Most of the work my students submit, in the online writing and literature courses I teach, is via PDF, Word, or RTF files. But I use Blackboard's assessment tool to create multiple-choice reading quizzes. The grade is recorded automatically, so it saves me a lot of time.

This term, I experimented with using the assessment tool for a mid-term exam. It allows different question types (e.g. multiple-choice, short answer, matching, etc.). And it will still grade the objective portion even if you have to intervene for the non-objective ones. It's not a perfect tool, but it's all I have at the moment. And I'm more-or-less happy with it.