Blackboard Ultra Doesn't Like Redos (and Other Thoughts).

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Within this last week, students have shown me what they see on their end of the Blackboard Ultra gradebook. I'm so appreciative of this, and I hope they know that, even as I grunt witnessing the red text telling them their completed work is late (when it wasn’t).

Instead of sulking and feeling frustrated, I decided to use the Student Preview this morning to look into that AND to see if incomplete work (some uploaded before a deadline and some after) would show up in any way on MY end in order for me to track those sorts of redos/revisions…


I did sent these findings to people on campus who might be able to do anything about them. In the meantime, since I doubt Blackboard will suddenly change how certain activities in Ultra are assessed or what-have-you, I should rethink (for Spring, I guess) how to use that gradebook. I want it to be easy for my students to understand, I want it to be easy for them to use, and I would like the third win to be for me - I want it to be efficient and effective on my end, as well. That might be asking a lot, but oh well.

So, brainstorming... if the quizzes are the only activity in there that allow redos right now, can I move most of my "stuff" to a quiz format AND THEN use the "offline" assignment feature for everything else? Maybe offline in this case means they emailed me something, they gave me a print copy, OR they put it into a Google folder (oh man, if they did that, they could revise RIGHT IN THE DOCUMENT - BOOM!).

What else have I been pondering within the realm of tweaking things? Well, I know that I need to focus on collaborative annotation, them writing, and feedback from all of us within the first 2-3 weeks. Right now, those are the things I really want to focus in on immediately; I feel they are vital to student learning. Collaborative annotation of the syllabus will aid the entire class in understanding the ungrading theory (hopefully dispersing any inequities that might occur between students who "get" what syllabi are vs those who don't), take care of concerns and anxieties that surround an intensive writing course, and allow them to practice TAG feedback right off the bat!







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