Southern New Hampshire University

Changes Coming to Grading Assignments (August 26, 2021)

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Brightspace is making updates to the grading page on assignments for instructors. The changes will allow for instructors to be more efficient in their grading process. This article will go over what has been added, what has been moved, and what has been removed. These changes will come August 26, 2021.

Changes to Brightspace Assignment Grading

Overview of the updates coming to Brightspace grading an assignment:

  1. Learner (Student) Context
  2. Multiple Submission Log
  3. The Drag Bar
  4. The Rubric Inside of the Assignment
  5. Edit the Assignment While Grading
  6. Adding Feedback to Assignment
The new grading set up of Brightspace with numbers around showing off the different changes.
The changes to files that can be added when publishing grades.

1. Learner (Student) Context

By hovering over the student’s profile photo, you will have the options to email the student or see their progress in the class.

  1. Email the student.
  2. View the student's progress in the course.
The student context box with a number one next to “email” and a number two next to “user progress.”

If the student is exempt from the assignment, it will appear next to their name when inside of the assignment.

Student context box with “(exempt)” highlighted in yellow.

2. Multiple Submission Log

When a student submits multiple times under the same assignment, you can select the drop-down arrow to see the multiple submissions.

The user submissions drop-down menu.
The drop-down menu of multiply submissions.

In this example, there are not multiple submissions, but if there were, there would be other submissions listed.

3. The Drag Bar

By selecting the bar and moving your cursor, the left and right windows will expand or shrink.

The assignment and rubric close up on the drag bar. The drag bar boxed in red.

4. Using a Rubric to Grade

The rubric will now expand down the evaluation panel. You can still choose to have the rubric open in a pop-up window by selecting the box with an arrow coming out of it.

Select the arrow next to the rubric to open the grading criteria.

To see the criteria for each section, hover your cursor over one of the sections of the rubric.

The rubric within grading with a red box around the arrow. The cursor hovering over and showing the criteria for the selected level on the rubric.

5. Editing Assignment While Grading

When selecting the ellipses (the three dots) you can now “edit activity” (which is the same as editing the assignment) and edit any special access date for students.

The drop-down menu from selecting the ellipses with the options showing of “edit activity” and special access dates.

6. Adding Feedback

You have the option to add audio feedback, video feedback, or add any other files that you would like to add from various sources.

  1. The sources to add a file.
  2. Adding audio feedback to students.
  3. Adding video feedback to students.
Adding attachments to a grade file. A red box around the different file sources with a one over the box, a number two over the audio, and a three over the video.

New Feature for Instructors

With the upcoming update to Brightspace instructors now will be able to grade assignments on other devices from a mobile app. Instructors will be able to grade on their phones and/or tablets.

The mobile view of grading an assignment on a cell phone.

What Has Been Removed?

The student preview of the grade. The following photo is the old view showing the feature that is being removed.

The old preview of the student’s grade.

More Information About the Changes

More information about the features staying the same, being removed, or changes coming to the grading portion of assignments can be found at the following Brightspace Community About New Assignment Evaluation Experience.

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