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What are the assignment settings? (Ultra)

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When you edit or add an assignment in your Blackboard Ultra course, there are a number of settings you can use to ensure the activity works the way you want it to.

From the assignment page, click the gear on the right side. You can also click any of the links in the Assignment Settings area to open the same settings menu.

Assignment settings with gear icon highlighted
Since Blackboard Ultra uses the same interface for the assignment and test, there are multiple items in the settings that do not apply to assignments.

Details & Information

Details & Information area in Assignment SettingsIn the Details & Information area, choose a due date for your assignment. If students submit after the due date you set, their submissions will be flagged as late. Allow class conversations allows you to create an ungraded threaded discussion associated with this assignment. This feature will be covered in more detail in another article. Collect submissions offline converts the assignment into a placeholder. If this is checked, the assignment cannot be submitted to directly, but it will still appear in the gradebook as an assignment you evaluate, but receive the submissions in a different way. This option makes sense if students are using software that doesn’t integrate directly with Blackboard or, for example, you are teaching a hybrid course and the assignment is a class presentation that is not submitted.

Grading & Submissions area in Assignment SettingsGrading & Submissions

The Grading & Submissions area allows you to determine how the assignment is organized within the gradebook. Blackboard Ultra puts every assignment in a predefined category called Assignment, but you can move it if you wish. You may allow students to submit anywhere from once to unlimited times to the assignment.

If you choose more than one submission, a new dropdown will appear allowing you to decide how the grade is calculated based on multiple submissions, like the average of all grades or the highest graded submission. You may choose how you grade the assignment, using points, a letter grade, or percentage, as well as the maximum number of points possible. More details on the structure of the gradebook and its organization are covered in another article.

Anonymous grading will allow you to evaluate submissions without knowing who submitted each. If you wish to do this, check the Hide student names box. This option is not available if you allow class conversations.

Additional Tools area and Save button in Assignment SettingsAdditional Tools

If you have additional evaluators in your course, like a graduate assistant, you can allow them to evaluate submissions by checking the 2 graders per student box and Assigning additional graders. If you are using a rubric to evaluate the assignment, you can add it by clicking the Add grading rubric link. Rubrics are covered in more detail in another video.

To make this a group assignment, click the Assign to groups link. Working with groups will be covered in a separate article.

To enable SafeAssign, Blackboard’s plagiarism detection software, click the Enable Originality Report link. You will be presented with three additional options. Check the first box to enable SafeAssign for this assignment. The second checkbox allows students to see the same originality report you do, showing how much of the submission appears to be plagiarized. The final checkbox will exclude any submissions in this assignment from the larger databases SafeAssign checks against. This is not recommended if you are allowing multiple submissions. When you have checked the boxes you want, click the x next to Safe Assign to return to the settings.

Safe Assign menu

Click Save when you are finished.

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