2013
Moodle - Assignment Handbook
Technology Enhanced Learning
York St John University
1/1/2013
Contents
Introduction for York St John University colleagues ......................................................................................................... 2
Where to get help if this document doesn’t answer your questions ........................................................................... 2
The process ....................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Adding and editing an Assignment activity ....................................................................................................................... 3
General settings ................................................................................................................................................................ 4
Assignment name.......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Description .................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Display description on course page .............................................................................................................................. 5
Assignment settings .......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Allow submissions from ................................................................................................................................................ 5
Due date ........................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Always show description............................................................................................................................................... 6
Prevent late submissions .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Require students click submit button ........................................................................................................................... 6
Notifications to graders (New in Moodle 2.3) .............................................................................................................. 7
Submission settings........................................................................................................................................................... 7
Online text..................................................................................................................................................................... 8
File submissions ............................................................................................................................................................ 8
Maximum number of uploaded files ............................................................................................................................ 8
Maximum submission size ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Submission comments (New in Moodle 2.3) ................................................................................................................ 9
Feedback settings.............................................................................................................................................................. 9
Feedback comments ..................................................................................................................................................... 9
File feedback ............................................................................................................................................................... 10
Grade Settings ................................................................................................................................................................. 12
Grading method .......................................................................................................................................................... 12
Grade Category ........................................................................................................................................................... 12
Submitting an assignment .............................................................................................................................................. 12
Downloading submissions............................................................................................................................................... 12
Hiding the assignment link during marking .................................................................................................................... 13
Hide the assignment link............................................................................................................................................. 13
Hide the link to the grade book .................................................................................................................................. 13
Returning files and giving feedback ................................................................................................................................ 14
Submission status ....................................................................................................................................................... 15
Quick grading .................................................................................................................................................................. 16
Student grading page ...................................................................................................................................................... 18
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Introduction for York St John University colleagues
The first thing you might notice is that the assignment tool has changed in Moodle 2.3. No longer do you have
several different assignment types to choose from - everything has merged into one page of settings. The settings
you choose will determine how the assignment works and which features are enabled, or not.
New to Moodle 2.3 are some extra grading methods which include a Marking Guide and Rubric which may enable
some programme areas to improve the consistency of their online marking processes and procedures.
Finally, this new assignment framework will allow the TEL team at York St John University to begin development
work to enable copying of grades from Moodle to SITS and will pave the way for bulk upload of assignments which
will be available from September 2013.
Where to get help if this document doesn’t answer your questions
The TEL team is located in Temple Hall. Members of the team work within faculties on a designated day during the
first week of each month during term time. You can get in touch with your faculty representative as below; however
all members of the team are able to deal with Moodle related queries. Alternatively, you can request individual or
small group training on managing assignments effectively by sending details to tel@yorksj.ac.uk.
TEL team members and faculty responsibilities are:



Mark Dransfield – TEL Manager | Business School
Daniel Mackley – TEL Advisor | Faculty of Education & Theology and Faculty of Health & Life Sciences
Philip Vincent – TEL Advisor | Faculty of Arts
Colleagues can get further information about York St John University policies and procedures by visiting the
Electronic submission, marking and feedback website.
The process
Below is a brief outline of the process of electronic assignment submission, marking and feedback. Tutors can use
this as a checklist to ensure that they have completed all the elements involved.
1. Tutor creates a new assignment
2. Student submits their assignment
3. Tutor sets the assignment to be hidden during the marking phase
a. Tutor creates a new assignment to handle extensions, if this is required.
4. Tutor downloads and provides feedback on the assignments
5. Tutor uploads the assignment files and indicative grades into Moodle for each student
6. Tutor reveals the assignment to enable students to see feedback
7. Tutor lets students know that their feedback is now available.
This guide provides information to enable tutors to complete all of the above steps.
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Adding and editing an Assignment activity
To add a new Assignment activity to your course login with the appropriate access rights (e.g. editing teacher, course
creator or administrator) and Turn Editing On. Within the required Week or Topic Block click Add and Activity or
Resource link.
In the Add an activity or resource dialogue box that appears, select Assignment and click Add.
To edit an existing Assignment activity, login to your course with the appropriate access rights (e.g. editing teacher,
course creator or administrator) and Turn Editing On. Select the Update icon against the relevant Assignment item.
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Alternatively, after logging into your course, simply click on the name of the
Assignment activity you wish to edit and then click the Edit Settings link
under Assignment administration within the Settings block.
General settings
The General section allows you to give your assignment a name and description.
Assignment name
Give your Assignment a name (e.g. “1000 word literature review”). The title entered here will be the name that
learners see in the course content area. Learners will click on this name to view the details of the assignment and, if
applicable, submit their work.
Description
The description of the assignment, which should include precise instructions for students regarding the subject of
the assignment, the form in which it should be submitted, the grading criteria etc.
Use this area to describe the assignment and explain what learners are expected to do to complete this task. The
assignment description can be as brief or as detailed as you feel is necessary to meet the needs of your learners.
However, it is to your benefit to provide as much detail and information as possible, especially at the start of the
course while you are still establishing procedures. Generally, the more information you are able to provide here the
fewer questions and problems your learners will have completing the task.
The assignment description field can also be used to provide information or resources related to the assignment. An
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instructor, for example, could provide some literature, a video clip, an image, or a link to a webpage, and then ask
the learners to use these materials in completing the task.
Display description on course page
Enabling this will display the description on the course page just below the link to the assignment activity.
Assignment settings
The Assignment settings section allows you to determine the assignment characteristics, due dates, when students
will be able to submit etc.
Allow submissions from
The Allow submissions from setting prevents students from submitting their assignment before the shown date. This
option allows an teacher to set a day, month, year and time (24 hour clock) from which learners can begin to submit
their assignments. Please note that this setting does not hide the activity from the learners. Instead, the learner will
see the activity, be able to view the instructions and use any materials you have included in the description, but the
learner will not be able to submit or complete the assignment until the Allow submissions from date.
If you also wish to hide the assignment description from students until a set date, you can use the Always show
description setting (see below).
By default the Allow submissions from date is Enabled (ticked) and is set at the day and time you selected Add
Assignment. To Disable this feature simply ensure the Enable checkbox is not marked.
Due date
The Due date setting prevents students from submitting their assignment after the shown date.
This option allows a tutor to set a day, month, year and time (24 hour clock) before which learners must submit their
assignment.
By default the Due date is Enabled (ticked) and is set at 7 days ahead of the day and time when you selected Add
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Assignment. To disable this feature simply ensure the Enable checkbox is not marked.
Notes on Date Settings
The Due date is displayed for learners in the assignment details and is also marked in the course Calendar as a visible
reminder for participants and provides a link to the activity.
Your use of the Allow submissions from and Due date settings will probably be dependent on the overall structure of
your course.
The Allow submissions from and Due date settings are useful for keeping learners on schedule. Using the Allow
submissions from setting will make it possible for learners to preview upcoming activities, while at the same time,
preventing them from completing the activity sooner than the tutor intended. Likewise, the Due dates help keep the
learners from lagging too far behind and decrease the likelihood that the learner will become overwhelmed by
having to complete several weeks worth of work at once.
Note: Assignments without a Due date will appear on the My home page with “No Due date” displayed.
Always show description
This setting is used in conjunction with the Allow submissions from setting. If it is set to Yes, the assignment
Description will become visible to students at the Allow submissions from date. If it is set to No, the assignment
Description will be hidden from students until the Allow submissions from date, only the assignment Name will be
displayed (as shown below).
Prevent late submissions
Setting Prevent late submissions to Yes will prevent learners from being able to submit this assignment after the Due
date (where specified). If you set Prevent late submissions to No, then learners can submit the assignment as long as
the assignment is visible or accessible to them but their submissions will be marked as late.
Require students click submit button
In previous Moodle versions this setting was known as “Enable Send for Marking button”.
The submit button allows students to upload draft versions of the assignment until such time as they are ready to
submit. It allows students to keep a draft version of their assignment on the system until submission. Once they click
the submit button they indicate to the teacher that they have finished working on the assignment.
Note: this means that the learner can no longer edit their submission (to do so would risk invalidating any work their
assessor had done on their submission). If students regret their decision and wish to edit, they need to request that
somebody with course editing access reverts them to Draft Status. Likewise the teacher may choose to revert the
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assignment to draft status (if it requires further work, for example).
To revert to the draft stage or let a student resubmit, click on the assignment activity, then click on the View/Grade
all Submissions button. On the grading table locate the student and click the action icon in the Edit column. Select
Revert the submission to draft.
If this setting is No then students are not required to click the submit button and are able to make changes to
uploaded files at any time. This scenario may be applicable to situations where teachers are providing feedback on
drafts, or where the assignment is iterative in nature.
If this setting is No and at some point as the teacher you wish to grade students work, then you can stop students
from making further changes by using Prevent submission changes. Prevent submission changes can also be used in
cases where students have neglected to click the Submit button and grading has commenced.
To prevent submission changes, click on the assignment activity, then click on the View/Grade all submissions
button. On the grading table locate the student and click the action icon in the Edit column. Select Prevent
submission changes.
If you wish to either “Revert to draft” or “Prevent submission updates” for a number of students, or the whole class,
you can use the With selected menu at the bottom of the grading table. Click on the assignment activity, then click
on the View/Grade all Submission link. Using the tick boxes in the Select column, tick relevant students or place a
tick in the box at the top of Select column to select all students. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select either
Lock Submissions, Unlock Submissions or Revert the submission to draft status and click Submit.
Notifications to graders (New in Moodle 2.3)
In previous Moodle versions this setting was singular and was known as “Email alerts to teachers”. In Moodle 2.3
onwards you are able to choose whether graders receive email notifications whenever a student submits an
assignment (early, on time and late) or whether graders only receive email notifications whenever a student submits
an assignment late. Only teachers who are able to grade the particular assignment are notified. So, for example, if
the course uses separate groups, teachers restricted to particular groups will not receive notifications about
students in other groups.
Submission settings
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Submission settings allow you to determine how you would like your students to submit their assignment.
Note: You can now set up an assignment that allows both online text and file upload.
Online text
If set to Yes learners are able to compose and edit text on screen using the standard Moodle HTML Editor.
File submissions
File submissions allows learners to upload and edit one or more files to form their final submission.
Maximum number of uploaded files
If file submissions are enabled, this setting determines the maximum number of files which may be uploaded by
each learner. As this figure is not displayed anywhere, it is suggested that it is mentioned in the assignment
Description. Tutors should note that the selection here also determines how many response files they are able to
provide as feedback for the learner.
Maximum submission size
This setting specifies the maximum size per file of each of the files that the students can upload as part of their
submission. This maximum upload size may only be equal to or less than the course limit (which in turn may only be
equal to or less than the site limit). The maximum size of each file is displayed to students at the point where they
upload files.
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Submission comments (New in Moodle 2.3)
If enabled, students may leave comments into a text area associated with the
assignment. Comments can be used for communication with the grading person,
assignment progress description, to let students alert the marker about which file is
the master file (in case of inter-linked files), or any other type of communication
between student and marker.
Feedback settings
Feedback settings allow you to determine the type of feedback you will provide to students.
Note (New in Moodle 2.3): You can now determine whether you will provide feedback comments or feedback files to
students, or a combination of both.
Feedback comments
Setting this to yes means that markers can leave feedback comments for each submission. Essentially what this does
is enable the Feedback Comments column in the grading table (to access the grading table click on the assignment
activity, then click on the View/Grade all Submission button).
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Feedback comments are also accessible by clicking on the green tick in the grade column on the grading table.
File feedback
Setting this to yes means that markers will be able to upload files with feedback when marking. These files may be
the marked up student assignments, documents with comments, a completed marking guide, or spoken audio
feedback. Essentially what this does is enable the Feedback Files column in the grading table (to access grading table
click on the assignment activity, then click on the view/Grade all Submissions button).
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To upload feedback files click on the green tick in the grade column on the grading table.
To upload a feedback file you can either use drag and drop or click Add to bring up the File picker.
All feedback will be displayed to students on the assignment submission page. The following screen shot
demonstrates the view if both feedback comments and file feedback are set to Yes.
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Grade Settings
Specify the maximum grade or Scale to be applied to the assignment. If you will not be giving a grade for the
assignment, choose No Grade.
Grading method
There are 3 options:



Simple direct grading (entering a grade or scale item)
Marking guide (New feature in Moodle 2.3)
Rubric (New feature in Moodle 2.3)
Grade Category
Any custom Grade Categories that have been created within your site or course will be listed here and will be
available for selection. Select the required Grade Category to add this assignment as a Grade item within this
Category.
Submitting an assignment
To be completed – or should this be a new skill sheet which we can point people to?
Downloading submissions
If you have a large cohort of students who are submitting assignments it is likely
that you will want to download all of the students’ files at once, rather than clicking
on each student’s submitted file individually.
To download all assignments at once, make sure you have clicked on the relevant
assignment title, then from the Settings block, choose Download all submissions
and save the file to a location of your choice.
Alternatively, you can choose Download all
submissions from the drop down menu at the top
of the list of enrolled students.
The assignments will be downloaded within a .zip file, which you must Extract in
order to begin working with the contents.
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File submissions will be downloaded in the format uploaded by the student. Online text submissions will be
downloaded as html files.
Each file in the zip will include the student first and lastname at the beginning of the filename for identification
purposes.
You are now able to handle these assignments in your own preferred way in order to provide students with
feedback. For example, you may choose to annotate assignments in Microsoft Word using comments.
Note: The location of the Download all submissions link has changed in Moodle 2.3 and is now available from the
drop down menu or the Settings block as described above.
Hiding the assignment link during marking
During the marking phase it is likely that you will want to hide the grades and feedback from students’ view until
such as stage as the marking for the entire cohort is complete. This ensures that all grades are released at the same
time, rather than students receiving feedback at different stages during the marking process. You will need to block
off students’ access in two places as detailed below.
Hide the assignment link
To hide an assignment from students, ensure that you click Turn Editing On and close the eye icon next to the
assignment you wish to hide.
Whilst an assignment is hidden, students cannot interact with it in any way.
Note: You will need to ensure that students who have mitigating circumstances are
able to submit to a different assignment.
Hide the link to the grade book
Even though you have hidden the assignment, students are still able to access
grade information in the grade book. This means that they would be able to see
their final grade for a piece of work but wouldn’t be able to access any feedback
for it. To hide the grade book, make sure you are on the course homepage and
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then in the Settings block, choose Edit settings
Scroll down the page until you see the option to Show grade book to students (the default setting is Yes), select the
drop down menu and choose No
When you want to release the grade information back to students, simply reverse the actions described above and
then let the students know that their feedback is available by clicking on the original assignment link in Moodle.
Returning files and giving feedback
When students have submitted their assignments, they can be accessed by clicking on the assignment activity. This
will bring up the Grading Summary page.
The Grading Summary page displays a summary of the assignment, including; number of participants, number of
drafts, number of submitted assignments, due date and time remaining.
Clicking on the the View/grade all submissions link will bring up the Grading Table.
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The Grading Table contains columns of information about the student, the status of their submission, a link to grade
their submission, a link to each submission and feedback comments and files (if enabled).
Submission status
If you will be assigning grades to student work, you may want to take note of the submission status before you begin
the marking process. If you have required students click the Submit button, you may find that some submissions are
still marked as Draft (not submitted), meaning the student has either uploaded a file(s) or entered some text, but has
not clicked Submit assignment.
It is suggested that if it's after the due date and you are about to commencing marking that you use Prevent
submission changes to stop students from making changes to their assignment. You can do this one by one by using
the icon in the Edit column.
Or you can select two or more students by putting a tick in the select column and going to 'Lock submissions’ from
the With selected menu under the grading table.
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Likewise you can also revert a student's submission to draft if they have uploaded the incorrect file. Instead of
selecting Prevent submission changes select Revert the submission to draft, or place ticks against selected students
and choose Revert the submission to draft status from the With selected menu under the grading table.
Quick grading
Under Options (scroll to bottom of the page) you can determine your preferences for the number of
assignments you wish to display per page. You can also filter assignments either to show all (no filter),
submitted, or requires grading. This is also where you can turn on quick grading.
Quick grading allows you to enter grades and a feedback comment (if enabled in Assignment settings)
directly into the grading table. Quick grading is not compatible with advanced grading and is not
recommended when there are multiple markers.
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You can enter grades and feedback comments using quick grading. It is now possible to
enter grades in decimal format. You will not be able to return a feedback file to your
students (if enabled in the Assignment settings).
Enter the grades
Scroll to the bottom of the grading table and click 'Save all quick grading changes'
A confirmation screen will appear.
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Student grading page
If you have enabled File Feedback in the Assignment settings and wish to upload either the marked student
assignment, a completed text based feedback document or audio feedback, click on the green tick in the
Grade column (or use the icon in the Edit column and select Grade).
Here you can enter grades, feedback comments and feedback files (if enabled in the Assignment settings).
You can use drag and drop to upload feedback files.
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