You get an assignment! And you get an assignment! And you! And you!

Derek Nichols
Derek Nichols Blackbaud Employee
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog
We have exciting Assignment news to share with you, especially for those who want an easier way to create assignments for specific students.Until recently, teachers using Blackbaud didn’t have a straightforward way to create assignments for specific students in their classes. Whether this was for an IEP, extra credit, group projects, etc., creating separate assignments could cause frustration and confusion for teachers and students. Additionally, with the rise of hybrid and remote learning, it became even more important to assign particular assignments to selected students only. In early September, we released some new functionality in assignments to address this problem.

Teachers can now easily create assignments for specific students. This can be done while adding or editing an assignment. After filling out the required information for an assignment, teachers will want to select the edit icon next to Full section under Publishing options.

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This will open the Assign to pop-up. To start, teachers will need to select the Selected students option and this will populate a list of students for the selected course.

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Teachers can use the available check boxes to select students for the assignment. If a student has a Learning profile, this will be noted here with an LP indicator. This allows teachers to easily assign to students with learning profiles in the system. Once the appropriate students have been selected, teachers will need to select Save.

Teachers can see these assignments from their Assignment Center. Under the Assigned to column instead of Full section, it will show # students. When selected, teachers can view the students selected for the assignment.

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Finally, in the Gradebook for the class, teachers will only be able to add grades and comments to the assignment for the selected students. The grade cells for the other students will be greyed out and cannot be selected.

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Students will only see assignments they are assigned to in their Assignment Center. Student grades won’t be impacted if the assignment is not assigned to them. This new functionality will create a better experience for teachers and students. Now go forth and assign!

Comments

  • Tina Pappas
    Tina Pappas
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    This enhancement is very appreciated!

  • Jess Moxsky
    Jess Moxsky
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    LOVE this! Teachers will be delighted :)

  • Diana Day
    Diana Day
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    I like the new feature and have been using it, but I was frustrated to see that you can't add a student to the assignment after it's been created. For example, I entered several students into an assignment and then had a new student join the class. That student also needed to complete the assignment. I entered the editing mode and placed a checkmark next to the new student's name, but it never saves. I ended up having to create another assignment just for that student, so my gradebook is starting to get a little clunky.

  • Derek Nichols
    Derek Nichols Blackbaud Employee
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    Thanks for letting us know Diana. I'll go ahead and pass your feedback along to the team.

  • Shannan Swindler
    Shannan Swindler
    Third Anniversary Facilitator 1

    We are having the same problem. Thanks for bringing this up!

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