Blackboard Ultra – Qualitative “no marks” Assessment

Contents

Staff guide: How to create assessment in Blackboard Ultra when you intend to release feedback but no overall marks to students. The example in this guide is for a Blackboard Assignment but you could also apply this to a Blackboard Test, marked Journal or Discussion.

Create a new mark schema in the Gradebook

This step is optional. A Complete/incomplete grade schema is available in your Ultra course by default.

Use a mark schema to control what students see as their “mark”. This can be a number, letter of word. In this example, we create a schema for “Submitted/Not Submitted”.

Open the course Gradebook and select the cog to open the Gradebook Settings.
Select Manage mark schemas.
Select + Add to create a new schema.
Name the schema and enter two mark names e.g. Submitted and Not Submitted.
You can leave the mark range, you will be scoring submissions as 0% or 100% to ensure that the right mark is allocated. The up to 100% mark range should be renamed as “Submitted”, and the lower range as “Not submitted”.
Save the mark schema.

A new mark schema is being created called "Submitted/Not Submitted". There is a table with two columns. First column heading is "Mark name" and this contains two names for Submitted and Not submitted. The second column heading is "Mark Range %". Submitted has a mark range & of 50-100%. Not submitted has a mark range of 0% and less than 50%.

Assignment Settings: Assign a mark schema and maximum point value

When creating your assignment. Select the desired schema, for example, “Submitted/Not Submitted” in the Marking & Submissions settings. This will be the Mark Using field.

Change the maximum points to 1.

The Marking & Submissions panel of a Blackboard Assignment. The user has selected the drop down menu for the "Mark using" field and is selecting the mark schema "Submitted/Not Submitted"

Assignment Settings: Create a No-Points Rubric

This step is optional. You cannot currently apply a rubric to a Blackboard Test.

You could also consider creating a qualitative rubric. You can create a rubric from the Gradebook or from the assignment settings panel.

Make sure you select No points as the Rubric Type.

Screenshot of creating a new rubric. There is a dropdown menu for Rubric type and "No Points" is selected from the dropdown.

Assignment Settings: Review

In this example we have:

Created a Submitted/Not Submitted mark schema in the Gradebook, and then assigned it to the assignment.
Changed the maximum points to 1.
Created and added a No-points rubric to the assignment.

The Assignment Settings panel. The assignment has a mark schema of "Submitted/Not Submitted" and a maximum 1 point. There is a rubric assigned called "Qualitative rubric"

Add & Post Feedback

Mark and add feedback for each submission as desired (using the no points rubric is used).

Assign each submission the maximum 1 point. Students will see this as “submitted” or the mark name according to the mark for 100% on your mark schema. In this example:

Assignments with the maximum 1 point appear as Submitted.
Assignments with 0 points appear as Not Submitted.

The gride view of the gradebook, an excerpt of a column for the Blackboard Assignment called "No points assign...". 2 submissions have been marked and posted. One is showing as "Submitted". One is showing as "Not Submitted".

Copy Mark Schemas and Rubrics

You can reuse the mark schemas and rubric throughout the course.

You can copy mark schemas and rubrics between courses using the copy items action.

You must be an instructor on both courses.
In the destination course and select the More Options menu (…) from the top right of the course content area.
Select Copy Items.
Select the desired Mark schemas and Rubrics.
Select Start Copy.

The copy items menu. A course called "ultra exemplar" has been selected and two items called Qualitiative Rubric and Submitted/Not Submitted have been selected to be copied to the current course. Two folders are highlighted for Rubrics and Mark Schemas.

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