The ISIS generated assignment

Assignment feed and availability timescales

On the day that an assignment feeds into a course from ISIS, all instructors receive an e-mail notification. If any of the assignment information is incorrect, please let your School Student Programme and Support (SPS) team know.

Below are the standard lead-in times for creation and release of ISIS generated assignments in Blackboard. Please note that faculties may choose to implement different lead-in times but students should always have a 2 week period in which to submit.

  • 4 weeks before the submission date - ISIS assignment fed into Blackboard
    if the ‘immediately available on release’ option is set in ISIS, an announcement is posted in the course at this point confirming the availability dates and the actual submission date
  • upto 2 weeks before the submission date - ISIS assignment remains unavailable to students
    this period gives instructors the opportunity to check and add instructions to the assignment
  • 2 weeks before the submission date - the assignment will become available to students
    only if the ‘immediately available on release’ option is set in ISIS - if it is not, instructors need to make the assignment available manually

Important note about assignment availability

The automatic availability of assignments and the creation of an announcement is dependent on whether the ‘immediately available on release’ option is set in ISIS. If it has not been set, an announcement will not be created and the assignment will not become available automatically - instructors will need to manually make the assignment available in order for students to submit.

ISIS generated assignments will be placed in the course content area called ‘Assessment’ or for a resit in the ‘Resit Materials’ content area. If you do not already have a content area with this name, it will automatically be created with the assignment.

Group Submission Assignments

Group submission assignments require manual involvement from the instructors once fed into the course. Please see our Group Submission Assignments guidance for further details.

Editing Assignment data and instructions

Once the ISIS generated assignment is in your course, you have the opportunity to add any further instructions or attachments to the assignment before it becomes available to students.

It is important for you to be clear with your students what format you want their submissions to be in i.e. Word document, PowerPoint file etc. The default instructions which are included in ISIS assignments, makes reference to attaching Microsoft Word files and advises students NOT to enter or paste text into the submission text box. Submissions from students who use the submission text box, will be presented to the marker as an .html file, making viewing and marking difficult.

It is imperative that ISIS derived data is NOT changed once the assignment is in Blackboard. Changing any of the ISIS fed data may result in incorrect marks being fed back into ISIS and/or contradicting information showing to the students in myUWE. If any of the information is incorrect, please let your School Student Programme Support (SPS) team know.

Take Note

  1. A default set of instructions for students which instructors may add to. We strongly recommend that Instructors review the instructions and amend the acceptable file formats as necessary. Include here if you want students to add a ‘comment’ to their submission.
  2. Attach any supplementary files
  3. Do not amend the due date. If it is incorrect, please contact your faculty Student Administration team (SAT).
  4. Do not amend any settings under Submission Details, Grading Options or Display of Grades.
  5. The availability of assignments should be set as ‘available’ by default in ISIS. However, if the assignment is only fed into Blackboard within the two weeks prior to the submission deadline, it will be fed as ‘unavailable’. This is to allow you time to review the instructions etc before the students can start submitting. Once you have checked it, you will need to make the assignment available to students by selecting the Make the Assignment Available tickbox.

example screenshot showing take notes A and B above

As long as the Assignment is available, from the Display after date your students will be able to see the assignment and submit to it. All times are UK time.

No further action is required by instructors until the Display until date has passed.

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