Using Blackboard Ultra assignments to give grades and feedback for assessment where nothing is submitted to NILE

You can use a Blackboard Ultra assignment to assess offline submissions (i.e., work that will not be submitted to NILE) when:

• You want to give grades and feedback to your students, either individually or in groups, but your students are not submitting any work to NILE. Such work may include presentations, performances, vivas, and physical artefacts, such as a paintings, sculptures, installations, etc.

When assessing offline submissions via a Blackboard Ultra assignment, as well as being able to give grades and feedback to individual students or groups, you can also use Blackboard rubrics, and can upload external documents as part of your feedback to students.

How to set up a Blackboard Ultra assignment to assess offline submissions

In order to be able to assess work that will not be submitted to NILE, you will need to set up a Blackboard Ultra offline submission assignment.

To set up your assignment, from within the 'Assessment and submission' area in your Ultra course, select the '+' (plus) button, and choose 'Create'.

From the 'Create Item' panel, choose 'Assignment',

Give the assignment a title. Then select the assignment settings cog to set up the assignment.

Add in a due date (normally, this will be the date on which the presentation, performance, etc., takes place), or use the option 'No Due Date', and select the 'Collect submissions offline' option.

Scroll down the 'Assignment Settings' panel to view and update the rest of the assignment settings.

Open the 'Mark using' dropdown list and select either Percentage or Letter Grade depending on your requirements, select 100 for the 'Maximum points', and ensure that 'Post assessment marks automatically' is not selected. Please follow this link for further guidance on the use of percentages or letter grades (opens in a new tab): How do I grade my assessments in NILE?

If you want to attach a Blackboard rubric to use when grading and feeding back to students, or if you want to change the assignment from an individual assignment to a group assignment, you can select these options at the bottom of the panel, under 'Additional Tools'. Please follow this link for further guidance on setting up Blackboard rubrics (opens in in new tab): https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Grade/Rubrics 

Please follow this link for further guidance on percentage ranges in Blackboard rubrics (opens in a new tab): https://askus.northampton.ac.uk/Learntech/faq/180657

When setting up a group assignment, it is easiest to set up the group before you set up the assignment, especially if you have a large cohort and a lot of groups.Please follow this link for further guidance about setting up groups, (opens in a new tab): https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Interact/Course_Groups/Create_Groups

Finally, select 'Save' to save your assignment.

If you are using a Blackboard rubric and want this to be available to your students prior to receiving their grades and feedback, you will need to set the assignment to 'Visible to students'. Otherwise, you can leave it set to 'Hidden from students'.