Downloading Assignments from Blackboard for Grading

Description

Blackboard allows instructors to quickly and easily download assignment submissions for grading. This is a helpful feature for instructors who want to provide digital feedback to students by using comments or track changes in Microsoft Word or a similar program. 

Downloading Assignment Submissions for Grading 

Step 1: Download Assignments 

1. Within your Blackboard course, click Grade Center in the left-hand navigation menu. 
2. Locate the assignment that you would like download submissions for. A yellow exclamation point icon will display alongside the names of assignments where there are student submissions yet to be graded. 
3. Click on the arrow next to the assignment name in the top row of your gradebook and select Assignment File Download from the drop-down menu. 
4. Click the check boxes next to the student submissions you would like to download. If you would like to download all student submissions for that assignment, simply click the check box in the top row next to the Name column. 
5. In the Select Files section, choose whether you would like to download all student attempts for that assignment or just the most recent attempt. 
6. Click Submit. 
7. On the next page, click Download assignments now. This will download a zip file of all the assignments you selected. 

Step 2: Viewing Downloaded Assignments 

1. Open the zip file that you downloaded. This will create a folder containing your students’ assignments. 
2. There will be two files for each student. The first is the student submission. The second (the .txt file type) contains the date and time of the submission as well as any comments the student included when submitting the assignment. 

Strategies for Downloading Assignments 

• Consider downloading essays or other written assignment submissions to easily provide feedback to students through tracking changes or adding comments in Microsoft Word. 
• Downloading assignment submissions allows instructors to maintain copies of student assignments to work on offline.
• Requiring students to use uniform naming conventions for their assignment submissions will make it easier to manage student files and grade after those files are downloaded.