As OIT announced on February 10, 2006, and November 28, 2005, the Assignments feature in Blackboard is a tool that was designed to replace the Digital Drop Box by allowing the instructor to create individual assignments for each student submission, rather than have all of the submissions for the course submitted into one place. This allows for easier document management—no more need to delete Digital Drop Box files one at a time—and no more confusion by students about whether they've POSTED an assignment to their drop box, or SUBMITTED it to the instructor's drop box. The Assignment function even creates a column in the Gradebook for easier management of grades.
With the upgrade to version 6.3 we are terminating the use of the Digital Drop Box on June 30th, following the spring 2006 semester, and will focus exclusively on the Assignments feature.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact John Fritz (fritz@umbc.edu or 5-6596) or Bob Armstrong (rarmstro@umbc.edu or 5-3885), or send email to blackboard@umbc.edu.