The following page will explain how to access the NILE courses you are enrolled on, and how to find and view the assessments, feedback, and information about the grading, feedback and verification processes that took place for each module.
If you are unable to log in to NILE, or do not know how to, please select the link below.
Once you have logged in to NILE, select the 'Courses' button to find the courses that you are enrolled on, and click on the course title to enter the course. Depending on whether you are in list or grid view, the courses will display as follows:
If you are enrolled on multiple courses, you can use the 'Search your courses' box to quickly find the course that you are looking for.
If you are not enrolled on all the NILE courses that you need access to, please contact the programme leader and ask them to enrol you.
All external examiners should be enrolled on the 'EE101: External Examiners Testing Area' NILE course. If you are not sure about any of the features or functions of NILE, you can use the EE101 course to check over any processes. The EE101 course has only dummy students enrolled and dummy assessments submitted, so you are welcome to use this course in order to get better acquainted with NILE.
If staff have added external examiner notes and/or internal moderation notes, etc., for you to review, these will be located in the 'Grading, feedback, and verification' folder in the NILE course.
The 'Grading, feedback, and verification' folder will be hidden from students, as will all documentation inside that folder. It is vital that the folder and contents remain hidden from students, as these documents contain confidential information and disclosure to students may constitute a data breach.
Please note that practices vary across the University, and staff may not necessarily make use of the 'Grading, feedback, and verification' folder. If this is the case, the programme/module leader will explain their practices to you and will send you the necessary information via alternative means.
If the documents in the folder have been uploaded in a common MS Office format (Word, Excel, etc) they will display directly in the NILE course when you select them, so you may not need to download them.
If you do download any documents containing information about students, these should be treated as confidential and subject to the Data Protection Act (2018). Such information should always be held securely on a password protected device, and completely deleted from the device once you no longer need access to the documents.
When viewing students' Turnitin submissions, please make sure that you do not adjust any settings, or make any changes to students' grades or feedback, as these changes will be saved and will be immediately visible to students.
Once you are in a NILE course, to access a Turnitin submission, select 'Gradebook'.
In list view, with 'Markable Items' selected (as shown in the screenshot below) all the items for assessment in the course will be visible. In the screenshot below, the first example in the list is a Turnitin assignment.
If you want to view all the grades for the assignments, you can switch to grid view.
To view the students' Turnitin submissions and their feedback, switch to list view, and make sure that 'Markable Items' is selected. Then select the Turnitin assignment that you want to look at. This will open the Turnitin assignment inbox, from where all students' assignments can be accessed.
Once the assignment inbox has opened, select the numeric grade for the paper that you want to look at. This will open the Turnitin document viewer with the instructor feedback layer active. (Note that if the document viewer is opening by selecting the paper title, the paper will open but the instructor feedback layer will not be active.)
As Turnitin does not allow letter grades to be entered, a numeric grade is given in Turnitin. This numeric grade is then translated into a letter grade in the Blackboard gradebook. The way that numeric grades translate to letter grades is documented here: https://askus.northampton.ac.uk/Learntech/faq/180767
If there are a lot of students enrolled on the course and you are looking for a specific student, start typing their name into the search box to quickly find them and view their paper.
The paper of the student you selected will be presented when the document viewer opens. If the paper was opened by selecting the grade in the assignment inbox, the instructor feedback layer will be active, and any notes and comments that staff have added to the student's paper will be visible on the document.
If the document viewer has been opened by selecting the paper title, the instructor feedback layer can be activated by selecting the 'Show/Hide Instructor Layer' button.
To view the feedback for the paper, including any voice comments, select the 'Feedback Summary' button.
If a Turnitin rubric or grading form has been used, you can view this by selecting the 'Rubric/Grading Form' button.
You can also view the rubric in more details in a pop-out window.
Be careful when viewing the rubric in a pop-out window, as clicking on any of the cells will update the rubric and change the feedback for the student whose work you are viewing.
Select 'Close' from the lower right corner to exit the rubric pop-out and return to the document viewer.
To view another student's submission, you can either close the document viewer and return to the assignment inbox, or you can select another submission from within the document viewer. Once the list opens, select the name of the student whose paper you want to view.
Once you have reviewed the submissions and feedback, you can close both the Turnitin document viewer and the assignment inbox, and this will return you to the gradebook in the NILE course.
Once back in the gradebook, you can view another item of assessment, view the course content, or can exit the course by closing the panel.
From the NILE course page, you can select another course, or can exit NILE by choosing 'Sign Out' at the bottom on the main NILE menu.
When you have completed the process of external examination you will normally complete an external examiners report. If you have any questions about how to complete the report, please contact: externalexaminers@northampton.ac.uk