Allow Assignments, Assessments, Graded Discussions Per Student (or Group of Students) Within a Class

Hi!

As we move towards using our class pages for 1) personalized learning and 2) collaborative learning, our teachers need the ability to create assignments, assessments, and graded discussions + assign them to specific students in the class. 

For example, it's common for Lower School students to be grouped together by reading level and asked to work in class and at home on assignments according to the group that they're in. I.e: Group A - read pages 1-10 in The Cat in the Hat, Group B - read pages 10-20 in Peter Rabbit. 

In Middle School, students in an English class may be placed in discussion groups and asked to reflect and post responses to a particular question in a Graded Discussion.

In both LS and MS, it would be awesome if Assessments could be used exit tickets for students, but assigned to the student as needed. So, if students are moving at their own pace, the teacher can make an assignment that makes sense for them. 

Note: We still want to keep the ability to create an assignment for the whole class at once, but we also see benefits in adding this additional layer of flexibility to support blended learning in the classroom.

  • Guest
  • May 26 2016
  • Implemented
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  • Ben Leddy commented
    1 Sep, 2021 12:51pm

    Happy to share this is implemented! Thank you for your votes and advocacy. From our release notes:

    Assignments for individual students or groups

    Teachers can now add assignments for a specific student or group of students. Teachers can use this for makeup work, extra credit assignments, group projects, and more! Teachers will need to select the students the assignment should be assigned to when they add a new one. Under Publishing options, they will need to select the Edit icon next to Full Section then select Selected students. They will then see their course roster and can select students from the available list.

    Once an assignment is assigned to specific students, it will appear on the Assignment center with # students listed. Teachers can select this to view the students they have selected for the assignment. Teachers can add additional students by editing the assignment. Students will only see these assignments if they are assigned to them.

  • anson kendall commented
    10 Jun, 2021 05:29pm

    I would also add that it would be nice if students who are assigned to a small group could be connected to any submitted group work. That would allow for better organization and grading while hopefully allowing all of those students to view the teacher's feedback.

    @Ben Leddy I also emailed you about the classroom experience.

  • Ben Leddy commented
    9 Jun, 2021 08:37pm

    Hi all! Work is underway here, and we have a few small questions for folks around differentiated assignments and grading. If you're up for a 30 minute chat to share your feedback and ideas, please email me at ben.leddy@blackbaud.me. Thank you in advance!

  • Tracy Dodge commented
    23 Feb, 2021 07:35pm

    Hi, I see this is marked as planned, which is great. BB - is there an estimated timeline for its release? This would be so beneficial for students and teachers.

  • Lorrin Saliba commented
    18 Sep, 2020 03:21pm

    As we have begun our 2020 school year with both online and in person learning, this is a desperately needed feature. Teachers are needing to give quizzes in person on paper (math show your work) and send blank quizzes to a small set of online learners via email (which is not preferable). We do not like sending testing to students via attachments. Honor code alone it offers too much opportunity for cheating and dishonesty.

    Being able to assign an assessment to a select group of students in a class would really be a great benefit to our teachers.

  • Angela Addison commented
    12 Aug, 2020 06:00pm

    Hi all, I am really pushing for this one on our end. If you are able and willing to get on the phone with us to do some discovery would you send me an email with availability please? And also if you are opposed to doing a group discovery session with multiple schools or would be willing to participate in a shared discussion (sometimes I find those to be more helpful actually). Please send to angela.addison@blackbaud.com. If you just respond here I may not have access to your email address to contact you so is best to reach out to me via email. Thank you!

  • Guest commented
    13 Sep, 2017 03:03pm

    I couldn't agree more. With greater individualization, we need this flexibility within the gradebook. This came up for us in a Journalism class, in which some students have long-term articles to write, and others have something to write daily. 

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