Creating a Group Assignment
You can use a Blackboard Assignment drop-box to allow your students to submit a group assignment. Students work together to complete the assignment and when ready, one student from each group submits the assignment on behalf of the group. You can award an overall Group mark or individual grades can be allocated to students based on their effort, final contribution, or other criteria.
Instructions
The format of the Group Assignment submission can be text, audio or multimedia coursework. You can also collect submissions offline, if there is no physical submission, e.g. the assignment is a presentation, performance or project where students are not required to submit a digital file.
The recommended workflow for a Group Assignment is:
Set up groups for the assignment
You create a group assignment dropbox in a similar way to the way you would create an individual assignment dropbox. In the Groups tab, Create a Groupset with the required number of Groups and members in each group the Groups tab, You can use Custom, Randomly enrol, Self enrolment or re-use an existing groupset.
Make sure all of your students have been put into a group. Students who are not in any group will not have access to the group assignment because it won't appear on their Course Content pages.
Create a Blackboard Assignment dropbox
Create a Blackboard assignment dropbox and modify the settings to reflect the requirements of the group assignment.
In your Module’s Course Content, click the + sign where you want the Assignment to display. In the drop-down menu, select Create
In the New Assignment page, add the assignment title and instructions, including an explanation detailing how the group will work together on the assignment. This is a good place to highlight to your students that only one student will submit the assignment on behalf of each group.
Assessment Code of Practice Coursework submission guidance advises using the format: Coursework # Title (##%) for your your assignment title e.g. 'Coursework 1 Post-modernist painters Essay (40%). This will help you and your students locate the assessment and make it clear how the student’s final grade is calculated.
Click Save
A Gradebook item will be created automatically for the assignment, even if it is an ‘offline assignment’.
Select the cog icon to open the Assignment Settings.
Click on the date to open up the calendar and select the deadline for submission, select the time to set an alternative time for submission if required.
Tick Allow class conversations to turn on the Class Conversation feature. Students will be able to communicate about the assignment using the chat function, with the whole class and also with the other group members.
Scroll down to Marking and Submissions section of the settings. Here you can change the number of attempts allowed and choice of marks (points or percentages).
Link a groupset to the assignment
In the Assignment Settings, under Additional Tools, click the fourth option, Assigned groups. This will take you to a view of all of the Groupsets in your module.
Choose the Groupset that you wish to link to the assignment.
Click Save.
Assigned groups in the Blackboard Assignment settings will now indicate the number of groups that have been linked to the assignment.
Be clear to students about the requirements of the assignment, outline expectations around behaviour, communication and effort of group members. Ensure that they know the criteria for marking the assignment and if grades are awarded to the group as a whole or individually allocated to each student.
Add Student declaration and marker disclaimer
The assessment and feedback code of practice recommends including a student declaration, link to the academic misconduct policy and marker disclaimer alongside coursework submission:
Assessment Code of Practice advises
Students compliance with the student declaration at the point of submission, the declaration can be found in the Learning Object Repository
that the release of marks should be accompanied by the following statement:
“Marks provided on Blackboard Ultra are subject to ratification by the Board of Examiners and may be subject to change. Please note that as these marks are provisional, they do not necessarily include any penalties applied for academic misconduct”
These are included in the 25/26 Blackboard module template.
Watch the 2 min video about class conversations in a group assignment
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Useful Links
Centre for Digital Learning Enhancement
ulster.ac.uk/learningengancement/cdle