Chapter 4
Digital Drop Box
The Digital Drop Box is a tool that allows instructors and students to exchange files. Students who use the Digital Drop Box can send files only to the instructor(s) of the course. Instructors, however, may choose any number of students to send a file. Files are uploaded and stored on the course website for easy access. Storing documents in the Digital Drop Box in a Blackboard course is particularly helpful in reducing the problems that are encountered with exceeding disk quotas on e-mail accounts, as well as any other problems associated with an account that receives a great deal of e-mail traffic.
While students can access the Digital Drop Box from the Student Tools button, instructors must always access the Digital Drop Box through the course Control Panel.
To Add a Document to the Digital Drop Box:
- In the Course Tools area of the Control Panel, click the "Digital Drop Box."
- Click the "Add File" button.
- Under section 1, enter the information required.
- Click on the "Browse" button at the end of the dialog box.
- Using the resulting pop-up window, locate the file you want to upload and click the "Open" button.
- Click the "Submit" button and the file will be uploaded to the Digital Drop Box.
- You will receive a message stating, "This file will be added but NOT sent. In order to send the file, please use the Send File button."
- Click "OK" to acknowledge the receipt of your changes.
You will now see the document has been added to your Digital Drop Box. The confirmation message under your file name will read "Posted on..." and it will include the date and time your file was added.
Instructors can use Send File to simultaneously "Add" and "Send" a file to one or many students. The sent file will appear in each student's Digital Drop Box. In the following screen-shot notice the window that appears when you click the Browse button.
This window is where you must locate the file you wish to add or send in the Digital Drop Box.
To Send a File:
- From the Course Tools area of the Control Panel, click "Digital Drop Box."
- Click the "Send File" button.
- Under section 1, Select Users, highlight the users you wish to receive the file (use the ctrl or shift keys to make multiple selections).
- Select File: Allows you to choose a file that has already been uploaded to your Digital Drop Box. Click on the down arrow to make your file selection.
- Upload a New File: Allows you to select a new file using the same process as adding a file above.
- After you have made your selection, click the "Submit" button to send the file.
- Click "OK" to acknowledge the receipt of your changes.
- Click "OK" or use the breadcrumb trail to return to the Control Panel.
The "Comments" text box pertains ONLY to uploading a new file. If you select a file that has already been uploaded to the Digital Drop Box and you type comments in the text box, the comments will NOT be sent with the file.
After the file has been sent, it will be listed in your Digital Drop Box with the date and time the file was submitted.
You may encounter situations where your students say they submitted a file to you, but you never received it. Chances are, the student thought they submitted the file, but only clicked the "Add" files. Such files must be sent to the instructor. It thus becomes a two-step process to send files to the instructor. Many first-time users don't realize this and only partially complete the process. If students "Add" a file to their Drop Box, then they must next choose "Send File" to actually send the file to the instructor. We recommend you teach your students how to use the "Send File" button before the first assignment deadline approaches.
All files in the Digital Drop Box are listed in chronological order. Instructors do not have the ability to sort or organize these files, so when you have a large number of files in the Drop Box, it can become difficult to manage. If instructors elect to remove a student file from their Drop Box, the documentation for that file in the student's Drop Box will be modified. Instead of saying "submitted on" it will change to "received on" and show the date the instructor deleted their file. For this reason, we recommend instructors notify students before removing files so they have the ability to print whatever documentation they need from their Digital Drop Box prior to the file being removed.
It is not possible to open a file within the Digital Drop Box and directly modify the document. You must save the file to your hard drive in order to make modifications.
File Saving:
After you have made the modifications, make sure to save the file under a new name that will identify the student and the file's modifications. If you save the file with the same name, you won't be able to tell the original file from the corrected file. Using a descriptive name will also help identify which file needs to be sent back to which student.
Remember, if you have 30 students in your class, you could receive 30 files in your Digital Drop Box that have the same name for an assignment or project. We recommend you instruct your students to submit all documents in a format identifying the student and the assignment. Also, you may use the assignment feature to sort documents into the Gradebook. It is recommended to consider the use of the assignment feature for instructors who plan to receive one or more assignments within a course. To learn more, please refer to Chapter 5, page 29.
It is important that you refer to the examples below to avoid any confusion with assignments.
username_assign1.doc
(the first assignment submitted by the student)
username_assign1_graded.doc
(the graded assignment returned by the instructor)
Be careful when naming any file. Instructors and students should eliminate spaces or non-alphanumeric characters from file names. To prevent problems opening the file, only underscores should be used to space out file names. For example, "English_comp_101.doc" is acceptable, but "English-comp-101.doc" is not acceptable. For information on naming your file, refer to Appendix A.