Should I use the Digital Drop Box or the Assignment tools to get files from students?
From BbWiki
The Digital DropBox and the Assignment Tool are similar; they both provide a place for you to exchange documents with students. The Digital DropBox is a little easier to set up, but the Assignment tool has many advantages.
The Digital DropBox is included as a Tool in Blackboard and can be accessed through the Tool menu when modifying a course menu. At Haverford, by default all courses include a Digital DropBox, called "Submit/Retrieve Assignments," which appears on the navigation menu. At Swarthmore courses also have a Digital DropBox by default, accessible through the Tools menu.With this tool, students can send documents to you, and you can send documents to all students, or to indivual students. You can also you this tool to allow students to exchange papers with each other, if you set up a group file exchange. (See How_do_I_create_an_area_for_file_exchange_between_students?).
With just a bit more work, you can set up an assigment area. Assignment areas have several benefits over the Digital DropBox.
- They help you organize student responses.
- They allow you to easily assign assignment grades into the gradebook, or simply use the gradebook to see which students submitted a paper already.
- They allow you to you to quickly and easily download all student assignments to one zipped archive file, which your computer will uncompress into one neat and tidy folder with every student paper identifiable by file name.
- They provide a way for you and students to include a short note with the paper. For example, you can return a student paper with a note saying, "Great organization, but your arguments could use more examples."
