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A faculty member posed the following interesting question,

"I want to set up an assignment that will act as a weekly entry ticket to lectures. I would like students to submit a summary of the reading by 5pm the day before lecture, which means setting up a weekly, perpetual due date rather than a one-time-only due date. Can I do this, and if so how? "

Any ideas, suggestions?

Thanks, Susan

Hi Susan. About the only way that I can think of to accomplish this would be to set up multiple assignments, each due one week apart and then make the content module related to the lecture available on a select release basis.

One other thought that may work -> use Respondus to create multiple quizzes, which are easier to duplicate with a tool such as Respondus and add a question that is graded automatically to automatically selective release the lectures when the quiz is submitted.

I would like to do something similar to what Susan requested, but we are now using Bb Learn, and morgan16's reply is several years old.

Is there a way to either (a) create multiple assignments at once, by uploading a data file, for example, or (b) clone assignments--i.e. create an assignment to be just like another one except for a few changes?

My problem is that I require each student to turn in a reading summary three times a week before class, and I have to do this for two sections of the course.  I'm willing to go through the tedious work of creating 35 or 40 assignments for each section, but I need to put in three date/time pairs for each assignment, as well as fill in other data to create the assignment, and this process is very error-prone.  I'm sure that there are others who have and will want to be able to do something like this, and it seems as if it would be an important feature.  I'm wondering whether some way to systematically create multiple assignments is available yet.

(There is probably a way to do it for someone who is able to work with the underlying databases that drive Bb Learn.  Maybe only Blackboard programmers are allowed to do that sort of thing, but it seems as if it would be possible, in theory, to provide the ability to instructors.)

Marshall

Marshall,

You might get more response posting over in the Blackboard Learn areas rather than the CE/Vista areas.  However, there isn't currently a way in Blackboard Learn to "batch" create multiple assignments at once, or to clone assignments.

Once you get the assignments set up in one class the first time, it's fairly straightforward to copy them to another class if you copy both the content area and the grade center settings.  However, you'll still have to fix all the dates in the new class, and that will be pretty tedious.  In an upcoming version of Blackboard, I believe you will be able to copy materials from one class to another and reset all the dates as needed relative to the start date for the class, but I'm not sure when that would be available at your school.

Mike