Working with Assignments
This section explains how to create, modify, delete, and share an assignment.
About the Assignment Details Screens
Regardless of its format, each assignment you create has the following:
An Assignment Overview, which summarizes details about the assignment and lists each student’s name, as well as each student’s grade, if one exists.
A Student Assignment Details screen—one for each student. You get to this screen by navigating first to the assignment overview, then clicking the name of any student listed. The Student Assignment Details screen lets you leave feedback for the student, view the student’s detailed history with the assignment, and take other actions.
You use these two screens for a variety of tasks that are described throughout this guide. This section simply offers a quick overview of these screens.
You might want to refer to the assignment overview in any of the following situations:
For online and uploaded assignments, you can use this screen to see which students have completed the assignment.
For uploaded and basic assignments, you can use this screen to enter students’ grades.
For any assignment, you can use the assignment overview to navigate to other screens, such as the Student Assignment Details screen.
The assignment overview can be viewed only by faculty members and by roles that have the Grading Access or Content Management Access permission.
Layout of the Assignment Overview
The exact contents of the assignment overview will vary depending on the format of the assignment, but all versions have the following:
A header that includes details about the assignment—its name and format, the unit it belongs to, etc.
An action bar, which includes several useful links. The exact links will vary depending on the assignment’s format and whether the due date has passed. If you’re looking for a link in the action bar and do not see it, click the More link to display additional options.
A Student Results area, which lists all students in the course section, along with each student’s grade on the assignment (if one exists), and related details. For uploaded and basic assignments, you can enter grades here.
For every assignment, there is a screen you can use to manage each student’s work. This is the Student Assignment Details screen. There are two versions of this screen—one shown to faculty and one shown to students.
The student version of the Student Assignment Details screen lets students do the following:
View details about the assignment, such as how many points the assignment is worth.
View instructions for the assignment.
Upload a file (if this is an uploaded assignment).
Display and take a test (if this is an online assignment), and later review the completed test, if review is allowed.
View feedback that you or other authorized users (such as a teaching assistant) have left.
Enter comments for you to review.
Write a post or reply for this assignment, visit the open discussion topic and view all of the student’s posts and replies (if this is a forum assignment)
Note
The Student Assignment Details screen is one of those which can be viewed in Student Emulation mode only in a generic sense—you can see what the screen looks like for an anonymous student who has not yet completed the assignment. You cannot preview what it looks like for a particular student.
The faculty view of the Student Assignment Details screen lets you complete the following tasks:
Manage this student’s experience with the assignment by taking actions such as giving the student a personalized time limit, granting the student a retake, and so forth.
If this is an uploaded assignment, download a student’s file(s).
If this is an online test, review a student’s answers, adjust any scores that were automatically given, and enter feedback for any question.
If this is a basic assignment, and if your version of eLearning is 1.6.3 or later, you can use the Student Assignment Details screen to configure a learning tool that you’ve added to a basic assignment.
Enter or adjust the student’s grade for the student.
Enter feedback for the students. You can enter comments, and you can also upload a file as part of the student’s feedback.
Review comments that the student left for you.
View all of the student’s forum posts and replies (if this is a forum assignment)
How To
You can create and add a new assignment or you can import an existing assignment from the File Cabinet.
If you want to create an assignment by manually defining all of its settings, use this procedure.
Navigate to the appropriate Coursework feature instance.
Click Add an Assignment and then select one of the following options:
Basic
File Upload
Forum
Online Test
Import
The Add an assignment page displays. This page has three main sections:
Step One: General Assignment Information. This is the area where you define the most basic settings. Note that the Name and Due date fields are required. If this is an uploaded or basic assignment, the Points field is also required.
Step Two: Format Assignment Options. This area includes optional settings specific to the format of the assignment.
Step Three: Instructions & Files. These optional settings let you add a description, instructions, and supplementary files.
Once you have filled out all of the fields that you want to complete, scroll to the bottom and click Save your new assignment.
The portal creates your assignment. If this is an online assignment, the portal opens the Test Builder, which you can use to create questions.
If you have saved assignments to your File Cabinet, you can import copies of these into any of your courses.
Navigate to the appropriate Coursework feature instance.
Click Add an Assignment and select Import.
Your File Cabinet displays.
Note
You can filter the list to show only online, basic, uploaded or forum assignments.
Select the assignment(s) you want to import.
Click Import selected.
A pop-up window displays that allows you to enable assignment linking. The Enable assignment linking checkbox is selected by default.
Take one of the following actions:
To enable assignment linking, leave the Enable assignment linking checkbox selected.
To disable assignment linking, click the Enable assignment linking checkbox to deselect it.
Click Import.
The assignments are imported.
Note
By default, the imported assignments are not active and not immediately visible to students. They are automatically given a due date equal to the last day in the term.
Click OK.
Next you might want to do either of the following:
Modify basic settings for the assignment, such as its name and its due date.
If this is an online assignment, you may want to modify its content.
If this is a forum assignment, you must associate it with a forum topic by editing the assignment and selecting a topic. After selecting a topic, you will be able to use all of the options available to forum assignments.
Use this procedure to change an aspect of an assignment except the content of an online assignment.
Note
Changing the format of an assignment will cause any linked copies to be unlinked from it.
Navigate to the appropriate Coursework feature instance.
Locate the assignment you want to modify and click the corresponding pencil icon.
The system displays the Edit Assignment screen.
Make any changes necessary.
Click Save.
If you think you’ll want to reuse some or all of an assignment, save it to the File Cabinet.
Note
The system allows you to save the same assignment to the File Cabinet multiple times. You might want to do this if you end up making unexpected modifications to an assignment, and you want to save the revisions.
Navigate to the appropriate Coursework feature instance.
Locate the assignment you want to save and click the name of it.
The system displays the assignment overview.
At the upper right, click More to expand a menu with additional options.
In the More menu, click Save to your File Cabinet.
The system displays a pop-up window that allows you to enable assignment linking. The Enable assignment linking checkbox is selected by default.
Take one of the following actions:
To enable assignment linking, leave the Enable assignment linking checkbox selected.
To disable assignment linking, click the Enable assignment linking checkbox to deselect it.
Click Save.
The system displays a pop-up window stating the assignment was saved.
Click OK.
Warning
The deletion of an assignment cannot be undone.
Note
eLearning does not allow you to delete assignments for which at least one grade has already been recorded. To delete a graded assignment, you must first remove all grades from it. Deleting an assignment will cause any linked copies to be unlinked from it.
Navigate to the appropriate Coursework feature instance.
Locate the assignment you want to delete and click the name of it.
The system displays the assignment overview.
At the upper right, click More to expand a menu with additional options.
In the expanded menu, click the link labeled Delete this assignment.
The system displays a pop-up window asking if you’re sure you want to proceed.
Click OK.
eLearning versions allows you to generate a printable version of a test for students who have accessibility concerns regarding the online version. You may do this from either the Test Builder or from the assignment overview.
Navigate to the appropriate Coursework feature instance.
Click the name of the assignment.
The system displays the assignment overview.
Click Go to the Test Builder.
The Test Builder opens.
From the More drop-down menu, select View printable version.
The printable version of the test displays, along with a print pop-up window. From here, you can print the exam to provide to students.
Navigate to the appropriate Coursework feature instance.
Click the name of the assignment.
The system displays the assignment overview.
From the More menu, select View printable version.
The printable version of the test displays, along with a print pop-up window. From here you can print the exam to provide to students.
FAQ
When you import an assignment from the File Cabinet, the due date and other dates of the new assignment are determined according to the logic explained in the following two subsections.
When you import an assignment from the File Cabinet, if the assignment’s due date has not yet passed, then all of the following dates will be copied into the destination assignment as is:
Due Date
Early Due Date (if any; forum assignments only)
Late Date (if any)
Show Grade date (if any)
Dates used in selective-release rules (if any)
If the original due date has already passed or if the original assignment was added to the File Cabinet before eLearning 1.4.1 was installed (and therefore has no due date), then the dates in the destination assignment will be calculated according to the following logic:
Due Date—This date will be equal to the destination section’s end date.
Early Due Date (if any; forum assignments only)—The system will determine this date by calculating the difference between the early due date and the due date of the original assignment and applying the same difference to the early due date in the destination assignment. For example, if the early due date is three days before the due date in the original assignment, the early due date of the destination assignment will be set to three days before the destination assignment’s due date.
Late Date (if any)—The system will determine this date by calculating the difference between the due date and late date of the original assignment and applying the same difference to the late date in the destination assignment.
Show Grade date (if any)—The system will determine this date by calculating the difference between the Show Grade date and the due date of the original assignment and applying the same difference to the Show Grade date in the destination assignment.
Dates used in selective-release rules (if any)—For each date-based rule, the system will determine which date to use by calculating the difference between the original rule’s date and the original section’s end date and applying the same difference to the destination rule’s date.
Whenever you import an assignment that is set to open based on selective-release rules, those rules will be imported according to the following logic:
As in the original assignment, the Open field will be set to Based on rules I define in the destination assignment.
The structure of all rules and groups of rules will be copied, and for each rule the selection in the first drop-down (a date or an assignment) will be copied.
Date-based rules—Dates used in selective-release rules will be copied based on the logic defined.
Assignment-based rules—For assignment-based rules, the system will determine which assignment to use in the rule based on the following logic:
The system will first look for a unit in the new course with the same name as the unit of the original assignment. If there is such a unit, the system will look for an assignment with the same name as the assignment to which the rule points. If such an assignment exists, then the selective-release rule will point to that assignment. (The comparison of unit and assignment names will be case-insensitive; for example, "Exam 1" would match "EXAM 1."
Otherwise, the system will look for the first assignment in the destination course with the same name as the original and point the assignment-based rule to that assignment. (The comparison will be case-insensitive.)
If there is no assignment with the same name, then the assignment-based rule will not point to an assignment.