Yes, thank you for that insight Mike! I'm in an interesting space where I'm getting a lot more feedback from students than from teachers. I have shared the "on paper" suggestion to teachers, but have heard crickets back. My spot-checks suggest that it's not being used. Having some sort of globally configurable option to set workable defaults might be good here, as well as -- as noted elsewhere -- the ability for students to toggle the auto-completion on or off themselves (I am fairly confident that students who care would take advantage of that, given the conversations that I've had).

Thank you @Mike Morrissette for addressing this issue and clearly explaining what you were, and are, trying to accomplish with the updates to Assignments and the Assignment Center. This feels like progress, but with some unintended growing pains.

I feel like this really boils down to how schools were using Assignments before these changes, and how well they understand (or don't understand) the differences between the three existing submission methods that teachers can now select. My gut tells me that better labeling of the 'On Paper' submission method, along with helping teachers clearly understand the differences between the three methods--especially how they each look/feel from the student view--will get people to a better place.

Kudos to those schools who are top of these changes and have been guiding their students to use the Assignment Center more (nice job @SethBattis)!

Hi Folks -

As you can imagine, finding a solution to this particular problem is difficult and I don't think our first pass entirely addressed the problem in the way that works for all schools. We're looking into some other means to help both teachers and students save clicks when it comes to assignment statuses, and I'll outline some of those potential solutions that we're discussing internally.

When this change was introduced, we also created a new setting for teachers to toggle when creating assignments. Under the Submission Method area, there is now an 'On paper' option. When an assignment is marked with that submission method, the assignment status will behave as it did previously (Due date and time pass, the assignment is moved to Overdue).

The issue with this new setting is that it doesn't take the situation that was outlined in this Idea into consideration (Something needing to be turned in, but not on paper and not within the Blackbaud LMS). Now, the verbiage of "On paper" doesn't jive with this need, but we may be changing the name of the setting to better encompass assignments that have a turn-in component but is happening outside of the Blackbaud system (on paper or otherwise). What this new verbiage is, we're unsure, but it's on our list to explore.

I also know that teachers don't want to have to mark another setting as they're building assignments. We hear regularly that the assignment creation process is tedious and involves too many clicks. That's a semi-separate issue, but one that we're also investigating as a potential project for 2025.

When it comes to LTI and assignments that leverage those connections, the connections, like Turnitin, that display in the Submission method area should still be marking the assignment as Overdue. The issue is with LTIs that do not have that first-class field. Because not all LTIs have turn-in components, adding a LTI isn't necessarily enough to warrant the assignment moving into an Overdue status. For the tools marked to allow grade pass back, however, we may be able to automatically select the proverbial "on paper" submission method when one of these tools is selected in the dropdown. No promises on this front, but it's something we're looking into.

Ultimately, our goal is to save students clicks by not having to mark off assignments that otherwise have no turn-in component and that act more akin to reminders, while still surfacing important assignments that do have some form of turn-in component. With that goal, we're trying to think through how best to implement such a solution so that it doesn't impact teachers too heavily.

-Mike

THIS is a huge problem at our school. I explained this to Blackbaud but was told students at other schools didn't like having to mark a status themselves. My response to that is, ok, then don't mark a status at all because that means you aren't using the system as intended BUT OUR students use this as a means to organize their assignments and their progress on them. Students who were absent or didn't do the work cannot keep track now because they all say complete when in fact, they are not. Can I out 100 votes here!? This is such a problem, it has caused a groundswell of complaints from grades 5-12...that never happens!

I agree that students should have more agency, or the ability to choose to have agency; how best to do that from both sides (students wanting to do it themselves vs. the system doing it) may be tricky.

I definitely understand both sides of this issue. Prior to the change, any assignment not marked completed and without a submission was left as overdue. This was also confusing for students. I have had at least one student ask about not having them marked complete as well. Is this another different status? I.e. no submission required or such so that the student still might have agency over when to consider it complete?

Our students are just the opposite. They (and their parents) freaked out when they saw all of the overdue assignments because they had not marked assignments that did not require a submission as completed. It would be great if the students had control of which they preferred- marking themselves or BB marking it as completed.