I’ve suggested in the past, and someone just reminded me, that it would be useful to be able to disable file upload for the assignments tool. Many of our faculty at SFU use the assignment tool to deliver and describe classroom assignments, but don’t necessarily want to collect the assignments online.
You can also make this suggestion (or any of your own!) at: http://www.blackboard.com/products/suggest.bbÂ
part two: delivery
Your delivery will depend largely on the communication, administrative, assessment and content-driven tools that you have chosen to use.
Write expectations and guidelines for your students and the communication tools available. Use the discussion, mail tool, chat or announcements to give and receive regular feedback. Promote the the discussion forum as a place for student collaboration or the journal function to introduce reflective practice.
Use the goals tool to remind students of the expected learning outcomes. Attach different content, communications and assessments to specific goals to reinforce how goals and assessments connect to the syllabus and the whole semester.
Create formative evaluations to track student understanding or surveys to request feedback. When using the assessment or assignment tool (for small quizzes or homework), create a test quiz or assignment to reduce student anxiety. Create a rubric to attach to the assessment or assignment, and read all the options available. When you are done, use student view to complete all assigned assessments as the demo student.
Encourage student community by setting it up so that students can contribute URLs to the weblinks tool, add the roster tool or ask students to publish their assignments to the class.
The gradebook is a quick and secure tool to provide grades and feedback to students. Give the demo student grades so you can preview in the student view, release each column as you finish adding grades, and download grades into a spreadsheet for backup or to enter grades offline.
Keep your course design simple, so students can easily navigate it, and be consistent in your communications, grade delivery and content release.
Today’s suggestion to the developers of WebCT/Blackboard:
Currently, I have to create my grading form first, and then create a new assignment and add the grading form. I don’t always think that far ahead. I’d like to be able to add a GradeForm to a previously created assignment or graded discussion.
Remember that you can make your own suggestions to them here. The more suggestions they get, the more likely they are to implement them.