The Blackboard inline marking tool Crocodoc is being replaced with Box View by its suppliers. Blackboard do not have any control over this change and have provided us with an update to allow us to make this change to the new product. The new Box View tool adds support for viewing more file types and works in a similar way to Crocodoc.
Crocodoc will be withdrawn by its supplier on 15 January 2018, and we must apply the update before then or we will lose access to all of our feedback. We have taken the decision to upgrade on 1 December, in order to minimise the impact of this change on students and staff.
In order to transition to this new tool, an update to Blackboard is scheduled for 5pm on Friday 1 December, with the system at risk until 5pm on Saturday 2 December. During the update, staff and students will not have access to Blackboard and shuspace. After the update is complete, the inline marking tool on Blackboard will be powered by Box View and existing feedback converted from Crocodoc into Box View automatically as part of this process.
Impact on students
The impact of the update and transition will be minimal for students. Students will continue to submit their work and access their feedback in the same ways as before.
The main difference for students will be that the feedback comments appear as interactive markers in the text when using Box View. Currently, students will only be able to view comments online and cannot download comments made in Box View although we are pushing for this functionality to be added in the future and we are exploring workarounds.
Impact on staff
Only staff using the inline marking function will see a change and the impact on these staff should also be minimal: submission points are not affected and no changes to assignment set-up are necessary. However, staff using Crocodoc at the time of the upgrade may notice some differences. After the update has taken place, any feedback comments previously created in Crocodoc will remain visible but cannot be edited in Box View. However, staff will be able to add additional feedback comments to this work using the Box View tool.
Therefore, where staff are using inline marking, they may wish to create all of their inline feedback on a piece of work either before or after the upgrade to ensure they do not have issues with being unable to edit some of the feedback. This change is a significant factor in the timing of the update. By doing the transition before the majority of assessments are submitted online for semester 1, we hope to minimise the impact on staff, though we recognise that some staff will be engaged with marking and creating feedback at this time.
Support available
A list of Frequently Asked Questions is available and will be updated regularly. If you have a question that is not covered, please email ! Assessment Journey Programme.
Your Faculty TEL Team can help support you with using online marking and feedback tools.