Most assignments on NILE will involve the student submitting something. For all of those scenarios, the other parts of the SaGE guide should be followed: Turnitin, Blackboard assignments, Tests, Blogs, Journals, and Multimedia submissions can all be completed digitally by the student.
There are some situations where a digital student submission is not possible, or plausible, such as live presentations in front of an audience, a viva, or an artwork installation, for example. In those cases, the tutor can take over as the 'submitter' in order to evidence the students' work and assign a grade on NILE. This is achieved with a manual grading column in the grade centre.
A manual grading column has no submission portal counterpart for students to access. For the purposes described in the rest of this guide, a manual column is purely for the recording of work undertaken by students and the recording of their grades. Once the workflow is complete, students may view the grades and feedback that has been left for them in the normal way. Moderators or external examiners can also access the grade centre to view these details.
Within the NILE course you wish to set the assignment, navigate to Course management, Control panel, Grade centre, Full grade centre.
Choose the Create Column button in the action bar menu.
In the Column Information section, add a name, primary display, points possible, and optionally a rubric.
The Column name should include the assignment code and title as it is recorded in the module guide. If it is a resit assignment, this should also be clearly marked in the name, e.g. AS1 RESIT.
The Primary Display option can be set to Text, which will allow you to directly enter a letter grade when marking. However, it is recommended to apply one of the calculated grading schemas, such as UnderGrad or Postgrad Letter when using a calculated rubric with a manual column; this will then show the corresponding letter grade to the students.
The Points possible is a required field. It should be set to 100 in almost every case. Doing so will allow for the correct recording of grades if using the grading schemas.
If adding a Rubric, associate it here. Please see the section of this guide, 'Using Blackboard rubrics' for more guidance.
The next part of the form relates to due dates and additional options.
As there is no accompanying submission point, there is arguably no need to set a due date.
The option for grade centre calculations is only relevant if you use calculated columns. LearnTech does not recommend the use of calculated columns for summative assessment.
Show this column to students should be set to No. This will hide marks from students until you are ready to release all grades to students at once. Releasing grades is covered later in this guide.
Use the Submit button to save your new grade centre column.
