Rules Regarding Assignment Status
It is important to note the rules that determine the status of an assignment, as this could determine which members of its audience can view and complete the assignment. The following subsections explain the terminology we use in eLearning to refer to an assignment’s completeness or state of being open (visible to its audience).
The following rules are used to determine an assignment’s completeness for general assignment statistics on the Coursework main screen and in the rules-calculation logic for selective release:
Basic and forum assignments—When the assignment is graded for a student, it is considered to be complete for that student. Also, once the assignment's due date has passed, it is complete for all students.
Upload assignments—Once a student clicks the Turn in button on the Student Assignment Detail page, the assignment is considered complete for that student. Alternatively, someone with assignment-grading permissions can use the Close the assignment button to make it complete. And when the assignment's due date passes, it will be considered complete for all students.
Online assignments (tests)—The assignment is complete for a student who has taken all allowed attempts (by default, only one attempt is allowed), or has clicked the Turn in button before all allowed attempts have been taken. Assignment graders can also use the Close the assignment button to make it complete. And when the assignment's due date passes, it will be considered complete for all students.
Note
It can take up to 5 minutes after an assignment's due date has passed before the system recognizes it as complete for all students.
An open assignment is one that is able to be completed by the student and graded by assignment graders. Until the assignment is open, it cannot be completed or graded. (Non-open assignments will also not be displayed to students unless you select the Display to students before it’s open checkbox.)
Following is the series of conditions that are considered, in this order, to see whether an assignment is "open" for a given student:
Audience—If a student is not listed in the selected audience on the New Assignment screen or Edit Assignment screen, the assignment will never open for that student, even if some of the conditions below are met.
Student start-date override—Certain assignment types, such as online tests and upload-file assignments, allow you to grant a custom start date for any single student. If this custom start date is set for a student, and the date has already passed, the assignment will be open for that student. On the other hand, if the start date is set but hasn't occurred yet, then this assignment will not be open for the student, even if other conditions have been met.
Open now—If the assignment is set to open now, then it will appear to all students in its audience.
Based on rules—The assignment will be considered open for any students for which the rule conditions have been met (depending on the grouping of those rules and value of the Any/All drop-down list).