Building Assessment Tasks in UTSOnline

The online assessment tools in UTSOnline can facilitate a wide variety of learning activities for students. The tools include: surveys, test, quizzes, and electronic submission of assignments. In addition, UTSOnline has the added feature of embedded access to Turnitin. To learn more about different assessment types, access details from the links below:
Assignments
Portfolio Assignments
Turnitin Assignments
Rubrics
Quizzes
Spark^PLUS
Self and peer assessment

Assignments

Assignments allow you to create coursework and manage the grades and feedback for each student separately. In an assignment, you can include a description, point value, and file attachments. You can create assignments in several courses areas, such as in a content area or folder. Blackboard Support offers extensive guides to the Assignment Tool.

Alternatively, view this easy-to-follow video that explains how and where to set up a basic assignment submission area (or assignment drop box) where students can upload their work. You can do this just for collection purposes or to conduct further marking directly inside UTSOnline via the Grade Centre.

This short video explains the basic setup (3:47min)

Access Portfolio Assignments to set up a portfolio assessment task. Portfolio assignments have a slightly different setup and grading process.Students access the assignment, type a submission, attach files, and submit it. You can respond to each student separately with comments and attached files. To learn about the grading process, see Blackboard support for Grading Assignments
You can distribute assignments to course groups. To learn more, see Create Group Assignments.

Turnitin assignments

Turnitin is a software product that provides the ability to check students’ work for potential plagiarism and students can build awareness of plagiarism by checking their own work prior to a final submission. In addition the Turnitin Grademark tool offers inline commenting, oral feedback and interactive rubrics.  Turnitin has been incorporated into UTSOnline which means that a grade centre column is automatically created and populated (as for a normal UTSOnline assignment).

Learn more about using Turnitin

Rubrics

A rubric is an assessment tool listing evaluation criteria for an assignment, and provides a means to convey to students your expectations for the quality of completed assignments. Rubrics can help students organise their efforts to meet the requirements of an assignment, and you can use them to explain evaluations to students. Rubrics can help ensure consistent and impartial grading.Rubrics are made up of rows and columns. The rows correspond to the various criteria of an assignment. The columns correspond to the level of achievement expressed for each criterion. A description and point value for each cell in the rubric defines the evaluation and score of an assignment. You can create as many rubrics as you need. Learn more  about about using rubrics in UTSOnline

Quizzes, pools and surveys

UTSOnline offers a range of quiz question types and includes the ability to randomise questions from a pool. Blackboard’s in-depth guides to quiz creation and deployment include how-to videos and case studies.

Due to the nature of online quizzes, they may be susceptible to events that can interfere with a student’s attempt. You can configure the settings of your quiz to minimise the disruption caused by these issues for both students and Instructors.

Spark^PLUS

Here at UTS you can also use Spark^PLUS, a tool offering group, self and peer assessment with sophisticated reporting in addition to the capability for conducting in-class polling. There are several modes of operation in Spark^PLUS – hence the ‘plus’ in the name. Most people just call it SPARK.

By helping students recognise their choices about how they participate in groups, SPARK can be very effective in promoting more equitable and thoughtful engagement. SPARK is also a highly effective way to moderate and benchmark marking in subject teams and it offers a real time polling feature that will track and store user input.

Learn more about SPARK in Group Contribution Mode and then how to setup for SPARK in ‘Group Contribution Mode’.

Self and peer assessment

The Blackboard Self and Peer Assessment tool is designed to facilitate the objective, analytical, and learning comprehension skills of students. Reviewing the work of fellow students through criteria-based reference evaluation allows constructive feedback. The constructive feedback that students give to and receive from their peers can enhance their comprehension of the subject material and provide valuable insights into their own efforts.

Self and Peer Assessments can help distribute the workload and ensure that students receive feedback from several individuals. Students also benefit from the analytical experience of evaluating submissions against defined criteria.