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Groups & Alternative Assessments

You can organize students into groups so they can demonstrate their knowledge while learning to appreciate the perspectives of others. Groups can be tied to assessments but can also be created independently of assessments to encourage collaboration in Blackboard Learn.

🏴This information applies only to Blackboard Learn Ultra.

Create Groups

You can create group sets to use for graded work:

assignments
discussions
tests

You can also create groups for activities such as volunteering or field trips.

Select Groups on your course's main page.

If you already have course groups, select New Group Set on the Course Groups page.

From the Group students menu, you can divide your students among groups in the following ways:

Custom
Randomly assign
Self-enrollment
Reuse groups

You can also select the plus sign to create as many groups as you need and add students.

Create custom groups

You can create one or many custom groups, with any number of students in each group.

In the Group students menu, select Custom and provide a name at the top of the page.
Select each student's name one after the other to select them as a group. Select a student's name again to remove the selection.

After you select the students, open the menu next to one of their names and select Create a new group. You can also move multiple students to a group listed in the menu.

Edit the group name if you want to change the default naming.
Provide an optional group description that will appear to group members.

You can select the plus sign wherever you want to add another group.

💡

If you save a Custom group set, return to that group set, and select Custom again, your groups are deleted.

Create randomly assigned groups

Students can be randomly assigned to the number of groups you choose. You need at least four students so the system can randomly assign two students to at least two groups.

In the Group students menu, select Randomly assign and provide a name at the top of the page.
In the Number of groups menu, select how many groups to create. You need to create at least two. Students are equally assigned to the number of groups you choose.

To remove all students from the current group set, select Unassign All at the top of the page. The menu option changes to Custom if you move students to different groups after they're grouped and before you save.

Edit each group name if you want to change the default naming and provide an optional group description that will appear to that group's members.

Select the plus sign wherever you want to create a group in addition to the groups the system created.

💡

When you add or delete groups, the menu option changes to Custom and any affected students aren't redistributed.

Create self-enrollment groups

You can ask students to self-enroll in course groups. Students receive a course announcement and an activity stream notification about groups they need to join.

You can also add an enrollment period. Students are notified when the enrollment deadline approaches. When the enrollment period ends, students can no longer join groups, and they’re enrolled automatically.

💡

If you added a preview user, that user is also enrolled automatically in a group. You can remove the preview user before or after you create self-enrollment groups.

To select Self-enrollment, you must first make the groups visible to students by selecting Visible to students on the top right corner of the New Group Set page.

In the Group students menu, select Self-enrollment.
Your students are evenly divided among the groups listed next to Number of groups. You need to create at least two self-enrollment course groups.

Select the plus sign wherever you want to add another group. The Number of groups updates automatically. You can add and delete groups even after students have started to join. If you delete a group that students have already joined, they’re moved to the unassigned list. You'll need to notify them to join one of the remaining groups or add them to a group.
You can add an enrollment start and end date. Select the arrow next to Advanced options to collapse the enrollment section.
You can change or clear the Maximum number of members per group that appears by default. The optional maximum must be 2 or greater. If you add or delete groups, the maximum number doesn’t update.

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Pay attention to the maximum members per group and the number of groups. For example, if you lower the maximum number, some students won’t be allowed to enroll in a group at the end of the enrollment period. You’ll need to create new groups and enroll the students.

To allow unlimited members per group, leave blank. Students see the maximum number allowed when they make their group selections. If you allow an unlimited number per group, students see the total number of students in their class.

You can override the maximum membership for a group. For example, you can add a newly enrolled student to a group.

Select the Hide enrolled members check box if you don't want students to see who's already joined.
Edit each group name if you want to change the default naming.
Add optional group descriptions. You can add information to help students choose a group. You have no limit on the number of characters.
Open the menu next to a group to access the management options.

Reuse groups

You can reuse an existing course group or group set.

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If you make changes to a group set you've reused, those changes affect any group assignments and discussions based on that group set.

In the Group students menu, select a title from the Reuse groups section. Groups with no members also appear in the list.
Provide a name at the top of the page, edit the individual group names, and add optional group descriptions that are shown to group members. You have no limit on the number of characters.

The same students are added to your new group or group set. You may need to add newly enrolled students to your new groups.

Course groups and members

All course groups you've created appear on the Course Groups page. Group sets with no members also appear. At the top of the page, the number of group sets and individual groups are listed.

A. Use Group Set to select a heading to sort your groups or the number of members in ascending or descending order.

B. You can show or hide the groups in a group set.

C. Open a group set's menu to edit or delete the group.

D. View the number of members in each group out of the total number of students in the course.

E. Show group members.

Select Show Members of an individual group to display this group's members on a panel on the right side of the page. This display lists members and indicates which have course accommodations. You can also search for members in a group using the search bar.

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Students can access course groups on the Course Content page in the Details & Actions panel, and they can view members of the groups they belong to on the Groups page. More on the student group experience

Manage Groups

After you create a group or a group set, you can add or delete individual groups and manage student membership.

Manage individual groups

You can also edit group names, add or edit group descriptions, and send messages to your groups to kick off collaboration.

Select the plus sign wherever you want to add a group.

If you no longer need a group, open the group's menu and select Delete group. The students in that group are unassigned automatically and appear at the top of the page. You can manually assign these students to new groups. Or, you can randomly assign all students—not only the students you unassigned—to the number of groups you choose.

Ramifications

If you add or delete a group in a group set used to create a new group set, the new group set is unaffected.
If you add or delete a group in a group set that you used to create a group assessment or discussion, that content item’s groups are updated. Edits to group titles and descriptions also affect the content items.
If you add or delete a group in a group assessment or discussion that's based on a course group set, the course group set is updated. Edits to group titles and descriptions also affect the course group set.
If you delete a group set used to create a new group set, the new group set is unaffected.
If you delete an entire group set used to create a group assessment or discussion, the content item’s groups are removed.
If you delete a group assessment or discussion based on a course group set, the group set is unaffected.

Manage student membership

Open the menu next to a student's name to access these options:

Start a new group with the student as a member.
Select Unassign to remove the student from the group. Unassigned students appear at the top of the page.
Assign the student to a different group that already exists. Select the group's name in the menu. Groups with no members don't appear.

You can also move multiple students to a different group in one action, create a new group for them, or unassign them all from the group. To remove all students from all groups, select Unassign All at the top of the page.

Ramifications:

Membership changes in a group set affect the content-level items where the groups are used, such as in group discussions and assessments.
Membership changes in a content-level item based on a course group set affect the course group set.
Membership changes in a group set do NOT affect other group sets that are based on the group set.

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Now you have a way to bulk create groups or add group members in Ultra courses by importing a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file. This feature also allows you to export groups and members to a CSV file. More on Import/Export group and members.

Group Assignments

You create a group assignment nearly the same way you create assignments for students to complete individually. Gradebook items are created automatically.

On the New Assignment page, select the Settings icon to open the Assignment Settings panel. Provide a due date and select the settings you want to apply to the group assignment:

You can allow class conversations for a group assignment. Students can choose between a conversation with the class as a whole or among only their group members.
You can also choose to collect submissions offline that don't require groups to upload submissions. You can add instructions, files, a rubric, and goals so the groups can prepare for the offline work. You can also enable conversations for offline work.
You can issue an access code to control when groups may submit a group assignment. At this time, access codes are generated randomly by the system. You can't customize the access codes.

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At this time, you can't create a group assignment with multiple attempts, a time limit, hidden names, or with parallel grading.

Select Assign to groups.

For a specific group assignment or group test, you can give an individual group an exception for extended access only. Multiple attempts aren't allowed for group assessments at this time.

Group Assessment

After groups submit their assignments, you can access their work from the gradebook or assignment. You can assign the same grade to the whole group or grade each group member's contribution separately.

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You can't change grade settings or group membership after you've started grading.

From the Submissions page, select a group name to start grading:

From a group's submission, you can navigate to other groups with the previous and next arrows.

To view the group members, expand the group.
View which member submitted on behalf of the group.

Select the feedback button to open the feedback panel. You can scroll through the assignment and provide a grade.

Add overall feedback for the group on the Group tab.
Select the Individual tab and add feedback for each student within the group.

You can also embed an audio/video recording of your feedback in the editor as you grade group submissions.

View and edit feedback

Expand the member list to view feedback for individual members. Open the menu and select Edit Feedback to delete or make changes to feedback for the group or individual members. If you make changes after you post grades, students aren't notified about the updated or deleted feedback.

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You can't enable parallel or anonymous grading on group assignments. More on grading assignments

Student View:

Students are notified in the Activity Stream, when the group grade is posted. If you provided group feedback, it appears with the grade. Students can select the group assignment title to open their Course Grades page to access all their grades.

Students can access their group and individual feedback if provided.

Assign different grades to group members

By default, all group members receive the same grade for a group assignment. However, you can change individual group members' grades if you feel their contributions earned grades different from the group.

On the Submissions page, you can assign a grade for the whole group. Type a value in the Grade column. The grade is labeled as Override because you didn't assign the grade from the actual submission.

To assign a different grade to an individual member, expand the group list and enter a value in that member's Grade column. The overall group's grade is shown as In Progress and the Post option doesn't appear because some students don't have grades for the assignment.

After you assign a grade to the overall group, you can edit a group member's individual grade. Expand the list of group members and change an individual grade as needed. The overall group's grade appears as Multiple. The individual member's grade is labeled as Override.

Move group members after grading

You can move students between groups.

New members can access the work the group has saved up to that point.
New group members can also submit work on behalf of the group.

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When students with existing grades are moved to different groups, their grades move with them, but their work doesn’t.

New group members keep their existing grades. Their grades won’t apply to the rest of the group. However, if you haven't graded the new group's work, the new member receives their new group's grade when it's assigned.

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If a group has received a grade and you move students to this group, you must manually assign grades to the new group member.

Group assessment exceptions

You can give an exception to a group to allow multiple submission attempts or to extend their due date, even if the group assessment is hidden from other groups. Because extensions are assigned to groups individually, you can set different due dates or number of attempts for each group.

From a group assessment's Submissions page, select Add or edit exceptions for the group. You can also add exceptions from a group's individual submission page.

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment options are available for tests and assignments, even if they are already graded.

When you create or edit an assessment, select Formative assessment under the settings panel. This will automatically select Display formative label to students. If you unmark this option, no formative indicator is displayed to students in any section.

Formative assessments are included in the gradebook calculations by default, but you can edit the grade calculations and exclude the formative assessments.

Excluding an item from grade calculations

The formative label helps to easily identify formative assessments. This label is always visible for instructors in these areas:

Course content page
Test and assignment settings
Gradebook list and grid views
Student overview
Student activity overview

If you choose to display the formative label for students, it is visible for them in these areas:

Course content page
Assessment panel before starting an attempt
Assessment details & information panel during and after an assessment
Assessment header when viewing a submission
Gradebook

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If you choose to hide the formative label from students, no indicator about this tool is displayed in any section.

Gradebook filters temporarily narrow the displayed data in the gradebook grid view. You can use the formative and summative filters to show the corresponding assessments.

In the gradebook grid view, select the Filters button to open the filters panel. Under Assessment type, select the formative option to display only the formative assessments.

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Only the formative label is displayed in the gradebook grid view, even if you apply the summative filter.

Authentic Assessment

You can use advanced AI to help create assessments by generating assignment prompts based on Bloom’s Taxonomy that can encourage students to do the following:

engage in higher-order thinking
apply knowledge gained from your class
produce authentic submissions that are evidenced
emulate real-world situations

Assignment prompts are generated based on course context. On the assignment creation page, select Auto-generate assignment.

The AI Design Assistant generates three assignment prompts. You have several ways to define the prompts that the AI Design Assistant generates.

Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the prompts
Select the desired cognitive level:

Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Create
Inspire me! provides you with a mix of levels

Adjust the complexity of the prompts’ focus by moving the slider
Select whether or not you want to generate a title for the prompts

Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. Review each prompt for accuracy and bias. Choose the prompt you’d like to add to your assignment, then select Add.

👁️‍🗨️Accessibility & AI in Learn Ultra

Self and Peer Assessment

Qualitative peer review can be enabled for an Assignment and has the following features:

Set different due dates for the initial assignment submission and the completion of peer review: Instructors can set how many reviews are expected from each student. Peers are assigned randomly and automatically.
Late submitters and reviewers remain part of the task and can continue to participate: Instructors can clearly see who was late.
Tracking: Instructors can track students’ progress toward completion.
Rubrics: Instructors can grade using a rubric. Optionally, students can see the rubric that will used for the grade.

When grading, the instructor can see all this information in a single view: the student’s submission, feedback provided by the students’ peers, and the feedback the current student gave to their peers.

Anonymous mode for students: The identities of peers are hidden from students but viewable by instructors.
Censoring: Instructors can hide reviews deemed inappropriate or harmful.

Instructors can access the submissions reviewed by a student right from that student's grading panel. They can easily select a specific submission and grade a student’s review in context.

Student View:

Students also have direct access to the submissions available for their review from either the Due Date or the Calendar views. This makes it easier for them to act when reviewing their pending tasks.

More on how students Submit Assignments with Qualitative Peer Review.

There are some relevant use cases that are planned as future improvements, including the following:

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Groups: There is no direct group support yet. However, because the review period excludes non-submitters automatically, it’s possible to set up multiple assignments with Peer Review enabled and set Conditional Availability by group membership. This way, assigned peers will always be members within a student’s group. Group submissions aren’t supported in this release.

Quantitative peer reviews: While a peer can view a rubric for guidance on providing feedback, the rubric can’t be used by students to provide a score.
Non-anonymous mode for students: Names of peers are always hidden from students. If an instructor wants students to know who they evaluate, it is necessary to request students to add their names to their submissions.
Multiple prompts with essay questions: Only a single text prompt is supported for an Assignment with Peer Review. If there are multiple topics to which s student is to respond and receive feedback, those should all be outlined in a single prompt or broken up into several assignments.
Separate grades for students’ submissions and their reviews: In this release, there is a single grade and rubric for an assignment. If the instructor wishes to communicate different scores for those two parts of the process, those can be outlined in the feedback.

🆕

Groups & Alternative Assessments

🏴This information applies only to Blackboard Learn Ultra.

Create Groups

You can create group sets to use for graded work:

assignments
discussions
tests

You can also create groups for activities such as volunteering or field trips.

Select Groups on your course's main page.

If you already have course groups, select New Group Set on the Course Groups page.

From the Group students menu, you can divide your students among groups in the following ways:

Custom
Randomly assign
Self-enrollment
Reuse groups

You can also select the plus sign to create as many groups as you need and add students.

Create custom groups

You can create one or many custom groups, with any number of students in each group.

In the Group students menu, select Custom and provide a name at the top of the page.
Select each student's name one after the other to select them as a group. Select a student's name again to remove the selection.

After you select the students, open the menu next to one of their names and select Create a new group. You can also move multiple students to a group listed in the menu.

Edit the group name if you want to change the default naming.
Provide an optional group description that will appear to group members.

You can select the plus sign wherever you want to add another group.

💡

If you save a Custom group set, return to that group set, and select Custom again, your groups are deleted.

Create randomly assigned groups

Students can be randomly assigned to the number of groups you choose. You need at least four students so the system can randomly assign two students to at least two groups.

In the Group students menu, select Randomly assign and provide a name at the top of the page.
In the Number of groups menu, select how many groups to create. You need to create at least two. Students are equally assigned to the number of groups you choose.

Edit each group name if you want to change the default naming and provide an optional group description that will appear to that group's members.

Select the plus sign wherever you want to create a group in addition to the groups the system created.

💡

When you add or delete groups, the menu option changes to Custom and any affected students aren't redistributed.

Create self-enrollment groups

You can ask students to self-enroll in course groups. Students receive a course announcement and an activity stream notification about groups they need to join.

💡

If you added a preview user, that user is also enrolled automatically in a group. You can remove the preview user before or after you create self-enrollment groups.

To select Self-enrollment, you must first make the groups visible to students by selecting Visible to students on the top right corner of the New Group Set page.

In the Group students menu, select Self-enrollment.
Your students are evenly divided among the groups listed next to Number of groups. You need to create at least two self-enrollment course groups.

Select the plus sign wherever you want to add another group. The Number of groups updates automatically. You can add and delete groups even after students have started to join. If you delete a group that students have already joined, they’re moved to the unassigned list. You'll need to notify them to join one of the remaining groups or add them to a group.
You can add an enrollment start and end date. Select the arrow next to Advanced options to collapse the enrollment section.
You can change or clear the Maximum number of members per group that appears by default. The optional maximum must be 2 or greater. If you add or delete groups, the maximum number doesn’t update.

💡

You can override the maximum membership for a group. For example, you can add a newly enrolled student to a group.

Select the Hide enrolled members check box if you don't want students to see who's already joined.
Edit each group name if you want to change the default naming.
Add optional group descriptions. You can add information to help students choose a group. You have no limit on the number of characters.
Open the menu next to a group to access the management options.

Reuse groups

You can reuse an existing course group or group set.

💡

If you make changes to a group set you've reused, those changes affect any group assignments and discussions based on that group set.

In the Group students menu, select a title from the Reuse groups section. Groups with no members also appear in the list.
Provide a name at the top of the page, edit the individual group names, and add optional group descriptions that are shown to group members. You have no limit on the number of characters.

The same students are added to your new group or group set. You may need to add newly enrolled students to your new groups.

Course groups and members

All course groups you've created appear on the Course Groups page. Group sets with no members also appear. At the top of the page, the number of group sets and individual groups are listed.

A. Use Group Set to select a heading to sort your groups or the number of members in ascending or descending order.

B. You can show or hide the groups in a group set.

C. Open a group set's menu to edit or delete the group.

D. View the number of members in each group out of the total number of students in the course.

E. Show group members.

💡

Manage Groups

After you create a group or a group set, you can add or delete individual groups and manage student membership.

Manage individual groups

You can also edit group names, add or edit group descriptions, and send messages to your groups to kick off collaboration.

Select the plus sign wherever you want to add a group.

Ramifications

If you add or delete a group in a group set used to create a new group set, the new group set is unaffected.
If you add or delete a group in a group set that you used to create a group assessment or discussion, that content item’s groups are updated. Edits to group titles and descriptions also affect the content items.
If you add or delete a group in a group assessment or discussion that's based on a course group set, the course group set is updated. Edits to group titles and descriptions also affect the course group set.
If you delete a group set used to create a new group set, the new group set is unaffected.
If you delete an entire group set used to create a group assessment or discussion, the content item’s groups are removed.
If you delete a group assessment or discussion based on a course group set, the group set is unaffected.

Manage student membership

Open the menu next to a student's name to access these options:

Start a new group with the student as a member.
Select Unassign to remove the student from the group. Unassigned students appear at the top of the page.
Assign the student to a different group that already exists. Select the group's name in the menu. Groups with no members don't appear.

Ramifications:

Membership changes in a group set affect the content-level items where the groups are used, such as in group discussions and assessments.
Membership changes in a content-level item based on a course group set affect the course group set.
Membership changes in a group set do NOT affect other group sets that are based on the group set.

💡

Group Assignments

You create a group assignment nearly the same way you create assignments for students to complete individually. Gradebook items are created automatically.

On the New Assignment page, select the Settings icon to open the Assignment Settings panel. Provide a due date and select the settings you want to apply to the group assignment:

You can allow class conversations for a group assignment. Students can choose between a conversation with the class as a whole or among only their group members.
You can also choose to collect submissions offline that don't require groups to upload submissions. You can add instructions, files, a rubric, and goals so the groups can prepare for the offline work. You can also enable conversations for offline work.
You can issue an access code to control when groups may submit a group assignment. At this time, access codes are generated randomly by the system. You can't customize the access codes.

💡

At this time, you can't create a group assignment with multiple attempts, a time limit, hidden names, or with parallel grading.

Select Assign to groups.

For a specific group assignment or group test, you can give an individual group an exception for extended access only. Multiple attempts aren't allowed for group assessments at this time.

Group Assessment

💡

You can't change grade settings or group membership after you've started grading.

From the Submissions page, select a group name to start grading:

From a group's submission, you can navigate to other groups with the previous and next arrows.

To view the group members, expand the group.
View which member submitted on behalf of the group.

Select the feedback button to open the feedback panel. You can scroll through the assignment and provide a grade.

Add overall feedback for the group on the Group tab.
Select the Individual tab and add feedback for each student within the group.

You can also embed an audio/video recording of your feedback in the editor as you grade group submissions.

View and edit feedback

💡

You can't enable parallel or anonymous grading on group assignments. More on grading assignments

Student View:

Students can access their group and individual feedback if provided.

Assign different grades to group members

Move group members after grading

You can move students between groups.

New members can access the work the group has saved up to that point.
New group members can also submit work on behalf of the group.

💡

When students with existing grades are moved to different groups, their grades move with them, but their work doesn’t.

New group members keep their existing grades. Their grades won’t apply to the rest of the group. However, if you haven't graded the new group's work, the new member receives their new group's grade when it's assigned.

💡

If a group has received a grade and you move students to this group, you must manually assign grades to the new group member.

Group assessment exceptions

From a group assessment's Submissions page, select Add or edit exceptions for the group. You can also add exceptions from a group's individual submission page.

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment options are available for tests and assignments, even if they are already graded.

Formative assessments are included in the gradebook calculations by default, but you can edit the grade calculations and exclude the formative assessments.

Excluding an item from grade calculations

The formative label helps to easily identify formative assessments. This label is always visible for instructors in these areas:

Course content page
Test and assignment settings
Gradebook list and grid views
Student overview
Student activity overview

If you choose to display the formative label for students, it is visible for them in these areas:

Course content page
Assessment panel before starting an attempt
Assessment details & information panel during and after an assessment
Assessment header when viewing a submission
Gradebook

💡

If you choose to hide the formative label from students, no indicator about this tool is displayed in any section.

Gradebook filters temporarily narrow the displayed data in the gradebook grid view. You can use the formative and summative filters to show the corresponding assessments.

In the gradebook grid view, select the Filters button to open the filters panel. Under Assessment type, select the formative option to display only the formative assessments.

💡

Only the formative label is displayed in the gradebook grid view, even if you apply the summative filter.

Authentic Assessment

You can use advanced AI to help create assessments by generating assignment prompts based on Bloom’s Taxonomy that can encourage students to do the following:

engage in higher-order thinking
apply knowledge gained from your class
produce authentic submissions that are evidenced
emulate real-world situations

Assignment prompts are generated based on course context. On the assignment creation page, select Auto-generate assignment.

The AI Design Assistant generates three assignment prompts. You have several ways to define the prompts that the AI Design Assistant generates.

Enter a description (limited to 2000 characters) to narrow the focus of the prompts
Select the desired cognitive level:

Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Create
Inspire me! provides you with a mix of levels

Adjust the complexity of the prompts’ focus by moving the slider
Select whether or not you want to generate a title for the prompts

Once you’ve finalized your settings, select Generate. Review each prompt for accuracy and bias. Choose the prompt you’d like to add to your assignment, then select Add.

👁️‍🗨️Accessibility & AI in Learn Ultra

Self and Peer Assessment

Qualitative peer review can be enabled for an Assignment and has the following features:

Set different due dates for the initial assignment submission and the completion of peer review: Instructors can set how many reviews are expected from each student. Peers are assigned randomly and automatically.
Late submitters and reviewers remain part of the task and can continue to participate: Instructors can clearly see who was late.
Tracking: Instructors can track students’ progress toward completion.
Rubrics: Instructors can grade using a rubric. Optionally, students can see the rubric that will used for the grade.

Anonymous mode for students: The identities of peers are hidden from students but viewable by instructors.
Censoring: Instructors can hide reviews deemed inappropriate or harmful.

Instructors can access the submissions reviewed by a student right from that student's grading panel. They can easily select a specific submission and grade a student’s review in context.

Student View:

More on how students Submit Assignments with Qualitative Peer Review.

There are some relevant use cases that are planned as future improvements, including the following:

💡

Quantitative peer reviews: While a peer can view a rubric for guidance on providing feedback, the rubric can’t be used by students to provide a score.
Non-anonymous mode for students: Names of peers are always hidden from students. If an instructor wants students to know who they evaluate, it is necessary to request students to add their names to their submissions.
Multiple prompts with essay questions: Only a single text prompt is supported for an Assignment with Peer Review. If there are multiple topics to which s student is to respond and receive feedback, those should all be outlined in a single prompt or broken up into several assignments.
Separate grades for students’ submissions and their reviews: In this release, there is a single grade and rubric for an assignment. If the instructor wishes to communicate different scores for those two parts of the process, those can be outlined in the feedback.