If you want to give a blackboard quiz that counts for a significant portion of a  student’s grade, you’ll need to address several issues:

• Minimizing cheating.
• Minimizing assessment lockups – making sure that students cancomplete the exam without too much technical difficulty.
• Minimizing the amount of work it takes you to deal with grading, specialcases and student complaints.

Attempt in Progress

It’s vital to have a plan in place and to communicate expectations to your students. Supplement this with instructions about where to find the test in the Bb site, what to do if they have problems, and a reminder that they are responsible for dealing with them, not you.

There are a lot of options and decisions. If you don’t have time  here’s a summary of 7 particularly important tips:

1. Don’t copy and paste from Word into a test.
2. Don’t set “Force Completion”. This allows students who are booted out by technical difficulties to resume without your help.
3. Keep tests short (30 to 45 min max expected time to complete), and instruct students to take the exam in one sitting with no breaks.
4. Give students a copy of or link to our “Test”Taking in Blackboard document.
5. Motivate students not to cheat, and to solve tech problems for themselves.
6. Get assistance from the USD/ATS helpdesk
7. Read the Blackboard Instructor’s Manual Site.