Schoolwork gets easier: see what's in tonight's update!
You know how some teachers let you resubmit assignments to earn a higher grade? That's a bit like what we're doing behind the scenes here at My Big Campus.
The Schoolwork interface got a major overhaul early this year, and we're fine-tuning it again as a result of teacher and student feedback. You'll see the changes after I update the site on Friday evening. In the meantime, here's a quick preview:
Teachers can grade assignments with another teacher
One question I'm asked very often is, "I share my classroom with another teacher. How do we share assignments with each other?" This started out as a complex problem, but turned out to have an easy solution. Friday's update will add a check box on the Edit Assignment page so you can allow group administrators, as well as yourself, to view and grade submissions. Just make your colleague a group administrator, and they'll see shared assignments on the Needs Grading tab. Don't worry, we've built in some safeguards to prevent two teachers from working on the same assignment submission: To prevent edit conflicts, only one user at a time can open a submission for grading.
Teachers can grade assignment submissions more quickly
We've also streamlined the interface for teachers so it will take fewer steps to grade batches of assignments. Select an assignment for grading, click Quick List, then enter your scores and bonus points directly on the page.
Students can save and continue working before submitting assignments
When a student opens an assignment, students will see a new option on the submission form to open an MBC Document. This way, students can save their work in progress and continue working until they are ready to submit the assignment to the teacher.
Everyone's Schoolwork will be easier to find
Students and teachers both reported they sometimes had trouble finding all their schoolwork, because old assignments were hidden unless you changed the View options on the page. We've added a Show All link so students and teachers can see all their current and past schoolwork. And it will soon be possible to search for an assignment from the Schoolwork page.
Students can mark assignments "Dismissed"
Students will also be able to mark assignments as "Dismissed" to remove them from the counter in the left navigation menu.
We're still at work on some other requested improvements to Schoolwork and other new features; you'll see those later this summer. Visit the What's Next for My Big Campus? page in the MBC Orientation Center to stay up to date on development plans for the coming weeks, and find information about updates in the MBC Release Notes topic.
I appreciate the opportunity to learn from you, our customers, about how you want to use My Big Campus, and I hope the work we do gives everyone high marks. Please share your questions, ideas, and suggestions with me in the Comments.