What is Google Assignments?

Google Assignments is an add-on application for learning management systems such as Blackboard that helps you distribute, analyze, and grade student work while leveraging the convenience of Google Docs and Google Drive for file submissions. Instructors can assign personalized Google Docs templates and worksheets to students, and students are able to submit their work in a variety of document and media file types. Each distributed copy of the assignment is labeled with the student’s name and automatically organized into folders in Google Drive.

Google Assignments enables you to provide substantive and timely feedback to your students. The application prevents students from editing their documents while you are grading, allows you to use rubrics and Google Docs features such as commenting, highlighting, and strikethrough for substantive feedback, and saves grades automatically into Blackboard’s Grade Center.

Who can use it?

Google Assignments is available to all BU faculty and students. It is enabled by default on both Blackboard Learn and Blackboard Ultra. Instructors will create a Google Assignment, which will create a submission portal for students and a submission management interface for instructors.

Features

  • Create templates using Google Docs for students to use. Assign due dates, point value, and offer assignment descriptions. Google Assignments automatically creates a column in your Blackboard Grade Center.
  • Allows students to submit Google Docs directly in Blackboard. Once students submit their assignments, ownership transfers to the instructor so students cannot make changes after submitting. Ownership transfers back to students once the instructor releases grades and comments. Supports revision assignments, where students can resubmit work after receiving substantive feedback.
  • Create rubrics, add comments, input grades, and utilize powerful Google features for comments and substantive feedback. Save rubrics and comments across assignments.
  • Instructors can enable an originality report for up to 3 assignments per course. The originality report uses Google’s search engine to scan for plagiarism. Note: this does not check student work against other student work–it only checks the web.
  • Students can also upload a variety of file types from Google Drive or their hard drive into the submission portal. These file types include:
    • Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
    • Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint
    • PDF
    • Image files
    • Text files
    • Video files (WEBM, MPEG4, 3GPP, MOV, AVI, MPEG-PS, WMV, FLV, OGG)
  • Assignments, a G Suite product, supports the latest version of Chrome and the current and previous releases of Firefox, and Safari.

How do I access Google Assignments?

  • Faculty and students should make sure to Enable their BU Google Account.
  • The first time faculty and students access Google Assignments in Blackboard, they will need to link their Google Drive account to Google Assignments. This will happen within Blackboard.
  • On Blackboard Learn, instructors can create a Google Assignment by navigating to a Content Area, clicking the Build Content dropdown menu, and choosing the Google Assignments option.
  • On Blackboard Ultra, instructors can create a Google Assignment by navigating to the View Course & Institution Tools link on the left hand sidebar. This will open a window on the right hand side of the browser. Scroll down and click Browse all Course Tools. This will open up a pop-up browser with all tools available for Blackboard Ultra. Select Google Assignments from this list to create a Google Assignment.
  • On both Blackboard Learn and Blackboard Ultra, students will access Google Assignments just like they would any normal Blackboard or Turnitin Assignment—through a dedicated submission interface.
  • Do not access Google Assignments through https://assignments.google.com/. This will not sync with your course roster and will be unavailable January 2021.

Tutorials

General Google Assignments Workflow

The Google Assignments workflow can be organized into four main steps that are accompanied by automated steps for file creation and sharing. 

  1. The instructor creates an assignment, attaches files, and publishes the assignment for students to access. → This automatically creates copies of the attached files for each student. File ownership transfers to the student and the instructor cannot access those files until the student submits it. 
  2. The student attaches files or edits their files and submit their work. → File ownership then transfers to the instructor. Students cannot edit their file or view comments once submitted. Note: Student access isn’t removed, but rather is shifted to “View-Only.” Students will be able to see any direct edits made to the text in Edit mode; however, they will not be able to see comments, edits made in “Suggest Mode,” or scoring until the assignment is returned. 
  3. The instructor grades and provides feedback for the assignment. They return the student’s graded assignment. Students can view their comments and grades. → File ownership transfers back to the student. Full editing rights are restored to the student. 
  4. [Optional] Students can edit and resubmit assignments based on instructor feedback.

Adding a Google Assignment in Blackboard

Student Submissions in Google Assignments

Managing and Grading Student Submissions

Student View for Returned Assignments

Learn More