Blackboard Forms

Forms can be used to gather information from students using several types of questions including multiple choice and Likert (opinion) scale. Forms are ungraded by default, and questions added to a form have no defined right answer.

Forms are designed primarily for creating ungraded surveys or other feedback activities in Blackboard. Optionally, forms can be manually graded and used as an alternative to automatically-graded tests or quizzes in circumstances were student grades depend more on participation and/or instructor evaluation than on correct/incorrect answers.

Anonymous Form Submission Unavailable

Forms share many features with assignments/tests in Blackboard.

As with assignments/tests, form submissions should generally be considered confidential between the student and the instructor(s)/TA(s) of the course; however, at this time there is no option to make student submissions fully anonymous using forms (or assignments/tests) in Blackboard.

Instructors who want to create fully anonymous surveys in which responses are entirely disconnected from participants' names/NetIDs/other identifying information should consider using another ITS-supported tool such as Google Forms or Poll Everywhere. Please contact help@syr.edu if you would like to schedule a consultation on picking the best survey tool for your purposes.

Creating a Form

To create a new form, open the course content area where you want to place the form, click the plus icon and select 'Create'

The Create Item menu will pop out on the right side of the content area. Select 'Form' under the Assessment section.

Create Item menu - Assessment Section

Enter a title for the new form in the upper left.

Click the plus icon in the center of the screen to add content to the form.

You can add text, attach files, and including the following types of questions:

Essay/Written Response
Likert (opinion) Scale
Multiple Choice
True/False

You can also add page breaks to control the presentation of the form, as shown in the next section.

'Add Content' menu from the form builder

Form Settings and Options

Key form settings such as due date and grading status are displayed to the right of the form editor. Click on a setting to edit it, or click the gear iconin the upper right to open the full settings menu. Form settings include the following options:

Due date and submission rules, including number of attempts allowed and options to allow/prevent late submissions after the due date, if applicable.
Presentation settings including options to present the whole form all at once, one page at a time using page breaks, or one question at a time.
Grading and grade category settings. Even though they are ungraded by default, forms will still appear in the gradebook as ungraded items with a submitted/not submitted status (see next section for details). If a form is going to be graded, you must specify the number of points and grading schema that it will use.

Form Results and Grading

Viewing Forms in the Gradebook

Forms will appear in the Ultra gradebook just like other Blackboard content items like assignments, tests, discussions, or journals. There is no way to remove a form from the gradebook apart from deleting it, although forms can be filtered or hidden from the gradebook view like any other item.

Ungraded forms are labeled "Non-gradable item" under the column header icon in grid view. Student attempt status is automatically displayed as either "Submitted" or "Not Submitted" for ungraded forms.

Graded forms will be displayed in the gradebook according to the total points value and grading schema you apply in the form settings, just like other graded assignments.

To view the results of an individual attempt, click on the "Submitted" status indicator and select "View" from the dropdown menu.

Students will see ungraded forms in their gradebook view with either a green check mark icon for "Submitted" or a gray circle icon for "Not Submitted."

Graded forms will be displayed to students in the gradebook according to the total points value and grading schema you apply in the form settings, just like other graded assignments.

Form Feedback and Grades

To view form results, go to the gradebook and click on any student submission to open the grading view. Within the grading screen, you can choose to view responses by student (i.e. view the results for the complete form, one student at a time) or by question (i.e. view all responses to a chosen question, one question at a time) using the selector in the upper left.

At this time, form responses cannot be made anonymous in Blackboard.

Blackboard forms do not currently support feedback on individual questions. To enter feedback or grades for a form, you must view the responses by student. Click the comment iconon the right side of the screen to open the feedback/grading panel. Enter comments and/or a grade for the student and then click "Save Changes."

Forms are designed primarily for gathering information from students, and do not support automated feedback or grading. To create a survey or similar activity with automated feedback, start by creating a test. Tests and test questions can be worth 0 points for ungraded activities, and once created, a test can be reassigned to the "forms" category in the gradebook (or other appropriate category) if desired.

To download form results from Blackboard, click the column header icon and then select "Download Results." In list view, click the title of the form to open the submissions list, then click the actions menu (...) in the upper right and select "Download all."

A graded form cannot be changed back to an ungraded form once students have begun submitting responses. Form grades can be overridden with an exception/exemption or disconnected from the overall grade calculation just as with any other graded assessment.