What is the Dropbox tool?
Students use the Dropbox tool to upload and submit assignments to the Dropbox submission folders in CourseLink, eliminating the need to mail, fax, or email their work to instructors.
Instructors use the Dropbox tool to see students’ submission times, download Dropbox submission folders to their computer, view submissions on the Evaluate Submission page, associate Dropbox submission folders to grade items/rubrics, and return submissions with grades and feedback.
In the Folder Submissions area, instructors can view students' submissions and submission dates, eliminating the need to collect assignments and making it easy to track when files were submitted.
Instructors can create categories to group and organize assignment submission folders. They can also restrict access to assignment submission folders by date and time, group membership, or use special access permissions.
Accessing the Dropbox Tool
The Dropbox tool is one of the links found on the default navigation bar of your CourseLink course site and can be accessed directly from that link.
Location of the Dropbox link on a face-to-face course site
For Distance Education (DE) courses, the link appears under the drop-down menu of the Tools link on the navigation bar (provided that the course is using Dropbox).
Location of the Dropbox link on a DE course site
New Experience Using the Dropbox
The main panel on the left allows instructors to add a name, score out of, due date, instructions, and attachments.
The panel on the right allows instructors to organizes more advanced options. This includes start and end dates, rubrics, annotation tools, and Turnitin. When these options are collapsed, summary text provides details about which settings are active and subtle hints that aid in the discovery of additional settings.
The new experience automatically syncs the Dropbox assignments including the name and score to the gradebook. If you create grade items in advance, support for selecting existing grades and categories is also available.
Note: To select the existing Grades column in the Dropbox, you must enter a score in the Score Out Of text field.
Instructors are temporarily able to opt in and out of the new experience based on preference.
Using the Dropbox tool?
For the most up-to-date information on how to setup a Dropbox folder, please follow the links below to the Brightspace Help documentation site.
“Please note that the documentation on the Brightspace Help site refers to the Dropbox tool as Assignments, however CourseLink still uses the original name of the tool (Dropbox). They are the same tool.”
Dropbox Basics
Assessing Dropbox Submissions
When and why is it a good idea to use the Dropbox tool?
The Dropbox tool is a great way to collect student assignments online. There are many advantages to using Dropbox for assignment collection, including:
Access Control and Submission Tracking
The ability to restrict access via start, end, and due dates
Grading and Assessment
Each Dropbox folder will allow a TA or instructor to assign a grade to a students work either as a simple score, or when a rubric is attached, a score as well as the completed rubric will be available to the student once published. That grade and the corresponding feedback will automatically transfer to the student’s corresponding grade item when published.
When working with group submissions, all members
Integration with Turnitin
Similarity checking and digital markup
Providing Feedback
When grading student submissions to a Dropbox folder, an instructor or TA will be able to leave feedback via text, file attachments, audio recording, or video recording. This feedback becomes available to the student as soon as their grade is published via the Dropbox and the corresponding grade item (if linked).
Restricted Files
These are the file types that are restricted from being submitted to the dropbox.
