It is possible to set up and mark assignments for groups using the Blackboard Assignment tool and to use the groups feature in Blackboard to show individual Turnitin assignments submitted by each member of a group.
Turnitin and Blackboard Assignment tools have different capabilities for handling groups, which will dictate your choice of tool.
Set up Groups
To create a group assignment, you should already have set up the groups in your Blackboard course area. Click here for guidance on Creating and managing groups.
Blackboard Group Assignments
You can use the Blackboard Assignment tool to assess a joint piece of work submitted by a group of students and return feedback to all the students in that group.
Please see the guide on Creating a Blackboard Assignment for instructions on how to set up a group assignment in Blackboard.
A few notes on marking:
- When marking a group assignment using Inline Grading, the overall mark given will automatically be submitted for all the students in the group and will become visible in the Grade Centre. However, you can modify individual students’ marks if you need to.
- Individual marks cannot be applied in the case of anonymous group assignments, as it won’t be possible to identify individual students.
For more on marking assignments in Blackboard, see Marking a Blackboard assignment online using Inline Grading.
It is important that group enrolments have been set up correctly before creating the assignment. Please do not change enrolments on groups and avoid editing the assignment settings after a submission has been made, as this will result in the entire group losing access to the assignment or any work in progress.
Turnitin Assignments by Group
The Turnitin Assignments by Group feature is an organisational tool that allows you to mark the individual assignments for a specific group of students.
You could use this tool:
- where tutors are marking work submitted by their tutor group,
- as a way of randomly assigning papers to markers,
- where students have a choice of essay topics and a different academic is marking each topic,
- to manage double marking – different groups can be created to allocate first and second markers.
Turnitin Assignments by Group can be used with anonymous marking.
You will not be able to see the grouped assignment submissions through the Grade Centre. You will need to access the students’ submitted assignments through the ‘Turnitin Assignments by Groups’ tool in all cases.
For more guidance, see the guide on Using the Turnitin Assignments by Group.
Note: although it is possible to add and edit the Blackboard group enrolments without affecting the Turnitin submissions, it is good practice not to change group enrolments once marking has started, especially where anonymous marking is being used.
Page last updated on September 25, 2018 by Sev Raychev
