Assignment feed and availability timescales
On the day that an assignment feeds into a course from SIS, 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 SIS generated assignments in Blackboard. Please note that Schools 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 - SIS assignment fed into Blackboard
- upto 2 weeks before the submission date - SIS assignment remains unavailable to students
this period gives instructors the opportunity to check and add instructions to the assignment. Please note that for resit assignments, they become available immediately that they feed into Blackboard. - 2 weeks before the submission date - the assignment will become available to students
only if the ‘immediately available on release’ option is set in SIS - if it is not, instructors need to make the assignment available manually
SIS generated assignments will be placed in a course folder called Assessment submission points. If you do not already have a folder 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 SIS 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 SIS assignments, makes reference to attaching Microsoft Word files and advises students NOT to enter or paste text into the submission text box.
It is imperative that SIS derived data is NOT changed once the assignment is in Blackboard. Changing any of the SIS fed data may result in incorrect marks being fed back into SIS 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.
The availability dates are set in the Release Conditions. Students will be able to access the assignment from the Access from date and time until the Access Until date and time. All times are UK time.