Using Assignment

This page explores the different types of assignment, how students submit assignments and how teachers can grade them.

Contents

• 1 What are the options for submitting work in Moodle?
• 2 Which type of assignment submission suits you best?
  • 2.1 You want students to type shorter or longer responses directly online
  • 2.2 You want students to submit work you can download in a specified program
  • 2.3 You want students to submit files at different times for a project
  • 2.4 You want students to write a response to a video/sound file/image
  • 2.5 You want students to answer a series of questions on a video/sound file/image
  • 2.6 You want to grade work students have done offline
  • 2.7 You want to view, comment on and send back students' assignments
  • 2.8 You want students to send you a comment or note along with their uploaded work
  • 2.9 You want to allow students to redraft and decide when to submit the work
  • 2.10 You want students to keep an ongoing journal or do an iterative assignment
  • 2.11 You want students to submit work in groups
  • 2.12 You want to grade students' work anonymously
  • 2.13 You want to read and grade student assignments offline
  • 2.14 You want to hide students' grades until a time of your choosing.
  • 2.15 You want to set a timed assignment
  • 2.16 You want to moderate other colleagues' marking or allocate certain teachers to certain students
  • 3.1 File submission
  • 3.2 Access controlled links
  • 3.3 Online text
  • 3.4 Submission comments
  • 4.1 Filtering submissions
  • 4.2 Allocating submissions to markers
  • 4.3 Submission status
  • 4.4 Overriding assignment deadlines
  • 4.5 Granting extensions
  • 4.6 Quick grading
  • 4.7 Grading individual submissions
    • 4.7.1 Annotating submissions
    • 4.8.1 Notifying as you mark
    • 4.8.2 Keeping grades hidden until a release date
    • 4.8.3 Examples of Marking workflow
    • 4.9.1 Before you start, enable the multiple file upload settings
    • 4.9.2 Downloading student submissions
    • 4.9.3 Download the Grading Worksheet to record grades
    • 4.9.4 Grade and annotate (if applicable) the submitted work
    • 4.9.5 Upload the completed grading worksheet
    • 4.9.6 Upload feedback files (if applicable)
    • 7.1 Examples from School demo site
    • 7.2 Other

    What are the options for submitting work in Moodle?

    The standard ways students can submit assignments are:

    • File submissions (students submit a file for assessment)
    • Online text (students can type their responses directly in Moodle)
    • Audio or video (via the recording button in the Atto editor)
    1. It is also possible to use the assignment for grading an "offline assignment", ie, one where work is done outside of Moodle. This is done by simply unchecking the above three options.
    2. If you're not sure which assignment type best suits your needs, look at the section below #Which type of assignment submission suits you best?

    Which type of assignment submission suits you best?

    You want students to type shorter or longer responses directly online

    Set Online text to Yes. This works well for younger children who will only manage a sentence or two and works just as well for higher education students who write more.

    • Advantage - quick for the student to get started; no need to use a word-processing program and upload the file. The text is saved on a regular basis so it will be preserved if the student loses the page for some reason.
    • Disadvantage: if the word count is expected to be large, setting Online text to No and File submission to Yes might be a better option.

    You want students to submit work you can download in a specified program

    Set File submission to Yes, set the number of files you will allow using the Maximum number of uploaded files setting and the file sizes by using the Maximum submission size setting.

    • Advantage - better than students emailing work as the whole class's work is collated in one space on your course. Markers can provide comments directly on the student work.
    • Advantage - with "Attempts reopened" enabled, teachers can see the progression through various drafts of a student's work.
    • Disadvantage - assignments must downloaded to be viewed (but they can be downloaded in bulk) and the teacher needs the appropriate program to open them.

    You want students to submit files at different times for a project

    Set File submission to Yes, and use Maximum number of uploaded files to set the maximum number of separate files they can upload

    • Advantage - all project files are in one assignment area for grading so they get a single grade.
    • Disadvantage - all project files are in one assignment area for grading - so they can only have a single grade!

    You want students to write a response to a video/sound file/image

    Set up an assignment allowing online text submission and get students to use the Moodle media icon to add video/sound/image files.

    You want students to answer a series of questions on a video/sound file/image

    Investigate the Quiz module. Assignments are really just for a single question.

    You want to grade work students have done offline

    Uncheck the submission types when setting up the assignment. Students won't be required to do anything but you can use the assignment to grade them for work done outside of Moodle.

    You want to view, comment on and send back students' assignments

    Set up an assignment allowing file submissions.

    • Advantage: useful for teachers who like using the "comment" options in word-processing programs for example. If you have Ghostscript enabled on your server and the students upload PDF files, you can annotate them inline. See the section Annotating PDF files below.
    • Disadvantage: if students upload other file types, you have to download them, comment and then re-upload them.

    You want students to send you a comment or note along with their uploaded work

    If comments are enabled site-wide, students will be able to add submission comments; if comments are disabled site-wide, students will not be given the option to add submission comments.

    You want to allow students to redraft and decide when to submit the work

    In the settings set Require students click submit button to Yes. Students can then control when their draft work is submitted to the teacher.

    You want students to keep an ongoing journal or do an iterative assignment

    In the settings set Require students click submit button to No. Students can continue to make changes to their assignment and at no point do they 'submit'. If the work will be graded at some point it is recommended that either Prevent late submissions is set to Yes to ensure that no changes can be made after the due date, or all submissions are locked when grading commences to ensure that the work is not altered during grading.

    • Advantage: the work remains in one place and is constantly improved, graded (if needed) and improved again.
    • Disadvantage: there is no record/history of previous attempts (such as with the Wiki). The online text assignment does not replicate the display of a journal or blog where each new entry is additional to the previous ones.

    You want students to submit work in groups

    In the settings, set "Students submit in groups" to Yes. If you just do this, then once one student has submitted, the assignment will be flagged as submitted even if the others haven't contributed. If you want to ensure everyone has an input, set "Require students click submit button" to Yes and then change "Require all group members to submit" to Yes. The assignment will only be classed as submitted when each member has contributed, and once one student has submitted, the remaining members's names will be displayed for the group to see who still needs to add their input.

    You want to grade students' work anonymously

    In the settings, choose 'Anonymous submissions'. When students submit assignments, their names will be replaced by randomly-generated participant numbers so you will not know who is who. Note that this is not totally anonymous because you can reveal their identities in the assignment settings and you can work out identities from the logs - so this might not be suitable if your establishment has very precise privacy requirements.

    You want to read and grade student assignments offline

    In the settings, choose "Offline grading worksheet". When students have submitted, click "View/grade all submissions" and you can download their assignments from the link "Download all submissions" and download the grading sheet from the link "Download grading worksheet". You can then edit grades and re-upload the grading worksheet. You can also upload multiple feedback files in a zip from this drop down menu. See Assignment settings for an explanation of how to use the "upload multiple feedback files as zip" feature.

    You want to hide students' grades until a time of your choosing.

    Use 'marking workflow' as explained in Assignment settings.

    You want to set a timed assignment

    Ask your administrator to enable the time limit feature from Site administration > Plugins > Assignment settings > Enable timed assignments and you will then have the option from the Availability section.

    You want to moderate other colleagues' marking or allocate certain teachers to certain students

    Use 'marking allocation' as explained in Assignment settings.

    How do students submit their assignments?

    The first page students will see when they click on the assignment activity link from the course page will display the assignment name, description and the submission status. The first time a student views the assignment it will look like this:

    

    Student view of assignment

    The submission status section includes:

    • Submission status
    • Grading status
    • Due date
    • Time remaining
    • Last modified
    • Submission details

    As they progress through the assignment the Submission status and Grading status will update and the Last modified date will appear.

    

    Example of submitted and graded assignment

    If the student uploaded a file which the teacher has annotated, this will be made available in the feedback section. The student can search through the document and filter specific comments.

    

    Student view of graded pdf file

    

    Searching and filtering comments in annotated pdf

    Submission statuses include:

    • Nothing submitted for this assignment
    • Draft (not submitted)
    • Submitted for grading

    Grading statuses include:

    File submission

    To submit a file submission, students complete the following steps:

    1. Click the ‘Add submission’ button to bring up the file upload page.
    2. Upload the relevant file into the submission. They are able to ‘drag and drop’ the file into the submission box.
    3. Click ‘Save Changes’.

    There should now be a Last modified date and the file(s) uploaded will also be displayed. Depending on how the assignment is setup the status will either read ‘Submitted for grading’ - in which case no further action is need, or ‘Draft (not submitted)’.

    1. If changes are required, click ‘Edit submission’.
    2. Once ready to submit, click ‘Submit assignment’.

    Note that once the assignment is 'submitted’ no further changes are allowed.

    

    Student view when adding a submission

    

    Student view once file is uploaded

    

    Student view when submitting assignment

    Note: Depending on how the assignment is setup students may see both a file submission page and an online text editor.

    If file submissions and online text are enabled, and a word limit is set for the online text, it is possible for a student to end up with a submission status of 'No attempt' together with saved file submissions. This occurs when a student submits files, enters online text, clicks 'Save changes' then obtains a message informing them that the text exceeds the word limit. If they then click Cancel, the submission status is shown as 'No attempt' together with saved file submissions.

    Access controlled links

    If the administrator has enabled this feature for either the Google Drive repository or the OneDrive repository then students can upload a file as an 'access controlled link' from either of these repositories. The file is then copied to the site account and the student is no longer able to edit it.The student retains the original file in their own Google Drive or OneDrive. The teacher is given permission to edit the file for grading purposes, and the student is sent a copy of the edited file.

    

    Student submits an access controlled link

    Online text

    To submit online text, students complete the following steps:

    1. Click the ‘Add submission’ button to bring up the online text editor page.
    2. Type the relevant text into the text editor, or paste from a previously written file.
    3. Click ‘Save Changes’.

    There should now be a Last modified date and the first 100 characters entered will also be displayed. Depending on how the assignment is setup the status will either read ‘Submitted for grading’ - in which case no further action is need, or ‘Draft (not submitted)’.

    1. If changes are required, click on ‘Edit my submission’.
    2. Once ready to submit, click ‘Submit assignment’.

    Note that once the assignment is 'submitted’ no further changes are allowed.