e-submission and e-marking
What is it?
e-submission refers to the process by which a student submits work online for storage and retrieval by academic, administrative or other staff for marking, feedback or review. This can also include plagiarism checking using Turnitin.
e-marking is the process by which staff provide marks and feedback to students online (through the Blackboard Grade Centre), which can include annotated files (e.g. using comments in Microsoft Word).
Why use it?
Some reasons for considering the use of e-submission and e-marking include:
- Flexibility e.g. Students can submit assignments or access marks and feedback without being restricted by office hours
- Tracking submissions and progress (for staff and students)
- Ability to use Plagiarism detection software (Turnitin) which is integrated with Blackboard
- Whole process is managed in one central, secure and familiar system (Blackboard)
- Archiving of assignments, feedback and marks for future reference e.g. for external examiner access
- Provision of clear, timely and easily accessible feedback to enhance student engagement
- Markers can re-edit their feedback comments in a document as they go through it
How does it work in Blackboard?
A typical basic workflow involves the following stages:
- Setup - Instructor creates the submission point (and Turnitin submission point if required)
- Submission - Students submit their assignments
- Plagiarism check - assignments are put through Turnitin and reports analysed
- Marking - markers add marks and feedback in the Blackboard Grade Centre
- Feedback - students access their own marks and feedback
Depending on your role in the process you may be involved in some of these stages but not others.
Anonymity
Although Blackboard does offer an "anonymous grading" function, this is trust-based. Instructors can choose to hide student identities whilst marking, but are able to switch the option on and off at will. Blackboard does also have a batch download facility for assignments, which can then be distributed for marking offline. However this tool automatically adds the student username as an identifier in the name of each submitted file.
Examples
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology
The effective management of student coursework has significant time and resource implications for both students and staff. In 2008/09 the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology implemented a pilot to investigate moving from paper-based to e-submission of student assignments using Blackboard. The pilot found that electronic submission of student assignments and coursework offers benefits to staff and students. Students have the option to submit from any location rather than having to travel to the administrative office, and can receive confirmation that the work has been received. Administrators have accurate details of when an assignment was submitted and can automatically create an electronic archive of all submitted documents reducing the need for bulky local stores of documents and making document retrieval easier. Academic staff can utilise the text matching software Turnitin to check that student work has been correctly cited.
How do I start using e-submission or e-marking?
If you are considering introducing e-submission and/or e-marking then firstly please refer to the planning guidance which provides a useful framework.
Tools commonly used include the Blackboard Assignment, Grade Centre and Turnitin.
If you require practical guidance, e.g. how to set up submission points in Blackboard then please refer to the Online Submission guides on the Blackboard Help tab. To access this log in to Blackboard and click on Help at the top right of the page.
What support is available?
The e-learning team run a workshop on Planning for e-submission and e-marking - details and booking via the staff development website. Alternatively If you would like any advice or consultation on e-submission please contact bb-help@bristol.ac.uk and one of our team will be in touch.
For practical advice, for example how to set up submission points in Blackboard please refer to the Blackboard Help tab in the first instance. This contains FAQs and also a guide called Online submission which has step-by-step instructions on how to set up and manage online submission in Blackboard.
Further information and useful links
Technology, Feedback, Action! (a research project at Sheffield Hallam funded by the Higher Education Academy) - including best practice recommendations for the use of technology to help students engage with their feedback.
NUS Charter on Feedback and Assessment