Assessment FAQs

Grade Journey is the process of transferring grades from Blackboard into SITS. Click here to find out more.

The university has 2 systems – Turnitin and Blackboard Assignment.

Each system (Turnitin versus Blackboard Assignment) offers different features more suitable for certain contexts.

Find out more about the two systems.

Portfolios are an invaluable tool in academic and professional development. They provide a powerful medium for users to efficiently collect and organize artifacts representative of work completed over time. Portfolios offer a means to demonstrate formative and/or summative progress and achievement. Portfolio authors are empowered with tools to effectively present their information in a cohesive, personalized format.

Download the guide here.

It is possible to create a column in the Grade Centre, named after the activity concerned, into which you can enter the marks and text feedback. You can also, if you wish to, attach a feedback file to each student’s mark in the Grade Centre column.

Download a guide to providing feedback online for an assessment not submitted or done online.

Coursework submission links are set up in the Blackboard site for the relevant module. You should set up the submission links in the folder called ‘Submit Coursework’, within the Blackboard site.

You can set up either a Turnitin submission link or a Blackboard Assignment submission, link depending on which system you choose to use.

Download a guide for Turnitin or for Blackboard Assignment.

Have a look at a video for Turnitin and for Blackboard Assignment (coming soon)

Student names will be revealed automatically to markers when the criteria you set up is met.

For Turnitin assignment, by the post date (the date at which provisional marks and feedback have been set to be accessible to students).

For Blackboard Assignments, “On a specific date”, or when all assignments are graded.

In addition it is possible at any point to reveal the name of students, before the criteria above is met.

Download the guide here.

Have a look at our online guidance video for Turnitin and for Blackboard Assignments (coming soon).

With Turnitin evidence can only be provided if the second mark ensures that any feedback comments they add includes their initial or ‘2M’ to indicate that they are second marker comments. With Blackboard Assignment, use of the Delegated Marking results in an automatic log of who the 2 markers were.

Download a guide for the Blackboard delegated marking process.

Have a look at our online guidance videos for Turnitin here, and for Blackboard Assignments here (coming soon).

Turnitin submissions can be accessed from Control Panel – Course Tools – Turnitin submissions.

Blackboard Assignments can be accessed from:

• Control Panel – Grade Centre – Assignments
• or Control Panel – Grade Centre – Full Grade Centre
• or Control Panel – Grade Centre – Needs Marking

Find out more about marking a Turnitin submission or a Blackboard Assignment submission. Or have a look at our online guidance videos for Turnitin here and here, and for Blackboard Assignments here (coming soon).

Click here to find out how to mark your students’ ePortfolio submissions.

You can use tablets for marking student submissions for both systems supported by the University for online submission of work. Click here to find out how. 

External examiners all have University of Westminster computing accounts. This means that they can be given instructor access to any Blackboard site and view all marked work in that way. If the intention is to give external examiners access only to a sample of marked work this can be done by downloading specific submissions either from Turnitin or the Blackboard Grade Centre for Blackboard Assignments and sending the scripts by email to the external. Alternatively, sample of coursework can be placed in a folder in the Blackboard Content Collection and the external examiner can access this folder using their University of Westminster computing account details.

Download a guide for making coursework accessible to external examiners.

With Turnitin second marking essentially takes place in the same way as first marking. As long as the second marker has instructor access to the module concerned they will be able to access the marked coursework in the same way as the first marker and see all of the first marker’s comments. They can then mark any of the work in exactly the same way. If the second marker needs to add further comments to the work, to differentiate their comments from the first marker’s comments the second marker must ensure that they add their initials or ‘2M’ to any comments that they add.

Download a guide for the Turnitin second marking process. Or have a look at our online guidance videos for Turnitin here.

Blackboard Assignment has a specific workflow for multiple marking called ‘Delegated Marking’. With this workflow markers can be assigned to groups of students as either first or marker for that group. The groups of student allocated to markers can be generated randomly or can be specific groups as long as students have first been divided into groups within the module’s Blackboard site. Once each marker has completed their marking there is a ‘reconcile’ function that can be used either by one of the markers or the module leader to record a final ‘provisional’ mark.

Download a guide for the Blackboard delegated marking process.

A rubric can be an effective way to support consistency both of marking and of feedback received by the student. The use of rubrics directly supports the new feedback and assessment policy in helping to make explicit the alignment of  assessments with assessment criteria. The rubric shows students the criteria used to mark the item of coursework and how they have performed in relation to each criterion. Rubrics can be used either solely to provide qualitative feedback to students or to both provide feedback and to automatically calculate a mark based on the performance against each criterion as selected by the marker.

Find out more about how rubrics work with Turnitin or Blackboard Assignment.

Online rubrics are built-in to both Turnitin and Blackboard Assignment. Each system has an online workflow for creating a rubric.but it is also possible with Turnitin to create the rubric in Excel and then import from Excel into the online system. Once a rubric has been created it can be associated with an assignment submission either when the submission link is set up or subsequently when marking starts. Rubrics can be re-used across assignments and modules. They can also be shared between staff within the system. So if one member of staff created a rubric to mark a generic report for example, that rubric (or an amended version) could be used by another member of staff or marking team for a similar assignment in another subject area.

Download a guide on how to set up rubrics with Turnitin or Blackboard Assignment.

When a student accesses their marked coursework online via Blackboard they will also be able to see any associated rubric that has been completed for that item of coursework.

Find out how a student accesses marked work including feedback and rubrics via Turnitin or Blackboard Assignment.

There are two systems for online coursework submission and marking: Turnitin and Blackboard assignment.

With Turnitin, when you set up a submission link you set a post date. That is the date on which marked work, including the provisional mark, will become visible to students. They can then access the marked work via Blackboard and view any feedback you have included online.

With Blackboard Assignments, the process is manual. Someone, normally module leaders, need to manually release the grades and feedback to students.

Check how to to keep marks and feedback hidden in Turnitin from students, after the post date/date is reached.

Check how to hide/unhide marks and feedback if you used Blackboard Assignments.

Have a look at our online guidance videos for Turnitin and for Blackboard Assignments (coming soon).

With Turnitin, when you set up a submission link you set a post date. That is the date on which marked work including the provisional mark will become visible to students in Turnitin. They can then access the marked work via Blackboard and view any feedback you have included online. With Blackboard Assignment there is a similar date (though it is not called the post date) that you set when you establish the coursework submission link. Similarly, once that date is reached the marked work, including any online feedback associated with the work, will become accessible to students via Blackboard.

See how how student accesses marked work including feedback via Blackboard.

Download a guide to find out how to keep coursework hidden in Turnitin from student view after the post date/date at which work should become visible to students is reached.

Download a guide to find out how to hide/unhide marks and feedback for Blackboard assignments

Students access their grades and feedback via Blackboard. We wrote guidance accessible to students via the Blackboard Help tab.

Check out how students access marks and feedback for their assignments here.

Have a look at a playlist that covers the full process in Turnitin here.

Have a look at a playlist that covers the full process in Blackboard here (coming soon).