Changes to Blackboard to support students submitting work

Tomorrow morning (13 March), there will be a few changes to Blackboard based on issues students have had around the submission of work and viewing of feedback.

Students using the Microsoft Edge web browser when submitting their work will receive a pop-up message warning them that we strongly recommend they use another browser. This is because Edge sometimes corrupts Microsoft Office files and turns them into 0 byte files which cannot be read by staff members.

We are removing the Save Draft button from the assignment submission page for students. There were some cases where students saved a draft and thought that their work had been submitted for marking. In this situation staff were unable to mark the students’ work as nothing had been submitted. We do not believe there is any need for this button anymore as it is causing confusion and students do not need to save a draft before submitting, in particular as they can submit their work again if they make a mistake or encounter a problem.

Lastly in the My Grades tool, assignments with feedback were not displaying a hand icon when students hovered over them. This will be fixed so they see a hand icon from now on.

Leave a Reply