Auto Save Assignments in "Draft" Mode

I regularly have teachers complain about the assignment creation window timing out while they're adding an assignment. Sometimes teachers are interrupted while they're typing out their assignment details and when they turn back to finish, the LMS has timed out and they've lost their work. Our current workaround is to try and remind teachers to draft their assignment details elsewhere and copy/paste them into the assignment. We would love to have an assignment automatically be saved in a "draft" mode when this happens.

  • Megan Day
  • Jan 30 2023
Blackbaud Learning Management / Assignments
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  • Seth Battis commented
    23 Sep 13:11

    Yet another teacher comment, observing that this isn't just about spontaneous logouts, but also a protection against modern OSes' stupid gestural controls:

    I am putting in a request for Blackbaud to come up with a way to save an assignment as it is being created. Can this be done? With the swipe of a finger, I just lost an assignment that I had spent about 25 minutes creating on MyGroton. My cursor somehow slipped up to the back arrow and (POOF!!!!) there goes all the work. This happens to me much more often than I want to admit and it kills me every time it happens. This seems like something that Blackbaud should be able to do, and, to my mind, it would be MUCH more useful than much of the other stuff they have come up with over the years.
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  • Seth Battis commented
    29 Jan 18:05

    From another teacher:

    I don’t want this to come across as snarky (especially to you), but I lost another assignment yesterday before I was actually able to hit save. To be clear, I was laboring through it intermittently for more than a few minutes, even so, I am wondering whether blackbaud has any plans to implement a “save as you go” feature when one is creating assignments. That would actually be helpful.
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  • Seth Battis commented
    October 03, 2023 15:33

    Relatedly, feedback offered up by teacher in response to the new Assignment Center EAP survey:

    > My one piece of advice for the Assignment Center (and its importance to me could not possibly be overstated) is that there be some kind of back up (constantly going) as you write up assignments.  I have on many occasions been sent into spiralling frustration when an assignment with a good amount of detail has been lost because of either a stray key-stroke (I don't even know what key I hit, but the page switches and the assignment is GONE when I hit the back arrow) or, if I get distracted from an assignment that I am entering and come back a few minutes later to see that I have been kicked back out to the page where all assignments are on display.  So, what I  am asking for is a sort of rolling "back-up" that does not actually post the assignment but keeps what you have written "intact" (a la emails or Google Forms).  My guess is that this is not an easy feature to implement, but, if it is (easy), it seems like a no-brainer feature that is overdue and should be implemented by Blackbaud a.s.a.p.

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  • Mayce Makani commented
    February 21, 2023 17:15

    The spontaneous logging out would not be as egregiously frustrating if you did not lose all of your work!

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  • john ronan commented
    February 02, 2023 16:09

    This is a bit of a band-aid. The real problem is spontaneous logging-out.

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