and Discussions depend on the same mechanism for storage and deploying, note that there can be multiple links to a Discussion, but only one link to a Test.

Enter the name for the Discussion

Enter the description of the Discussion – be as clear and concise as possible

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training

Normal Discussion Board or “Post First” Pay attention to grading options Notifications (for instructor) This date will appear in the Calendar

These options are self-explanatory (and similar to ANGEL)

Notes: 

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By default, the Discussions will allow users to “subscribe” - this means that they will get email alerts (if they opt to) when posts are made  The instructor can choose to have the text of the post included in the email or just a link to the post Most of the options are aligned with the default behavior of how Discussions worked in ANGEL

The next page discusses how Discussions are deployed into the course.

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training DEPLOYING A DISCUSSION To deploy a Discussion, go to the place in your course where you want the Discussion to appear. Click on the “Tools” tab, and choose “Discussion Board”.

Note that it is possible to link to the Discussion Board Page, but this will bring the student to the aggregated lists of Discussions, which creates ambiguity as to what the Discussion is.

The last option, “Create New Forum”, allows you to create a new Discussion. Clicking on this button will bring you to the Discussion creation process (previous page), and will still store the Discussion in the “Woodshed”. The link to the Discussion will remain in the area where you created it.

The next page contains a screenshot of the local configuration for the Discussion. You will be able to add text that will appear to the student from the link in your content area. This is independent of the instructions you added when creating the Discussion.

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training

Text in this box will appear on the local link (the link that is deployed in the course). This text is independent of the instructions on the Discussion.

Make sure the Discussion is available to students

Optionally, use the “Date Restrictions� feature to enable the date(s) of visibility

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training VIEWING A DISCUSSION The link to the Discussion renders the same for both the student and the instructor:

PARTICIPATING IN A DISCUSSION This is what the actual Discussion looks like:

GRADING A DISCUSSION Grading a Discussion is somewhat similar to the process in ANGEL.

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training Notes on Grading Discussions

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training Tests In Blackboard, Tests are aggregated in one, central location (much like Discussions). Colloquially, we call that the “Garage” (it’s actually a three bay garage, dedicated to Tests, Surveys, and Pools). This conversation is dedicated to the Test portion of the Garage.

Tests are merely the questions associated with the test - the settings (like when the Test is available) are done in the local deployment. To access the Garage, go to the Control Panel (gray menu), and choose “Tests, Surveys, and Pools” from the “Course Tools” menu.

Once in the Test Garage, you will see a list of your tests. Note the “Deployed” column. If you have a test that is not currently in use, it will display “No”. There are two advantages to the Garage - it is impossible to deploy the same test twice, and it is easy to see where (and how many) Tests are in the course.

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training To create a new test, click on “Build Test” in the Garage. To edit a test, click on “Edit” from the drop-down chevron next to an existing test.

Once in an exam, click on “Create Question” to create a new question (alternatively, click on the chevron next to an existing question and choose “Edit” to modify the question).

There are many different types of questions that Blackboard handles, but the ones listed below are similar to the ones ANGEL has.

ESSAY Essay questions require students to type an answer in a text box. You can type directly in the text box or paste a question from another application, such as a simple text editor like Notepad or TextEdit.

FILE RESPONSE File Response questions require students to upload a file from their computers or from the Content Collection as the answer to the question. You grade these questions manually. Students can work on something before a test and submit it with the test, particularly if it requires a large amount of text. Submitting the answer this way also allows you to download, review, and assess the submission without an active internet connection, although you will still need to access the Grade Center to assign a grade.

en-

s/10 FILL IN MULTIPLE BLANKS QUESTIONS In Fill in Multiple Blanks questions, students are presented with text containing up to 10 blanks. Each blank can have a maximum of 100 answers. Students complete the sentence by typing the appropriate word or phrase for each blank. For questions with a single blank, use Fill in the Blank Questions.

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training FILL IN THE BLANK Fill in the Blank questions consist of a phrase, sentence, or paragraph with a blank space indicating where the student should provide the missing word or words. Use Fill in Multiple Blanks Questions to create a question with multiple answers.

MATCHING Matching questions allow students to pair items in one column to items in another column. You may include a different numbers of questions and answers in a matching question. For example, the question may include a list of animals and a list of food they eat (herbivore, carnivore, omnivore). Students would match each animal with their diet.

MULTIPLE ANSWER QUESTIONS Multiple answer questions allow students to choose more than one answer. Use this type of question when more than one answer is correct. For example, in the medical field, use this type of question to select symptoms associated with a medical condition. mal with their diet.

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS Multiple choice questions allow students several choices with only one correct answer.

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training ORDERING Ordering questions require students to provide an answer by selecting the correct order of a series of items. For example, you can give students a list of historical events and ask them to place these events in chronological order. Students are granted partial credit for ordering questions if they answer part of the question correctly. For example, if the question is worth eight points and the student gives the correct order for half of the items, they will receive four points.

SHORT ANSWER Short Answer questions are similar to Essay questions. Student responses are not limited in length, but the number of rows you set for the text box size can let students know your expectations. The maximum number of rows is six. Both Essay questions and Short Answer questions are graded manually.

TRUE OR FALSE QUESTIONS True/False questions allow students to choose either true or false in response to a statement question. True and false answer options are limited to the words True and False.

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training DEPLOYING A TEST To deploy a Test, go to the place in your course where you want the Test to appear. Click on the “Assessments” tab, and choose “Test”.

It’s important to know that when Tests are deployed, it is only a link that resides in the content area (consequently, deleting the link will have no effect on the test). The link is where you can edit the test options.

As with Discussions, if you choose to “Create” a new Test while in a content area, the test will still wind up in the Garage (although a link will be deployed in the area where you originally were).

Lastly, unlike Discussions, there can be only one link to a Test. To see where a Test is deployed, go to the Garage and look in the column that says, “Deployed”.

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training There are many customizations for Tests in Blackboard - but most of them translate very easily from ANGEL. The following pages are dedicated to a brief overview of the settings. Don’t forget that the settings (the “Test Options”, as they are known in Blackboard) are accessible by choosing “Edit Options” from the chevron adjacent to the link where the Test is deployed.

Add the title of the Test

The text written here will appear with the link (where the Test is deployed).

It will not appear within the framework of the Test.

Decide if you want the Description and Instructions (from when the Test was created) to also appear

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training

This will only generate an Announcement if the Test has just be created

The Availability options are Almost Identical to the options in ANGEL

This is a more advanced feature; we recommend not using it initially

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training

This will populate the Calendar automatically Check this box to disallow students the ability to take the Test past the Due Date

Blackboard makes giving feedback to the student much easier. Using the drop-down, instructors may choose two different scenarios for giving back feedback. In the default configuration, one of the options is “After Submission�, and the only feedback that is given is the score. Instructors may override that option, or they may add another that permits them to control when (and what information) is made available to the Student.

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training

These options are also similar to the corresponding options in ANGEL

This will randomize questions for the whole exam, not just each Question Set

There are a few different things to consider when working with exams:

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Be sure to test the student experience with the Student account

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Question Sets do not act quite the same way - in Blackboard, it is not possible for questions in a Question Set to have different amounts of points

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A “Random Block” is needed (accessed through the “Reuse Question” tab when editing a Test) to create a Question Set that randomly selects questions

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There are many other types of questions that Blackboard offers (and ANGEL does not) - try experimenting with the options  Calculated Formula  Calculated Numeric  Either/Or  Fill in Multiple Blanks  Hot Spot  Jumbled Sentence  Opinion Scale/Likert  Quiz Bowl

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

Blackboard Migration Training Notes on Tests

Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment

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Blackboard Migration Training Notes on Tests

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Monroe Community College: Office of Online Learning | Session II: Interaction and Assessment