From 2016-17 onwards, neither Turnitin nor Blackboard assignments will be copied as part of the annual Course Rollover.

We plan to present staff with a blank slate as far as assessment is concerned, allowing staff to set up the submission points they require with the most appropriate settings.

The reasons for this are:

To ensure a consistent and reliable user experience for students and staff.
When assignment submission points are copied from the previous year, they retain their original settings and dates. At the very least these need to be edited and updated. When this has not happened, it has caused confusion for students who try to submit to an outdated assignment.
In many cases, the copied assignment submission points are redundant, so staff opt to delete these, and create new ones.
With the evolving use of e-submission, e-marking and e-feedback (where you may even be changing from one e-submission tool to another) the benefits of having a copy of the previous year’s assignment submission points and settings are rapidly diminishing.
We have seen a significant number of cases where reusing Turnitin assignments copied from the previous year’s course has led to serious technical issues.
A ‘clean slate’ approach will ensure that staff no longer see redundant or confusing columns in the Grade Centre.
Please note that Blackboard Tests will be copied, but not deployed to users – in other words you will need to take action to make them available to students.

Page last updated on October 9, 2018 by Sev Raychev