Blackboard, while great at maintaining grading and calculating overall scores, can be burdensome when executing the actual grading process.  To that end, I’m experimenting with Google Forms to understand if that may be a better platform for both the students and myself.

My first attempt is with the Initial group homeworks which have two deliverables, one of which is a form completed by the team describing their thesis and initial keywords, as well as entries for each individual to provide links in support of their specific sub-topic.  This requires creating two forms. One to be completed by the team captain describing the thesis, primary and secondary keywords.  The second, to be completed by each individual, contains entries for that team member’s contribution and includes their sub-topic, two scholarly articles and then three (or more) links for other types of sources.

GA1-1 Team Topic, Thesis and Keywords

GA1-2 – Individual Topics and Sources

Benefits

• Easy to work with
• High visibility – instructor can see all entries by all students in a spreadsheet view
• Links are reliable. Student must enter valid links and link integrity is maintained, unlike BBD where links are often broken
• Can be completed by any student on any device (including phones)

Issues

• Two deliverables instead of one
• Outside BBD ecosystem, so instructor has to manually enter all grades