Assignments 2 Purpose: The Assignments 2 tool allows for a piece of work to be set with corresponding duration (including grace period), marking and the return of marks to students. It also (optionally) allows for the submission to be scanned by the Turnitin plagiarism detection service. Pieces of work are normally be expected to be submitted in the form of uploaded files, but the tool also allows non-electronic submissions (which have to be marked manually). Alternatives: Whilst it does not feature integration with Turnitin, it is possible to use the Tests tool for the purpose of students submitting tasks. Another, less formal, approach is to use the Drop Box tool where students simply upload a file into their own personal folder, visible only to site organiser/s. Other useful step-by-step guides to read in conjunction with this one: Attaching files in WebLearn Using the WYSIWYG HTML editor All step-by-step guides are available from weblearn.ox.ac.uk/info Benefits of the tool The Assignments 2 tool offers a convenient secure way of submitting and keeping track of Assignments. At the submission stage, you can (optionally) get students to agree to a statement of originality. When a student has submitted their work, an e-mail confirmation is sent to their university e-mail account. If the Turnitin originality checking service is being used, a digital receipt which includes the entire transcript of the submission (in plain text) is also sent to the student as an e-mail. If you opt to use Turnitin, you can view the originality reports that are returned into the Assignments 2 tool, and optionally allow students to see their own reports. M NB: Impress on students that they must make sure that: They attach their piece of work (electronic file) They click on Submit They receive an on-screen confirmation: You have successfully submitted your assignment They receive an email confirmation message DOC-162 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. 25 September 2012 To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Creating an assignment 1. From within your WebLearn site, choose the Assignments 2 tool from the list of tools on the left. Click Add to create a new assignment. If you are used to the Assignments tool, you will notice that the layout of Assignments 2 is different. 2. Access: The default is to display the assignment to the entire WebLearn site. The Assignments 2 tool is group aware, so if you have set up subgroups (see the Site Info guide for how to manage subgroups), you can set different Assignments 2 for different groups: (Note: in order for this option to appear, you must first have created the internal subgroups of students using Site Info > Manage subgroups). 3. Give your assignment a unique title. Under Assignment Instructions is a large WYSIWYG HTML editor text area which allows you give precise instructions as to what the assignment is about and what form (e.g. Word, PDF document, etc) it should take. 4. (Optional) Model Answer: Provide a model answer or solution to the assignment (attachments are possible). Help with the HTML editor You can add an attachment such as a worksheet, or reference material that may be required in order to complete the assignment IT Services 2
Resubmissions will also go through Turnitin again. Students see this Due Date and Time Select these options, as required. Your site must contain the Schedule / Announcements tools respectively A grace period can be allowed, after which the system will NOT accept any submissions Option to use the automatic submission to Turnitin, with the reports returned within this tool 5. The Submission Format drop-down list asks you to specify the form of the submission. You can pick from the following: Text only: students are presented with a WYSIWYG HTML editor text box in which to write their submission. Attachments only: The submission must be in the form of an uploaded file. (Note: this is the recommended format). You must select this format if using Turnitin. Text and Attachments: students can submit an uploaded file and are presented with a text area to write in, i.e. they can do both. Non- electronic: this is aimed at submissions which are not suitable for electronic submission, e.g. a painting or sculpture. You might wish to allocate marks for such an activity, which could be stored in the MarkBook (if you have the MarkBook tool in your site and you select the option to add the assignment to the MarkBook.) 6. (Optional) Add declaration of authorship. This option enables a declaration of authorship when a student is about to submit their work, which requires them to confirm that the submission is all their own work. 7. The Open Date indicates when the assignment will become available to students. (Tip: clicking on the little calendar grid icon will cause a widget to pop-up which can make picking dates easier, e.g. when you want to choose a date that s one week from today). 3 IT Services
8. (Optional) Post Open Date to Announcements on open date. This option shows the open date of the assignment as an announcement in the Announcements tool. (Note: in order for this option to appear, the Announcement tool must be added to the current site). 9. The Due Date indicates when the assignment will become unavailable. (If you specify an Accept Until date, this provides a grace period after the Due Date). 10. (Optional) Post due date to Schedule Now. This option shows the due date of the assignment as an event in the Schedule (calendar) tool. This will also appear in the student s schedule in their My Workspace site (Note: in order for this option to appear, the Schedule tool must be added to the current site). 11. The Accept Until date specifies the final date for accepting submissions. (Note: this date is not visible in the student view). 12. The Marking Details options give you the following choices: Not marked: there will not be any kind of score associated with any assignment submissions. Marked and is associated with a MarkBook item: a dropdown menu allows you to choose a MarkBook item. This option will only be visible if you have included the MarkBook in your site. Create a new MarkBook item: This allows you to create a new MarkBook item and allot a marking system to it. 13. (Optional) If you wish to use the Turnitin originality checking service then tick the corresponding checkbox. If you want your students to submit work to Turnitin using Assignments 2 (see Turnitin integration: Overview), under Turnitin, check Use Turnitin. You can then specify the following options: Submit papers to the following repository: To allow future University of Oxford submissions to be checked against your students' work, select Institution Paper Repository; otherwise, select None. Generate originality reports: Choose to generate the reports Immediately on submission or On Due Date. Allow students to see originality reports: Check this box to allow students to access their own originality reports. Check originality against: Check the boxes for all the repositories in which you want Turnitin to search for matches with your students' work. You must select at least one. Available repositories are: Turnitin paper repository: Works previously submitted on Turnitin Current and archived internet Periodicals, journals, and publications Institution Repository: Works previously submitted from University of Oxford students 14. Note: The first time you create an assignment that uses the Turnitin option in Assignments 2, you may see a message saying that the assignment was saved, but the Turnitin settings were not saved. Edit the assignment, select the Turnitin settings again, and it will save correctly. 15. When you have filled in all desired information for the assignment, at the bottom of the page, choose one of the following actions: Click Save when you are finished adding content to the assignment. The assignment will become visible to students on the open date you have set. IT Services 4
Click Save as Draft to save your changes without making the assignment visible. To make further changes or to post your assignment, from the assignment list, highlight the assignment and click Edit. Note: When you save an assignment as a draft, no one else in your site (including other instructors and teaching assistants) will be able to see it in the assignment list. Click Preview as Student to review your assignment before posting it. To return to the Add Assignment page, click Edit. Note: Assignments added in the Assignments 2 tool can only be marked, edited, or removed in the Assignments 2 tool, even if they are added to the MarkBook or associated with a MarkBook entry. Restrictions when using Turnitin There are some restrictions with the current WebLearn integration with Turnitin. such that you are unlikely to encounter any in practice; however it is worth being aware of them in case you have any problems. The scenario when you are most likely to run into them would be when you are testing Turnitin for yourself with artificial sample data. For WebLearn users with external accounts, they must first set their first name and surname in their My Workspace > Account. Turnitin distinguishes users on the basis of e-mail address. Therefore, once an e-mail address has been associated with a particular user it cannot be associated with another one. You must choose Attachments only for the type of student submission. Multiple attachments can be added per student submission, each of which is passed through Turnitin. Turnitin accepts only the following file types for submissions - MS Word (*.doc or *.docx), WordPerfect, RTF, PDF, Postscript, HTML and plain text. Avoid using the Duplicate option to duplicate Assignments, since this may also cause problems in the Turnitin database rather create a new assignment from scratch. Turnitin has its own internal mechanism to ignore Assignments 2 created more than 5 months ago. Thus assignment creation dates should not be more than 5 months before expected student submissions. The name of the WebLearn site containing the assignment must be greater than 5 characters. Document submissions must be over 100 characters in length. Managing Assignments 2 From the main Assignments 2 page, you can edit one of the current Assignments or base a new one on an existing one by copying it (via the Duplicate option). This is especially useful when you want a new assignment that is similar to a previous one, but different in certain ways, e.g. keep most of the details the same, but make modifications to some aspects. There are 3 main options available from the Assignments 2 overview for managing Assignments: Edit: this enables you to modify an existing assignment and presents the same options as when you initially created the assignment. A common reason in practice for you to choose this option is to publish (i.e. make available to students) an assignment you were working on previously. In general, you should (for obvious reasons) be wary of making changes to an assignment, once you have made it available to students. 5 IT Services
Duplicate: rather than create an assignment from scratch, you can make a copy of an existing one. Whilst this will copy all the existing properties, it will not by default be published (i.e. available to students) even if the associated dates imply that it should be. This means you have the opportunity to change certain aspects (via Edit) before you actually publish the new assignment. (Note the warning above about not using Duplicate if it is a Turnitin assignment.) Mark: this enables you to mark the assignments. This is dealt with in detail in the section Marking Assignments 2. Note, if you have not associated a MarkBook item for the assignment, this will read Provide feedback. The rosette indicates that the assignment submissions have gone through Turnitin Submitting Assignments It can be useful to get an overview of the submission process, from the student point of view. Having a more rounded understanding of the process may help you to assist students with any problems they might experience. You can examine the submission workflow via the Student View option. 1. Create an assignment or select an existing assignment to edit 2. Click Preview as Student. After releasing an Assignment If you are not already in the tool, from the left menu, click Assignments 2. Near the top of the page on the right hand side, click Switch to access role. This will show you the assignment list as it appears to students or other site participants. IT Services 6
If you want to work through an assignment and submit it as a student would, click View Details and Submit beneath the assignment. To leave student view, click Leave access role. Note: The student view differs slightly from what a student will actually see. When a student visits the Assignments 2 tool, they will see the list of available Assignments 2. In order to submit their work, they click on the title of the assignment which is a link to the assignment. Viewing originality reports from Turnitin If the assignment was created with the Turnitin option, you will see an extra column in the marking view. This will clearly indicate whether a report has been returned yet (it can take up to 15 minutes) and if it has, what the corresponding originality score is. If students have resubmitted or submitted multiple attachments, a different icon is visible. Click on the student name to view the submissions and accompanying Turnitin reports. 7 IT Services
The Turnitin column will indicate whether a report has been returned or not. Once a report has been returned, you can see the originality score. The score can vary from 0 (no matches found in the database / blue icon) through to 100 (complete match found in the database / red icon) with scores at some point in between having an amber icon. If you click on the icon you can see the full report, which will (where appropriate) contain links to any corresponding online documents where a textual match was detected. Marking Assignments 2 Assignments 2 can be marked online and returned to the student. This is probably practical when there are only a few submissions to mark (or you are marking a few late submissions). However, if there are a lot of submissions to mark, it s probably worth considering marking them offline. This is done by downloading all the submissions as a single ZIP file, marking them and then uploading an updated ZIP file back into WebLearn. IT Services 8
Marking Assignments (individually) You can mark an assignment with or without returning it to the student, and you can return it with or without a mark. The basic steps are the same: 1. In the left menu, click Assignments 2. You'll see a list of assignments. The "In/New" column displays the number of submissions that have come in from students (the "In" value) and the number of new submissions (the "New" value) for each assignment. To begin marking an assignment, click the number in the "In/New" column, or click the Mark link under the name of your assignment. 2. To view a student's submission and start marking, click the student's name. Under Submitted Text, you'll see the student's submitted text. If applicable, under Submitted Attachments, you'll see links to files the student submitted. Note: If a student has saved an assignment as a draft, you will be unable to see the text of the student's draft, although you will still be able to assign a mark. 3. To leave comments, you have the following options: 4. You can add comments to the student's submitted text. No special formatting will be applied automatically in the instructor view, so you may want to differentiate the text of your comments in some way. Comments will be highlighted in yellow when displayed to the student. 5. Under Assignment Feedback, you can enter summary comments in the text box (no special formatting is required). 6. When assigning a mark, you will have the option to add additional comments; see step 9. These comments will be transferred to the MarkBook tool when you release the assignment's marks and feedback. 7. To add an attachment to return with the mark, click Add Attachments. 8. To allow the student to resubmit the assignment, click Override Assignment- Level Settings to display the override options. Check Override assignmentlevel settings?, and then, from the Number of Submissions Remaining drop-down list, select the number of resubmissions you would like to assign. If desired, you can extend the due date by checking the box and selecting a new date. 9. To assign a mark, in the MarkBook Details section at the bottom of the page, type the desired mark and comments. 10. To make the student's assignment mark immediately available, click Save and Release Feedback. To save your changes (without returning the mark to the student), click Save. You can also click Cancel to cancel any changes and return to the assignment list. 11. When you're finished marking and adding comments, you can click << Previous to go to the previous student's submission, Next >> to go to the next student's submission, or Return to Submission List to return to the list of submitted assignments. 9 IT Services
Note: To assign the same mark to all unmarked participants, next to the Apply mark to all unmarked button, enter a mark, and then click Apply mark to all unmarked. 3. When you have finished marking assignments and adding comments, you can release them to students using the Release Marks and Release All Student Feedback links located above the list of submissions. If you decide that you do not want to have the marks and comments released, you can click Retract Marks or Retract All Student Feedback. Marking Assignments (in bulk) The previous section described how to mark a single assignment submission. For handling multiple Assignments, it may be advisable to download all the Assignments as a single zip and mark them offline. Once you have finished marking them, you can upload them (as a single file) back into the Assignments 2 tool. The following step-by-step instructions describe how to do this on Mac OSX. Step 1: Download Assignments 1. Click on Mark in the standard Assignments 2 view. 2. In the marking view, click on Download All. This will download a zip file called title_of_assignment- name_of_weblearn_site.zip to your downloads folder. If using Mac OSX, this will be expanded automatically and the folder containing the assignment submissions will be available. For Windows users, doubleclick on the zip file to extract the contents. On the left-hand side, in the window titled Folder Tasks, click on Extract all files. A simple wizard dialog appears. Follow the simple instructions (accepting the defaults) and you should end up with a folder called title_of_assignment- name_of_weblearn_site on your desktop. IT Services 10
3. Double-click on the assignment folder. It contains a DownloadAll_ReadMe text file, individual folders per student and a CSV (Comma-Separated Values) file named with the title of the assignment. 4. When the files are extracted, you will see a folder labelled with the name of the assignment and course number. Inside this folder, you will see a folder for each student. To read a student's work, open the folder with his or her name; it will contain one or more folders with a name indicating the date and time the student turned in each submission (e.g., 20090106_0342PM). Inside each time-stamped folder is the student's work. If the assignment is associated with a MarkBook item, inside the assignment folder, you will also see a.csv file listing each student's username, name, mark for the assignment, and any mark comments that have been saved. You can use this to enter marks, as described in the following sections. Step 2 Adding marks, mark comments, and feedback to an assignment 1. To enter (and optionally provide comments about) a mark, open the.csv file with Microsoft Excel or another.csv editor. Add the mark and/or comments, and then save the file. Be sure to save the file to its original location. 2. To add inline comments to a student's submission text, navigate to the Feedback folder within the folder containing the student's submission text, and open the file named annotated_submission_text.html with an HTML editor. Add your comments, and then save the file. 3. To edit or add comments to a student attachment, open the attachment with the software used to create the original file, and then make the desired changes. Save or copy the version with your changes to the Feedback folder for that submission. 4. To provide rich text feedback about a student's submission, open the Feedback folder for that submission. Open the file named feedback.html with an HTML editor, add your feedback, and save the file. 5. To add feedback attachments for a student submission, put the files you want to attach in the Feedback folder for that submission. Note: Do not move these files anywhere else, or if you do, you need to maintain the original structure of files and folders. This is because in the next step you will bundle the files and folders back into a single file and if any of the structure has changed, the Assignments 2 tool will not be able to interpret it correctly. Step 3 Uploading marks, comments, and feedback for an assignment Note: To upload feedback as well as marks and mark comments, use a ZIP utility to compress and save the extracted folder in.zip format. The.zip file must have the same name as the file you originally extracted from. 1. When you are finished adding marks and comments, to upload the file: From the left menu, click Assignments. Locate the assignment you want to upload, and then click the In/New number to the right of the assignment's title 2. Near the top, click Upload Marks and Feedback. To upload only marks and comments: On the Upload Marks and Feedback page, click C hoose file, and then locate the.csv file on your computer. Once you have selected the.csv file, choose whether you want to release feedback and/or marks, 11 IT Services
and then click Upload to proceed or Cancel to return to the submissions page. The Verify Mark Import page contains a preview of the data that you are uploading. Verify that the information displayed is correct, and then click Ok to finish the import, or Back to return to the Upload Marks and Feedback page. To upload marks, comments, and feedback: On the Upload Marks and Feedback page, next click Choose file, and then locate the.zip file on your computer. Once you have selected the.zip file, choose whether you want to release feedback and/or marks, and then click Upload to proceed or Cancel to return to the submissions page. Permissions The Permissions link at the top of the main Assignments 2 page allows you to change permissions in terms of who can create, submit, delete, read, revise Assignments 2: Click Save when done Select or de-select the boxes as required to grant or remove permissions IT Services 12