Assignments
The Assignment module gives you an easy way to allow students to upload digital content for grading. You can ask them to submit essays, spreadsheets, presentations, photographs, and small audio or video clips. Basically, anything (reasonably sized) that can be stored on your students' hard drives can be uploaded in response to an assignment.
Click here to go to the video tutorials for Offline and Online Assignments, or here to go to the video tutorial for Uploading File type Assignments.
The Four Types of Assignments
When you turn editing on and open the "Add an Assignment..." drop down menu, you will see that "Assignments" itself cannot be chosen, but under it, there are four choices:
-Advanced Uploading of Files
-Online Text
-Upload Single File
-Offline Activity
This option should be used when you want your students to be submitting multiple files, or particularly big files. In this sub-module, you will be able to set a maximum file size as well as a maximum number of files submitted per student, and you can decide if you want students to work in groups, if students can delete files after they are uploaded, if students can write notes to you online, and when the assignment is due. You can also decide whether you would like to receive an email every time a student submits a file. This assignment has a further feature of allowing teachers to submit feedback in the form of a file, so an electronically corrected document may be returned. For detailed documentation on this, see the Advanced Assignments PDF on the right side of this page.
This option is for relatively short, text-based assignments. For example, if you wanted to ask students to submit their thoughts on a reading assignment, you might use this kind of assignment. Students will not be able to upload files from their computer; they will simply see a text editor box, approximately paragraph-sized, where they can type something up online and submit it to you.
In the sub-module, you can set things like due dates, whether late assignments are acceptable, whether assignments can be resubmitted, and whether you would like to receive email alerts when a submission has been made. You can also make the submissions easier to grade by turning on the "Comment inline" option, which will allow you to edit the original text, or comment using a different color. Furthermore, you can split students into groups, but this is generally a solitary kind of assignment.
If you would like to have your students upload files, but you only want each student to upload one file and the files aren't particularly big (Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc.), then you can use the much simpler "Upload a single file" option, which works almost exactly like "Advanced uploading of files", except for the number limit on each student. As a professor, you can set a grade scale, due date, late submission policy, and resubmission policy, as well as a maximum size of file. You can also split students into groups and have each group submit one assignment, and decide whether you would like email alerts when files are submitted.
This is the easiest option to use. There is no online submission of any kind; the assignment mostly exists as a reminder to students that they have a certain assignment due on a certain day. Mostly, this is used for assignments from the textbook, or offline worksheets. You can set a grading scale, a due date, and a late submission policy, but again, this is all for the students' benefit, since they won't be submitting anything online, anyway.
Effective Assignment Practices
In order to use Assignments effectively, you should always let students know what you are doing. For example, if, in Advanced uploading, you decide that each student can upload a maximum of three files, then you should definitely include that fact in the description. Otherwise, students might upload too many files, in which case they will write over their first submissions.
This is one place where descriptions should be anything but brief. Even if you have described an assignment in class, you should reiterate the entire assignment online: things like expected page length, file type, number of submissions expected, and resubmission policy should all be carefully detailed.
Managing Submissions
To view submissions, click on the link to your Assignments in the Activities Block, or go into the Assignment itself and click on the View Submitted Assignments link in the upper right. You'll see the assignment's name and details, as well as how many assignments have been submitted.
Each submission will have its own block. The block will have the student's name, and the date that he (last) submitted the assignment. You will see a link to download his submission. Save it to your own computer, and open it in whatever application it calls for. If the submission is a Word document, you will need to save it and open it in Microsoft Word.
To the right, you will see the feedback area. After you've looked at the student's submission, this is where you can assign a grade (from the grading scale that you picked earlier), as well as comment on the student's work. Click on the Grade link, and fill in your comments. When you are done, click "Save all my feedback" at the bottom of the screen. For offline assignments, grades can be entered the same way, but, obviously, there will be no files to download for each student.
After you have finished giving feedback, students can see your grade and comments two ways. They can open the assignment link in weekly schedule, or they can can go straight to Grades, and see everything there. They will also receive an email telling them that their submission has been graded.