Frequently Answered Questions: Teaching & Learning

If students submit their SOAP notes as assignments on Blackboard, their submissions are available right in the Grade Center. To mark/grade them, you will first need to access the students' attempts. The easiest way to access a SOAP note submission is by:

1. Enter the course and navigate to Control panel > Grade Center > Needs Grading.

2. Use the Item drop-down list on the top of the page to select the soap notes assignment, and then press Go.

3. Click the name of the student whose submission you want to correct. If you plan on marking up all the submissions, you can feel free to just click the name that appears on the top of the list.

• Depending on the file type, clicking the name will either bring you to Blackboard's inline grader or a page that has the student's submission attached to it.

Inline Grading

Blackboard has recently transitioned to a new program that allows instructors to grade certain file types right in their web browser. This new system, box, takes submitted Word documents (.doc or .docx), Microsoft PowerPoint presentations (.ppt or .pptx), or PDFs and converts the contents into a format you can mark up without needing to download first.

To use box to mark up a submission:

1. Use the steps above to access Needs Grading and open up a submission. If the submission's contents are previewed in the browser than proceed to step 2, otherwise please see the section below about grading downloaded submissions.

2. Click the Point annotation mode button on the top right of the page, just above the submission.

3. Click your mouse where you want to leave a comment, and then type the comment in the box that appears. Press Post to save the comment.

4. After leaving comments, use the Attempt Grade field to insert the grade the student earned. Blackboard will automatically save your comments and the grade. Students will be able to view the comments by clicking their grade under My Grades and viewing the inline assignment preview.

5. (Optional) If you would like to leave additional feedback to the student, press the drop-down below the attempt grade and type your additional comments in the FEEDBACK TO LEARNER field. Press Submit to save the feedback. Failure to press Submit will cause your comments to disappear after you leave the page.

Grading downloaded submissions

Sometimes a submission does not work with box and will require you to manually download it to read and mark up. In those cases, you will need to download the file and open it up in the appropriate software (normally Word). After opening the submission in Word you are free to mark it up as you would a regular paper and then save the changes. After marking up the paper in the program:

1. Go back to your Blackboard course and access the student's submission in Needs Grading.

2. Click the drop-down under the Attempt Grade field and then press the Insert File button to upload the previously marked up / corrected version of the student's assignment.

3. Use the FEEDBACK TO LEARNER field to insert general comments if you have not done so already in the marked up paper.

4. Press Submit.

5. Use the Attempt Grade field to insert the grade the student earned. Blackboard will automatically save the grade and the student will be able to view the comments by downloading the attachment under feedback.