Assignment Activity in Moodle

The Assignment Activity allows students to submit work for teachers to grade and give feedback on. Student submissions appear on one screen together and you can require that they submit one or several files. Assignments also can have deadlines and cut-off dates.

Creating an assignment activity

  1. Select the “Edit Mode” toggle in the upper right to begin editing the course site.
  2. Choose the Topics Block where you want to add the assignment and click Add an activity or resource.
  3. Select the Assignment activity at the very top of the list.
  4. Name the assignment and add a description as well as set the availability of the assignment, the submission types, and grade settings.
  5. Click the [Save and return to course] button.

Grading Assignments

Various grading methods and grading feedback can be added to an assignment in both the Feedback types and Grade section of the Assignment settings.

Feedback types

  • Feedback comments: grader is able to leave written feedback for assignment submissions including recorded audio or video.
    • Record RTC: allows for up to two minutes of recorded audio or video
    • Kaltura: record audio or video of any length
      Black circles around Record RTC and Kaltura buttons in ATTO editor in Moodle comments
  • Annotate PDF: allows the grader to annotate a PDF by adding comments or drawings directly on the student’s submission. For information about annotating including using an iPad, see Annotating Moodle Assignment Files.
  • Feedback files: grader is able to upload feedback files including marked-up student submissions (see Batch Export/Import of Assignment Submissions), documents with comments, or other types of files.
  • Offline grading worksheet: grader will be able to download and upload a worksheet with students’ grades while grading submissions.
  • Comment inline: submission text is copied into the comments box allowing for inline comments or editing the original text.

Grading methods

  • Simple direct grading (default): grader enters a grade either a point or scale value based on the grade settings.
  • Grading Guide: grader uses a grading guide (similar to a rubric) to create a set of criteria for grading as well as point value for each criterion and comment (see Grading with Grading Guides in Moodle).
  • Rubric: grader creates a rubric consisting of a set of criteria with several descriptive levels for each criterion. A numerical grade is assigned to each level and the rubric score is used to calculate the student submission grade (see Grading with Rubrics in Moodle).

Multiple Submissions

There may be situations when an instructor wishes to collect multiple document submissions within the same Moodle assignment such as a rough draft that is submitted for feedback prior to a final draft submission or collecting multiple documents as part of the same assignment over a period of time. See Allow Multiple Submissions to Moodle Assignment for step-by-step instructions.

Blank Submissions

If instructors are in the grading interface and notice an error message opening up a student’s submission or a student submission is blank, most often the issue is due to a setting a student enabled when downloading the assignment from their own device. Be sure to ask the student to uncheck or turn off the “editable pdf” setting and try downloading and reuploading the assignment again. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, please contact the Help Desk at help@lafayette.edu.

Conditional access to resources and activities

The Restricted Access setting is available for all resources and activities and allows instructors to make items available to students after they have met the restriction criteria. Restrictions can be based on the date, performance, completion of an activity, or both. For example, an instructor could post a quiz for students to complete and then post an extra credit activity to be released only after students have completed the initial quiz.

Show Activity Date

Instructors can now display the due date on activities on the course page by enabling “Show activity dates” in the course settings. For more information on enabling Show Activity date and how to set the activity date for an assignment see Show Activity Dates in Moodle.

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