Bb 9.1 April 2014
Having looked last week at a glitch in the new version of Blackboard (Bb 9.1 April 2014), let’s turn to another one of Blackboard’s many new and/or improved features. The new feature in this case takes the form of Crocodoc, a Blackboard plugin that allows instructors to insert inline comments into any MS Office or PDF document that their students have submitted using the Blackboard assignment tool.
Here’s how it works. When you go in through your Grade Center to grade an assignment submission (How do I do that?), and the student has made more than one assignment submission, you will see an interface much like the one in the following screenshot:
At this point, you select the link for the student’s submitted file — when you do this, it will activate Crocodoc and display the submitted file like this:
If the student has made only one assignment submission, Crocodoc will display the student’s document without your having to select the link for it.
When the document displays in Crocodoc, you can use the Draw, Highlight, Text, and Strikeout tools on the Crocodoc toolbar to visually “markup” the document. For example, you can draw a circle around a portion of text that you want to draw a student’s attention to; highlight that text “magic marker-style,” insert a textbox with text next to that text, or strike through that text.
To insert inline comments, you select one of the options from the Comment drop-down menu:
After using Crocodoc to comment on your student’s submitted document, you can then use the normal Blackboard tools to assign a grade to that submission, and write feedback to your students. You can also use the Crocodoc download tool to download the file that you’ve commented on (you can download it either as a PDF, or in the file format of the program that you created it in), so that you can then attach it to your student feedback:
As well, you still have the option of using Blackboard to download assignment files to your computer, and attach graded files to your student feedback.
When your students go in to view their grades for the assignment, they will see their grades and your comments. If they’ve made one assignment submission, their document will display automatically in Crocodoc. If they’ve made more than one submission, they simply need to select the link for their submitted document in order to view the document with all of your markups and comments:
There are, however, some caveats to using Crocodoc:
- Crocodoc cannot—and is not designed to—replicate the functionality of Turnitin; nor does it support as many file formats as Turnitin does. For this reason, faculty who use Turnitin may find that Crocodoc does not meet their needs.
- While Crocodoc allows you to provide inline comments on any MS Office document that your students submit, it is not designed to let you access and grade Office functionality that is “under the hood.” For example, Crocodoc will not let you view or comment on your students’ ability to properly format headers or footers in Word, and it will not allow you to view and comment on functions and formulas that your students have created in Excel. In these instances, you would have to download the file from your Grade Center, so that you can open it, view it, and assess it in the program in which it was created (after which, you can then attach it as a file to the Blackboard feedback that you provide your student with).
- Crocodoc will not allow you to insert comments into an RTF document.
- Crocodoc will not allow you to insert comments into documents that were created in programs other than MS Office (for example, Google Docs, OpenOffice, or Apple iWorks), which could be an issue for students who have limited or no access to MS Office.
Use the following link to download a printable version of this Bb tip of the week: Download the Tip
Use the following link to view previous Bb tips of the week: BBTOTW-Archive
As always, please do not hesitate to contact the Distance and Online Learning Office (629-7070 / DLHelp@hvcc.edu), if you have any questions, or if you would like to receive training on this topic.
Published: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 12:10:45 +0000 by m.petersen