How do students access feedback and marks I provide via the Blackboard Grade Centre?

The information in this article contain guidance that you might copy and share with students to illustrate how to access different types of feedback that you might provide to them via the Blackboard Grade Centre.

Finding Assessment Feedback on Blackboard

All assessments you undertake and work you submit will be given provisional grades and feedback through the My Grades area of your Blackboard sites. My Grades can be accessed from the left-hand menu of your Blackboard module sites. On each site, you will see feedback and marks for assessment tasks completed in that module.

There are several ways your tutor could provide feedback on your assessments in Blackboard. Your tutor should inform you in what format they have issued feedback. They may use a Feedback Rubric, which is an electronic marking grid; they might annotate your submission directly in Blackboard using an inline marking tool (called New Box View); or they might leave more general comments attached to your mark, or upload feedback files using different media including text, audio or video. All of these types of feedback are accessed via the My Grades section on the module's Blackboard site.

Feedback Rubrics

If you have been given assessment feedback via a Blackboard Feedback Rubric, you can access this by clicking View Feedback Rubric in My Grades under the name of the assessment or link to the submission point. It will open up the Rubric in a grid view like this, in a new window.

The grid view allows you to access all of the information available in the rubric, including the criteria against which you were marked and the level of detail required to achieve a certain grade. Here you can see what standard you achieved on different aspects of your work, and also see any additional feedback on specific areas, that your tutor may have provided.

You can use this information to help you understand why you achieved your overall mark, and what is expected of you if you are to improve your grade in the future.

You can also view the Feedback Rubric in list view. This limits the information that can be seen, but allows you to get a brief overview of the standard achieved for each of the criteria. 

You can use this limited view to quickly identify your strong points, as well as specific areas of weakness, which you could work on for future assessments. If desired however, you can check the Show Descriptions and Show Feedback boxes to display all the detail that is visible in the grid view, in a list format. 

Finally, at the bottom of the Feedback Rubric, there is an option for your tutor to leave overall feedback comments. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see any additional feedback. This is visible in both grid view and list view.

Inline comments (New Box View)

If your tutor has used New Box View to comment on your work and give you feedback, click the link to the submission point in My Grades to open the annotated version of your work. Clicking this link will open up a page like showing your submission, and the annotations made on your paper by your tutor.

note for Mac OS/Safari users: some combinations of MAC OS and Safari may not initially load papers in New Box View until Prevent cross-site tracking is deselected in Safari > Preferences > Privacy, or alternatively use an alternative browser such as Chrome or Firefox.

 

Audio feedback

Your tutor may provide an audio commentary as feedback on your assessment. This would be uploaded as a separate file alongside your mark. You can access this file by clicking the speech bubble  next to your mark. Click on the link to launch the audio file. You might find it helpful to refer back to your original work whilst listening to the recording. Consider taking notes as you listen to audio feedback. This could help you to identify areas you need to improve on in future assessments. Save these notes and refer to them whilst you produce future work. You could also write down any questions you might have regarding what your tutor said about your work, or if there is any part of the recording you do not understand. You can then relay these queries to your tutor in your next seminar, or via email.
 

Video and screencast feedback

Video feedback is also a form a feedback your tutor might provide for you, and this can be accessed in the same way you access audio feedback. Video feedback could be a recording of your tutor speaking directly to you about your assessment, or could be a screencast recording of your work with audio commentary. This gives your tutor the opportunity to give audio feedback whilst going through your assessment, and potentially adding comments/annotations at the same time. With a screencast you can get an understanding of how your tutor marked your work, and provided feedback, in real time. Again, consider writing down key points your tutor might highlight about your work and any questions you wish to ask regarding your feedback. This will help you to understand why you received the mark you did, and you can use this information to help improve your performance on future assessments.
Explore the following topics for related information: