Last winter, the company that provides the inline grading tool in Blackboard, Box, retired the Crocodoc tool that we’d become accustomed to using. One critical feature that was left out was the ability to download instructor annotated documents. Unknown to the company this was a critical feature for both students and instructors. Students want to save graded versions of their work for later study or to show potential employers their skills. Instructors need the function to create their course manuals at the end of the term to demonstrate what their students are learning and that students are meeting accreditation and institution goals.

Finally, the ability to download those annotated documents is returning to the inline grading tool, now called Box View. Similar to the prior tool, instructors and students will be able to download the student submissions with annotations. The new functionality will appear after the maintenance is completed over the August 24th update.

To see how the function will work, check out the video in the August 13 announcement on the Blackboard Community blog.  (FYI – The video has no audio). LIT will showcase the feature in training targeting faculty and Twitter announcements targeting students.