Important: Are you using Safe Assign to manage your student submissions?

Background

Due to a scheduling problem from Blackboard Hosting they are unable to roll out the Safe Assign tool, with LearnUCS. Currently, Blackboard have given us a date for completion of the 14th August.

Therefore, we have had to disable the Safe Assign tool in LearnUCS until this work is completed. The following describes the process of managing the submission, marking, grading and return of assignments for those expecting to use the Safe Assign tool upto the 14th August.

What do academic staff need to do?

The starting point is contact your Course Administrator or Academic Support. They will be managing the submission points and can liaise with you about downloading work, returning grades etc.,

There are a number of factors which influence your choices about what to do.

• are you using the Safe Assign submission route? If No (using Assignment Manager) nothing has changed. If yes, contact your course administrator


• can you wait until after the 14th August? If yes, do nothing. If No, contact your Course Administrator

The following is for your information to make you aware of how we are managing the following scenarios. As mentioned previously, you should contact your Course Administrator.

Scenarios

• Students submitting work to LearnUCS


• Staff accessing work for marking


• Staff uploading grades / feedback to gradebook


• Access for external examiners

Students submitting work to LearnUCS

Submission will need to go through the Blackboard Assignment Manager. Therefore, all new submissions points will be created by the Course Administrator(s). Teaching staff will need to liaise with their Course Administrator.

If the SafeAssign point has been created (based on the list from Academic Support), the course administrator will create a new submission point for students. If student work has been submitted previously the Elevate Team will manually migrate this across.

The student experience will be very similar, the process of submitting is nearly identical.

Staff accessing work for marking

Staff who need access to material submitted to Safe Assign, will need to contact Elevate Team (elevate@ucs.ac.uk) who will download the submissions. After which they will share with staff either via (1) email or (2) dropbox depending on the size.

Staff uploading grades / feedback to gradebook

The key determinant is can you wait until after the 14th August? If yes, wait. If not, you (academic staff) will need to forward the feedback files and unratified grades to the individual students. Once Safe Assign is back online then can upload grades and files.

If you have already uploaded the grades and feedback to Safe Assign, and you haven’t a local copy you need to contact your Course Administrator to arrange for them to be exported from Safe Assign.

Access for external examiners

The key determinant is can you wait until after the 14th August? If yes, wait. If not, you need to share a sample via (1) email or (2) dropbox. The best place is to contact your Course Administrator.

If you have any questions about the above, please email the Elevate Team (elevate@ucs.ac.uk)