New Assignment Center Webinar Recap and FAQs

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the webinar on August 7th, 2024 on the New Assignment Center, a new feature that will help teachers manage their assignments more efficiently and effectively. We hope you enjoyed the session and learned a lot from our product experts.

If you missed the webinar or want to watch it again, you can find the onDemand webinar here and access it at any time.

You can also share the webinar with your colleagues, teachers, and staff who might be interested in learning more about the New Assignment Center. Feel free to forward this post or the link to the onDemand webinar to anyone who might benefit from it.
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FAQs from the Webinar:
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During the webinar, we received many questions from the attendees. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions and their answers:
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When will the New Assignment Center be available?
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• It is already available. The old assignment center has been removed.

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What are the main benefits of the New Assignment Center?
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• Some highlights of the New Assignment Center include:
  • Color coding of classes
  • Enhanced filtering options
  • Quickly see how many points an assignment is worth
  • Ability to add Tasks to an assignment
  • Separation of Faculty vs Student Assignment Center Defaults
  • Mobile-Friendly interface
  • Allows teachers to see a true preview of an assignment as though they were the student themselves
  • Helps reduce clicks for teachers by creating global default due time

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If a student marks the assignment complete, does that change the status on the teacher's end?
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• The complete status is shown to the parent and student when the student marks the assignment as complete on the assignment. Teachers can go to the student's assignment center and view the status but it would not change the status on the teacher’s end.

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How can I learn more about the New Assignment Center?
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• You can stay in touch with our What's New and you can also ask questions, share feedback, and exchange best practices with other users and our product team.
  1. Watch the OnDemand Webinar here.
  2. Check out our What’s New Documentation.
  3. Ask questions in our Community Forums.

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Do the student and teacher preferences save after logging out?
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• For preferences that the teachers set, these are saved to the database and are remembered across browser sessions. For the student's preferences, these are saved in the local browser cache. As long as their browser cache is not cleared, or as long as they do not sign on from another device or browser, this will remain.

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Any Google Classroom integration other than rosters?
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• Google Classroom will utilize the OneRoster Connection which will sync Roster and Assignment data. Other Google integrations we have are Google Assignments (LTI) and Google Drive.

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Is color coding only user preference or can we set color by departments on admin side?
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• Color coding is a per user preference. If you would like to see admin-level defaults implemented in the future, please insert that into our Idea Bank.

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Does the new assignment center allow for students to create self-directed tasks or calendar items?
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• Yes, the previous task feature has been expanded to allow students to add general tasks, tasks specific to a class section, and tasks specific to a particular assignment. These tasks will show up on the calendar and list view as separate line items for the date the student set as the due date.

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Are the AI-generated question banks already available or are they a planned update? I don't see them in my question bank interface, and I don't know if that's an issue on my end or just not meant to be seen yet.
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• This feature is currently in our Early Adopter’s Program (EAP) and set to be released later this school year. Any interested parties wanting to join the EAP can reach out to our Product Manager, Michael Morrissette at michael.morrissette@blackbaud.com to request to join.

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In the previous version, when assignments were marked as zero, students were not able to submit or resubmit. in this version, when student assignments are marked as "missing" will students still be able to submit or upload?
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• When a student’s assignments are marked missing or incomplete by the teacher they will still be able to submit the assignment. Files can also still be submitted if there is a grade of zero entered.

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We hope this post answered some of your questions and helped you get ready for the New Assignment Center. Thank you for being part of the Blackbaud K–12 community!