Hey Folks -

Quick update on this. As of this morning, we have released a hotfix that will allow students to correctly change assignment statuses from Overdue to Complete. Previously, selecting the Complete status would cause the status to flicker and not actually take effect.

We also took a look at the behavior where assignments in the past were displaying as Overdue when the new setting was enabled. This is not something we'll be able to adjust as the assignment status is not a fixed value, rather it is calculated each time the assignment center or assignment submission screen is loaded. Because of this, when that setting is changed there may be a period where students see a lot of their old assignments displaying as Overdue.

If adjusting the setting, student may need to perform a one-time status change to any assignment that is due in the past and was not graded or marked 'Collected' by the teacher. Once that status has been changed that single time, it will remain as the student-set status.

If you wish to not have your students set these assignment statuses manually, waiting to change the setting at the start of a new term may be ideal. The Missing and Overdue bucket that displays on the List view of the assignment center only displays assignments within the active term. So, if the setting is adjusted, any assignments in the first term will still be moved to an Overdue status but will not display in as a 'Missing or Overdue' assignment in the List view (Out of sight, out of mind).

We have a few more fixes planned that should be coming in the near future. Here is the current list of known defects around assignment status:

- Assignment status does not always match between the class page and the assignment center (Mainly concerning Overdue assignments)

- Manually adjusting an assignment to a status of Overdue > In Progress or Complete > Back to Overdue can cause the status to disappear
- Assignments with an Online Submission component do not always show as Overdue when the due date and time pass.

- Assignments linked to the Turnitin integration do not always move to an Overdue status.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at michael.morrissette@blackbaud.com

-Mike

Hmm. Students are reporting that assignments are showing as over due (since that's the setting that I chose) in Assignment Center, but as complete in classes.

Unexpected ramification of toggling from "Completed" to "Over Due" in assignment settings is that all assignments previously marked as completed are now marked as over due instead (I think just the assignments that had been automatically marked completed).

Thank you so much Mike!!

Thank you!

Hi Folks -

One last update for you all.

The enhancement will be going into the product on 11/19 with the Tuesday release. At that time, you will be able to go to Academics > Grades > Grading setup > Assignment settings and access the new option. In the Student and Parent defaults, there will be a field called 'Assignment status behavior'. That setting will allow you all to control how assignments with the 'No assignment submission' option selected behave. You will have three options, Completed, To Do, and Overdue - allowing you to select the option that is best suited for your school.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at michael.morrissette@blackbaud.com.

-Mike

Hello Everyone -

I just wanted to provide a quick update on this.

We will be introducing a global, admin setting that will give you all the choice of how assignments with 'No submission' are handled. You will have the option to choose between moving the assignments into an Overdue, Complete, or To Do state once the Due Date/Time have passed.

This enhancement is being included in our upcoming body of work, so be on the lookout in our What's New communications for further updates on this feature.

If you have any other pieces of feedback, feel free to send them my way at michael.morrissette@blackbaud.com

-Mike

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.