Niagara College Canada

This section offers recommendations on how you can support student success in your online assignments and tests and offer them meaningful feedback that they can apply to future learning.

How can I support student success in my online assignments and tests?

Communicate important details, such as submission format(s) and due dates, consistently and well in advance.

Ensure that students are aware of assignment deadlines, formatting, and submission requirements as early as possible and invite them to ask you questions should anything be unclear. To supplement written instructions, you may want to create a short explainer video in which you summarize key assignment goals and requirements.

Check out our Video Library for more information about setting up Blackboard assignments.

Make them aware of their academic integrity obligations and available supports.

Do not assume that students will have a shared understanding of your academic integrity expectations. Describe your expectations, with examples where possible, and embed academic integrity resources into your course.

NC Libraries have created a number of modules to improve students’ understanding of academic integrity and help them avoid plagiarism that can be linked directly within your Blackboard course site.

Embed simple check-ins to monitor student progress and spot misconceptions early.

You can use Blackboard surveys to create quick and easy check-ins at the end of each unit or week of course content.  For example, you could ask students to complete a ‘Muddiest Point’ question, so they can identify the concept that they struggled with the most.

See: Making Surveys on Blackboard

Provide exemplars of high-quality submissions where appropriate.

Where possible, provide students with examples of high-quality assignments so that they can get a better sense of how your expectations should be translated into their actual work. Attach these examples to your Blackboard assignments so they are easily accessible.

Scaffold large assignments.

Rather than having significant projects or assignments due at the end of your online course, you might consider breaking large assessments into smaller elements and requiring students to submit them over time. This can be beneficial because:

1. it makes the work feel more manageable for students;
2. it helps them to organize their time and accomplish key tasks in order, and;
3. you are better able to check in on their progress and provide them feedback in a timely fashion to improve their final submission.

Provide a marking guide/rubric.

When you provide a clear rubric or marking guide, students can feel empowered to take responsibility for meeting expectations. They can also use rubrics to learn to pre-assess their work before submitting it and see where they need to improve. Rubrics can also help you to give timely, targeted feedback.

See: Creating a Rubric in Blackboard

Provide practice questions ahead of significant tests.

Allow students to prepare for major online tests by providing them with sample questions or scheduling low stakes quizzes that mimic the test structure. This will help them to become familiar with both the online testing platform and also with your question style and response expectations.

Check out Video Library for more information about creating and deploying quizzes and tests.

Provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know.

Provide various opportunities for students to practice skills and demonstrate their learning, rather than one or two high stakes tests or assignments. For example, if students have to complete eight quizzes, you may choose to have only six of them count toward the final grade. Give shorter, low percentage assignments early to help build student confidence and to keep them engaged in course work consistently. For written assignments, offer students the opportunity to earn back a portion of their grade by submitting a revised paper which addresses the issues outlined in your feedback. Lower the stakes in assignments and tests by grading them out of a higher number of marks than their weight in the final grade so that students have many opportunities to demonstrate knowledge with less risk.  For example, a multiple choice test that is worth 10% and includes 25 questions is a lower stakes test than one that is worth 10% but includes only 10 questions.

How can I provide effective feedback to my online learners?

Inform students of the type and timing of feedback they can expect from you.

At the start of the semester, clarify the role that feedback will play in your course, the types of feedback that you will offer, when students can expect to receive feedback and where they will be able to access it. This will help to give students a clearer sense of what to expect from you and will likely help to reduce their anxiety regarding assessment in your course.

Find informal opportunities to acknowledge good work and provide encouragement.

Feedback doesn’t always have to be associated with formal assessments. If you’ve been receiving good questions from students, or if contributions to an online discussion have been really thoughtful, take some time to offer informal feedback to an individual or to the entire class via email or a course announcement. Offering this kind of regular encouragement gives students a sense that you are an active member of the online course and that you are paying attention to their individual contributions. It helps to create a welcoming environment and motivate ongoing student effort.

Personalize the feedback.

Given the dynamics of online learning, students can sometimes feel distant and isolated during the course. One of the best ways to prevent your students from feeling this way is by delivering personalized feedback. A simple act, like using the student’s name while writing feedback, helps in developing your connection with the student. Try to avoid generic comments, like ‘good work,’ and instead point out specific strengths of the student’s work and concrete improvements that they can make the next time.

See: Inline Grading in Blackboard

Use a marking guide/rubric to help structure and organize your feedback.

Using a rubric or marking guide can help to speed up your grading, while also helping to structure and organize your feedback to students.

See: Grading with a Rubric in Blackboard

Build in opportunities to provide formative feedback to learners.

If possible, allow students to share draft work with you and/or with their peers. They can then use your feedback, and their peers’ feedback, to revise and improve their work.

Provide feedback frequently and in a timely manner.

Timely interaction between students and instructors is significant to developing a strong online community. When you deliver timely feedback, it lets students know that you are actively involved and gives them the reassurance that you are committed to their ongoing development as learners.

Use automated feedback where appropriate.

14 of Blackboard’s 17 test question types can be autograded and set-up to release automated feedback to students. Consider using some of these autograding features, where appropriate, to cut down on your grading time.

Check out our Video Library more information about creating and grading quizzes and tests.

Use SafeAssign to monitor the originality of student work.

SafeAssign can be turned on for any assignment that you’re setting up in your course site and works with DOCX, DOC, PPT, PPTX, PDF, TXT, ODT, RTF, HTML, and HTM files. Turn on SafeAssign and access its reports.

Ensure that your feedback is specific and actionable.

Because of the distance between teacher and student in the online domain, it is crucial that any offered is highly specific and concrete. Avoid generic comments and instead point out tangible strengths of the student’s work and actionable improvements that they can make the next time. Where possible, reference examples from the student’s own submission.

Consider supplementing written feedback with other forms of feedback.

To further personalize your feedback, you may want to supplement written feedback with short video or audio recordings. This allows students to hear your voice directly, strengthening their sense of connection to you and to the suggestions that you are offering them. Accessibility remains important, so any audio or video feedback should be accompanied by a transcript or written commentary.

Consider a role for peer feedback.

A great way to give feedback while promoting increased interaction and engagement in online classes is by encouraging students to review and offer feedback on one another’s work. Because giving effective feedback is a skill, you should always provide guidance to students about the specific features of their peers’ work that they should be commenting on and provide one or more examples of good feedback as a model.

• Instructional value of peer review in an online course
• Summary for students on why giving peer feedback is an important and valuable skill

Monitor student performance and consider sending a Salesforce alert if you have significant concerns about a student’s academic engagement.

Throughout the year, faculty members can use the Salesforce Faculty Update form (available in My Apps on the NC Portal page) to notify academic advisors of students who may be experiencing academic challenges. Find out who the advisors for your academic area are by exploring the Academic Advising website.

What settings and strategies can promote student success in online tests?

For general information on how to create, deploy and grade online tests, review the Tests and Quizzes section our Video Library.

Make a test available to students for a minimum of 24 hours and possibly several days or even a week.

Since students may have issues with internet connectivity, limited access to devices, may be writing their test from any time zone in the world, and likely have additional family obligations during this period, it’s important that any test be available for a significant period so students can access it at a time when they are able to concentrate, focus, and have predictable access to a device.

Set the test timer, but allocate a generous amount of time.

For example, if the test should take students 60 minutes to complete, we would recommend setting the test timer for 90 min or 2 hours. Because internet connectivity is such an issue right now, giving students some extra time will help in the event that their test experience is interrupted.

DO NOT enable forced completion in your test settings.

If you enable forced completion when setting up a Blackboard test, a student’s test will be submitted if their test is interrupted for any reason (power outage, loss of internet connectivity, accidentally close their browser).  This will result in many panicked emails from students and likely lots of work for the faculty member. If you do not enable forced completion and use the test timer, if a student’s test is interrupted, they will be able to return to it and continue with whatever time remains on their timer.

For more information on the implications of forced completion and other important test settings, visit our Video Library and review the Deploy Tests video.

If you’re concerned about academic integrity, consider using randomized test pools.

For more information on creating and using test pools to randomize tests, visit our Video Library and review the Generate Randomized Tests video.

If possible, set up a small, low-stakes ‘practice test’ so students can become familiar with the test interface and iron out the kinks.

If this is the first time that students will be taking a test online, and especially if it’s a significant test, you might want to create a short four or five question ‘practice’ test for them to take ahead of time. This will allow you to practice test set-up and allow them to identify any significant challenges that they might have ahead of the high-stakes evaluation.

Parts of this page were adapted from Motivating Our Students. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo which is licensed under the Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 4.0).