In the past, when students have submitted work to the Blackboard Assignment tool they did not receive a receipt. This was a source of dissatisfaction for both staff and students, as work submitted via the Turnitin tool does generate a receipt, emailed to their University email address.
This issue has now been addressed – the University has paid Blackboard for an additional building block (plug-in) and this was made live on Wednesday evening.
So now, every time a student submits work to a Blackboard assignment, a receipt will be sent to their University email address. This receipt contains the following information:
- a submission ID
- the student’s name and student number
- the assignment title
- the title and ID of the Blackboard course
- date and time of submission
- a link to the file(s) submitted
- a link to a web version of the receipt
We have updated the guidance available to students via the Support for Students tab on Blackboard
Please note our advice to students
- Do not delete the email receipt – you should retain it as proof of submission.
- This receipt only indicates that a submission has been made by you on the date and time shown, and received by Blackboard.
- It is not confirmation that a file you have submitted is correct or has uploaded properly.
Always check the files you have submitted to make sure that they can be viewed or downloaded.
Even with a receipt, the onus is still on the student to ensure that they have submitted the correct files, that they are in the correct format, and that they can be viewed in and/or downloaded from Blackboard. Not all students will read our guidance, of course, so please reiterate these points to any of your students who are required to submit work to Blackboard assignments.
Staff access to receipts
Once a student has submitted to a Blackboard assignment on your course, you will find that a Receipts folder has been created in the course Fileshare, and all submission receipts will be stored here.
For each receipt you can identify
- the student username (contained within the filename)
- the date and time of submission
You would have to open a receipt to see other details, such as which assignment it relates to, or what files were submitted.
So identifying submission by a specific student to a specific assignment could be time-consuming. But, in case of dispute, the first step would be to ask the student to forward to you the receipt which was emailed to them.
We hope that the introduction of Blackboard assignment receipts will reduce student anxiety around e-submission, and increase transparency for both staff and students as to what was submitted when.
