What is Blackboard Annotate?


Blackboard Annotate can be used on any assignments that students have attached documents to. Annotate loads these attachments and provides tools to assist instructors to effectively grade and provide feedback to students. Currently this is only available to attachments to an assignment

  • Microsoft® Word (DOC, DOCX)
  • Microsoft® PowerPoint®(PPT, PPTX)
  • Microsoft® Excel®(XLS, XLSM, XLSX)
  • OpenOffice® Documents (ODS, ODT, ODP)
  • Digital Images (JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIF, TIFF, TGA, BMP)
  • Medical Images (DICOM, DICM, DCM)
  • PDF
  • PSD
  • RTF
  • TXT
  • WPD


Blackboard Annotate is supported on Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari.


How do I use it?


After students have submitted an attachment to an assignment, grade the item from the Needs Grading or Gradebook areas. This will open the paper with the Annotate menu at the top (See Below)



  1. Sidebar: View Thumbnail, Outline, Annotation, or Bookmark views of the submission.
  2. Pages: Use the arrows to jump to different pages in the submission.
  3. Pan: Move the submission on the page.
  4. Zoom and Fit: Zoom in and out of the submission or adjust the view to fit the page, fit the width, or select the best fit.
  5. Annotation tools: Select each tool to view the tool properties.
    • Drawing, Brush, and Eraser: Draw freehand on the submission with various colors, thickness, and opacity. Select the eraser to remove annotations. You can erase parts of a freehand drawing with the eraser or select the Delete icon to delete the whole drawing.
    • Image or Stamp: Choose a preloaded stamp or create your own customized stamp or image to add to the submission.
    • Text: Add text directly on the submission. You can move, edit, and change the text and select the font, size, alignment, and color of the text.
    • Shapes: Choose Line, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, and Polyline. Each shape has its own settings to change the color, width, opacity, and more.
  6. Comment: Provide feedback in comments. Your comments appear in a panel next to the submission.
  7. Print or Download: Print or download the submission with the annotations. 
  8. Search: Search the submission for specific text. 
  9. Content Library: Create a bank of reusable comments. You can add, edit, delete, and search comments in the library. You can also add a comment directly to the submission page from the menu.


 For more information please visit https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Assignments/Grade_Assignments/Bb_Annotate