The online assessment tools of Blackboard can be utilized to facilitate meaningful and memorable learning activities for students. These online assessment tools include: surveys, test, quizzes, and electronic submission of assignments. What are the most efficient and effective uses of the Blackboard assessment tools? What recommendations exist for reinforcing academic integrity and providing meaningful feedback?
Below is a list of tips and recommended best practices for assessing student learning using Blackboard. Please feel free to add your tip(s) to the list!
A survey within Blackboard is a non-graded assessment tool that records answers anonymously. Blackboard will record when the survey is taken but will not associate answers with an individual user; no individual feedback can be provided for a survey.
The Tests tool in Blackboard is the tool to use for automatically graded assessments. Scores are automatically added to the Blackboard Grade Center. Faculty have several options for creating tests, including typing into the question-by-question format provided by Blackboard, copying and pasting questions into the Blackboard format (which allows one to work offline and take advantage of a word processor's spell check), and uploading questions in a pre-established format. The term "test" is used in Blackboard to refer to any graded assessment (formative or summative) consisting of more than one question.
SafeAssign is a free plagiarism prevention tool that allows for you to protect the originality of work and ensure a fair playing ground for all your students. SafeAssign is integrated with Blackboard and prevents plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in students papers within your existing teaching and learning environment. SafeAssign can also further deter plagiarism by creating opportunities to educate students on proper attribution and citations while properly leveraging the wealth of information at their disposal.
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