If you use the inline grading tools in Blackboard you will be seeing a change this term. Previously, inline grading used a plug-in called Crocodoc. The company that developed Crocodoc was purchased by Box.com and the Crocodoc plugin is being retired. As of January 15th 2018, Crocodoc will no longer be available. Before January 15th, however, we will enable a new tool,   Box View. All assignments submitted under Crocodoc will be migrated to Box View.

As a precaution we have archived all Crocodoc submissions with annotations to provide backup in case problems occur in the migration process.

On January 12th during our maintenance window (8 PM – Midnight), we will be turning on the new Box View tool. Any comments made using Crocodoc will be burned into the documents already graded/annotated and can’t be changed.

Learn more about Grading with Box View:

There will be some good and not so good changes with this transition. In Box View, students do not see any annotations until you submit the grade to Blackboard. Instructors who want to grade all student work and then release grades at one time, rather than over the course of a day or more,  can add comments but wait to add grades until they’ve reviewed all assignments.

Unfortunately there is no way to download an annotated assignment file as there was with Crocodoc. So to save annotated assignments for course manuals, you will need to take screen shots in addition downloading the original file. We’ll be looking for other ways of collecting this information (and Box View has heard from Blackboard System Administrators about how essential this feature is). Hopefully, Blackboard/Box.com will announce annotation download functionality as an improvement in the near future.

If you want to influence the development of Box View, make your voice heard and go to the Blackboard Community site, sign-up, and vote up the annotated download feature at:
https://community.blackboard.com/ideas/2504-new-box-view-download-document-with-annotations