Using Grading and Tracking Tools on Blackboard.

Blackboard has a handy Grading Centre which arranges all of your assignments in columns and keeps track of where your students are up to.  When you set up your assignments and activities, you can go into the Grade Centre and monitor your students' progress, like this: 

In this screen grab, you can see the name so of the students in orange, on the left (names have been blanked out for privacy).  You can see the names of the tasks and assignments above each column to the right of the names.  As you can see, some students have taken part in Task 1 - Questions where we can see symbols for "in progress" and "needs marking".  There is a drop down menu next to each of these symbols giving you options such as to view the work, or make a quick comment.  These records of student attempts and your responses can be used as evidence of participation.

In addition, Blackboard tracks all student activity if you enable statistics tracking.  In the screen grab below you can see the assignments listed and that they have Enabled Statistics Tracking.

There is a small drop down arrow which will give you a menu of options including "Run Statistics Report", and when you click that option, it brings up this screen:

Once again, a contextual menu gives the option to "run" the report.
When you click this option you will get a page which provides the criteria or specifications for the report such as dates and students and a "submit" button to generate the report.  You can select an individual student or you can leave it open to run a report on all students.  By clicking submit a file will be generated showing the useage by the students selected, or all students if none are selected.  You can choose the format of the file to be PDF, Excel, Word, or HTML.

It does take a little while to get used to these tools but it is worth it - you have your AQTF records and evidence sitting there ready for any kind of audit!

Feel free to ask questions, make comments or share experiences in the Comments below.