How to Set Up a Moodle Assignment (3.1)

How to Set Up a Moodle Assignment (3.1) The assignment activity provides a space into which students can submit work for teachers to grade and give feedback on. This saves on paper and is more efficient than email. Students can type directly into Moodle, upload files or add media and the submissions are located in one space. It is possible to have students submit work as a group and you can also choose as a teacher to grade their work 'blind' in other words not to see the identities of those who have submitted assignments. Assignments can have deadlines and cut off dates - which can be extended if necessary. STEPS TO ADD A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT 1. Click Turn editing on. 2. Locate the section to add the assignment activity to. 3. Click on add an activity or resource (see image below) Figure 1 - Add an activity or resources hyperlink once in editing mode 4. Select Assignment and then Click Add. Clicking the radio button once will show you the explanation text to the right. Alternatively, you can double click the Assignment radio button to add the assignment. Figure 2 - Select Assignment from the Add activity or Resource screen Learning, Teaching and Curriculum, 2016

Fill in the assignment details, such as name, description, add a file/image, due date and cut off dates, File submission type, word limit and maximum file type. Figure 3 - Adding a new Assignment screen with default expanded fields up to Word Limit 5. Feedback type and selecting Yes to Comment inline, will allow the teacher to add comments to a file (just as you would when grading on paper). There are also options for submission work being the student s own and group submission settings. Notification settings enable the teacher to be notified when students submit their assignment and the student can be notified when the teacher grades their assignment. 6. Click on Save and return to site or Save and display. To edit an existing Assignment activity, login to your site and Turn Editing On. Select the Update icon against the relevant Assignment item. 2 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

Alternatively after logging into your site, 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. ASSIGNMENT SETTINGS General Give your assignment a name (which students will see to click on) and, if required, a description. Provide instructions for your students here so they are clear what they have to do. Click the icon on the left to expand the toolbar and drag the bottom right of the text box out to expand it. You can also provide information or resources related to the assignment, such as a video clip, an image, or a link to a webpage. Check the box to display the description on the site home page. Figure 4 - Assignment name and description example AVAILABILITY Allow submissions from. This prevents students from submitting before the shown date but it doesn't hide the assignment and any included instructions or materials. Due date The Due date setting establishes when the assignment is due. Submissions are still allowed after this date but will be marked as late. Disable it by unticking the checkbox. Assignments without a due date will appear on the dashboard with No Due Date displayed. Note: Assignments without a Due date will appear on the My home page with No Due date displayed. Cut-off date After this date, students will not be able to submit and the submit button will disappear. If you want to grant an extension, go to the assignment grading screen by clicking view submissions, click Edit alongside the relevant student and choose Grant extension. To grant an extension to multiple students, select the checkbox alongside their names and use the With selected... menu at the bottom of the page to Grant extension. (See screencast Assignment Extensions). 3 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

Figure 5 - Availability set up options within the Assignment screen SUBMISSION TYPES The teacher can decide how students submit their work. Mahara portfolio If enabled, students can integrate with their Mahara portfolio. Groups (teams) are not supported for the Mahara portfolio submission type. In conjunction with Mahara Portfolio, the Institution setting lets you select which Mahara institution your students should submit their pages from. If "Yes, keep locked" is selected for Lock submitted pages, submitted Mahara pages and collections will be locked from editing in Mahara and will remain locked after grading. If "Yes, but unlock after grading", the page or collection will be unlocked after submission grading, or, if marking workflow has been used, they will be unlocked when marks are released to student. Online text Students type their responses directly in Moodle using a text editor (such as the Atto editor which automatically saves text at regular intervals). It is possible to set a word limit on an online text assignment. Students get a warning if they try to exceed the word limit. Numbers are counted as words and abbreviations such as I'm or they re are counted as single words. File submissions Students can upload one or more files of any type the teacher can open. If file submissions are enabled, each student will be able to upload a maximum number of uploaded files for their submission. Maximum submission size The maximum upload size refers to each file a student uploads. It cannot be larger than the limit in the site settings. Figure 6 - Submission type options in the Assignment screen FEEDBACK TYPES Feedback comments: With this enabled, markers can leave comments for each submission (which appear on the assignment grading screen.) 4 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

Feedback files: This allows markers 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. It enables the Feedback Files column in the assignment grading screen (accessed from View/Grade all submissions.) To upload feedback files, click on the green tick in the grade column on the grading table and then upload either with drag and drop or using the File picker. Offline grading worksheet: This is useful if you wish to download the grading list and edit it in a program such as MS Excel. When the teacher has completed their grading offline, they can then upload the spreadsheet, confirm the changes and the grades and comments will be transferred over into Moodle's gradebook. (Also see Offline Grading Worksheet blog by Gavin Henrick: http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/blog/2012/11/19/offline-grading-worksheet-in-moodle- 2-4-assignment/). Feedback PoodLL: If enabled, the marker can leave audio/video feedback for each submission. This option is currently (October, 2016) not available in all sites. The PoodLL audio feedback plugin is still undergoing a limited trial at UOW. Comment inline This usefully allows you to comment directly on an online text type submission. PoodLL Record Type: For use with the PoodlL audio feedback plugin which is currently (October 2016) being trialled. The default option is MP3 Voice Recorder. Show download link Currently set to no with no option to change. This will be enabled if the Feedback PoodLL checkbox is selected. Figure 7 - Feedback type options in the Assignment screen SUBMISSION SETTINGS Require students click submit button If this is set to No students can make changes to their submission at any time. (If you want to stop them changing work once you are ready to grade, click View/Grade all submissions; locate the student and from the Edit column, click the action icon and select Prevent submission changes. If set to Yes, students can upload draft versions of the assignment until such time as they are ready to submit. Clicking the submit button tells the teacher they have finished drafting and want the work to be graded. They can no longer edit it and must ask the teacher to revert to draft status if they need to change it again. To do that, click View/Grade all submissions; locate the student and from the Edit column, click the action icon and select Revert the submission to draft. Require that students accept the Submission statement This has been set to Yes by the Administrator and cannot be changed. Students must accept the submission statement for all work submitted to the Assignment activity. The submission statement includes an acknowledgement that the student is submitting their own work. Attempts reopened If require students to click submit is enabled, then students may only submit once. You can change this to Manually and reopen it for students to resubmit, or you can change it to Automatically until pass, for the students to keep resubmitting until they get a pass grade. 5 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

Maximum attempts Here you can decide how many attempts to allow if students can resubmit. If a student has to keep trying until they get a pass grade, you might decide to limit the attempts even though they have not yet passed - or they might be trying forever! Figure 8 - Submission settings in the Assignment screen GROUPS SUBMISSION SETTINGS These settings allow students to collaborate on a single assignment, e.g., working in the same online area or uploading, editing and re-uploading an MS PowerPoint in the common assignment area. When grading, the teacher may choose to give a common grade and feedback to all students in the group or to give individual grades and feedback to each member. Students submit in groups If enabled students will be divided into groups based on the default set of groups or a custom grouping. A group submission will be shared among group members and all members of the group will see each other s changes to the submission. Require group to make submission Students not in a group can still submit assignments unless this is forced in Site administration > Plugins > Assignment > Assignment settings. Moodle will then display a message You're not a member of any group; please contact your teacher, and the student will not be able to submit the assignment. Require all group members submit If enabled, all members of the student group must click the submit button for this assignment before the group submission will be considered as submitted. If disabled, the group submission will be considered as submitted as soon as any member of the student group clicks the submit button. Grouping for student groups If a particular grouping is selected here, then the gradebook will display any other groups and non-grouped students in the default group, while naming the group(s) that are in the chosen grouping. If none is selected, then the gradebook will display the names of all groups and put any non-grouped students in the default group. Figure 9 - Group submission settings 6 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

NOTIFICATIONS Please note that if you are using group mode then teachers need to be members of the group in order to receive submission and late submission notifications. Notify graders about submissions: If enabled, graders (usually teachers) receive a message whenever a student submits an assignment, early, on time and late. Message methods are configurable. Notify graders about late submissions : If enabled, graders (usually teachers) receive a message whenever a student submits an assignment late. Message methods are configurable Default setting for Notify Students: Set the default value for the "Notify students" checkbox on the grading form. Figure 10 -Notifications options within the Assignment Screen GRADE Select the type of grading used for this activity. If scale is chosen, you can then choose the scale from the scale dropdown. If using point grading, you can then enter the maximum grade available for this activity. Setting a passing grade may be connected with Activity completion and Restrict access such that a student will not be able to access a follow up activity until they have passed this assignment. Figures 11a and 11b - Scale and Point set up options in the Assignment Screen If you change the Grading method to Advanced grading, you can then use a Marking guide or Rubric. Choose the advanced grading method that should be used for calculating grades in the given context. To disable advanced grading and switch back to the default grading mechanism, choose 'Simple direct grading'. 7 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

Figure 12 - Grade options in the Assignment Screen Grade category: This setting controls the category in which this activity's grades are placed in the gradebook. Grade to pass: This setting determines the minimum grade required to pass. The value is used in activity and site completion, and in the gradebook, where pass grades are highlighted in green and fail grades in red. Anonymous marking Sometimes known as blind marking, anonymous marking prevents assessors from seeing students' names on submissions. Instead, they will see randomly generated Participant numbers. (The student view of the assignment does not change.) This is also the case if student comments have been enabled. Anonymous marking hides the identity of students to markers. Anonymous marking settings will be locked once a submission or grade has been made in relation to this assignment. Because of the nature of anonymous marking, the students cannot see the final grade until all of the students' names have been revealed. If you are grading an assignment using an advanced grading method such as a rubric, the rubric will also be hidden from students' view until the names are revealed. To reveal student names after you are finished grading, look under Assignment settings > Reveal student identities. Feedback comments will appear whether or not student names are hidden or revealed. Use marking (grading) workflow: If enabled together with marking workflow, markers can be allocated to particular students. Enable Marking Workflow if you need to: keep grades and feedback hidden until you are ready to release them (otherwise by default they display to each student as you save them). state where you are up to in your grading. coordinate multiple markers. One advantage of using marking workflow is that the grades can be hidden from students until they are set to Released. The actual steps are: Not marked (the marker has not yet started) In marking (the marker has started but not yet finished) Marking completed (the marker has finished but might need to go back for checking/corrections) In review (the marking is now with the teacher in charge for quality checking) Ready for release (the teacher in charge is satisfied with the marking but wait before giving students access to the marking) Released (the student can access the grades/feedback) Example use cases One marker, Marker, wants to release all grades at the same time Marker enables Use marking workflow Marker marks each submission and transitions the grading to Marking completed as each submission is graded. Marker then uses the batch operations to transition all grades to Released at the same time. 8 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

Multiple markers Marker enables Use marking workflow Marker marks each submission and transitions the grading to Marking completed as each submission is graded. Marker then uses the batch operations to transition all grades to Released at the same time. Use marking allocation If marking workflow (see above) is set to Yes, it is possible to enable marking allocation. This means that teachers can be selected to grade or review the submitted work of specific students. Colleagues can monitor progress through the displayed marking workflow states. Figure 13 - Marking Workflow example screen Figure 14 - Grade set up options in the Assignment Screen GROUPS AND VISIBILITY If groups and groupings have been set up for this activity in the Users Groups section, the options in the groups and visibility category will link the activity to the groups and groupings. Note: The Groups option should be used with caution in the Workshop activity. You will need to activate group mode in your Moodle Site Settings and create your groups and groupings before you can set up this section. The group mode defined at Moodle site level is the default mode for all activities within the site. Each activity that supports groups can 9 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

also define its own group mode, though if the option is chosen to force group mode at site level, the group mode setting for each activity will be ignored. Visible: choose whether to Show or Hide the Workshop activity to students on the Moodle site homepage. ID number: setting an ID number provides a way of identifying the activity for grade calculation purposes. You can choose to leave this field blank if you are not using formulas for grading in the Gradebook. The ID number can only be set and edited on the activity settings page. Group Mode: this setting has 3 options:- No groups: there are no groups and all students submit their work in one Assignment area Separate groups: students submit their assignments within a separate Group based submission area and the instructor can sort submissions by Group or view All Participants. Visible groups: all students submit their work within a single Assignment area but may choose which Group to associate their submission with before uploading. The instructor can sort submissions by Group or view All Participants. The group mode defined at site level is the default mode for all activities within the site. Each activity that supports groups can also define its own group mode, though if the group mode is forced at site level, the group mode setting for each activity is ignored. Grouping: groupings must be set up in the Groups section in Site Administration Users. A grouping is a collection of groups within a site. If a grouping is selected, students assigned to groups within the grouping will be able to work together. More information on groups and groupings which refers to version Moodle 2.4 (at www.moodle.org) or view video on Group Assignments https://youtu.be/g16gyzjfcrm?list=uucrg_ebhu9tdpldiggn1mgg. Figure 15 - Groups and Visibility options in the Assignment Screen RESTRICT ACCESS There are 3 options for restricting access: Date: Preventing access to the assignment until (or from) a specified date and time Grade: Require students to achieve a specified grade Restriction Set : Add a set of nested restrictions to apply complex logic. 10 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

Figure 16 - Restrict Access options in Assignment screen TAGS Figure 17 - Tags field in Assignment Screen This feature enables search tags (key words) to be added to the site, linking those key words to this assignment. Students will be able to access the assignment from the tag words listed on the site, by clicking on the hyperlinked word within the tag area. COMPETENCIES Competencies describe the level of understanding or proficiency of a learner in certain subject-related skills. Competency-based education (CBE), also known as Competency-based learning or Skills-based learning, refers to systems of assessment and grading where students demonstrate these competencies. In Moodle 3.1 it is possible to create and apply frameworks for evaluating students against competencies in Moodle. Firstly, Site competencies need to be set up via the Administration Block (see screen shot below). Once these are set up for the site, they can then be linked to the Assignment. Figure 18 - Site Competencies screen in Administration Block 11 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

The Competencies view for the specific Assignment. Figure 19 - Competencies field in the assignment screen More Information about Moodle Assignment ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION TYPES Online text: Text typed into the Atto editor is automatically saved and the teacher can set a Word limit, which will display a warning if students exceed it. File submissions: Students can upload files of any type the teacher can open. The teacher can select a maximum number of files to upload and a maximum size for each file. This will depend on the site settings. If a student uploads a PDF file, the teacher can annotate it within the browser and once saved, these annotations are available for the student. Students may be able to add a note (comment) to their teacher when they submit their work if this has been enabled sitewide by the administrator. FEEDBACK TYPES Teachers may give feedback in various ways. The options available are in the Feedback types section and if you don't see a particular option, get the admin to check the Site administration settings in the Assignment settings documentation. Comment inline: With online text submissions, this allows the teacher to give feedback directly on the student's work, in a similar way to grading on paper. Feedback comments: Setting this to yes means that markers can leave feedback comments for each submission. It enables the Feedback Comments column in the grading table. (To access the grading table, click on the assignment activity and then View/Grade all Submissions). Feedback comments are also accessible by clicking on the green tick in the grade column on the grading table. Offline grading worksheet gives the teacher a link to download the grading list as a spreadsheet. This is useful if the teacher wants to download the grading list and edit it in a program such as MS Excel. Feedback files allows graders 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. Figure 20 - Download grading worksheet 12 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

Figure 21 - Offline grading in MS Excel. Figure 22 - Upload grading worksheet When the teacher has completed their grading offline, they can then upload the spreadsheet, confirm the changes and the grades and comments will be transferred over into Moodle's gradebook: Figure 23 - Confirmation of successful upload of feedback Figure 24 - Grades and feedback transferred to Moodle 13 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)

UPLOADING MULTIPLE FEEDBACK FILES It is also possible to upload multiple feedback files as a zip, from the dropdown above the grading list: Download the students' assignments using the Download all submissions link from the same dropdown menu Extract the folder offline and add your comments to the student's submissions. Keep the names the same. Select the students' submissions and zip them into a new folder. Important: Don't just edit them inside their original folder and re-zip this; it will not work. The folder name does not matter as long as the feedback files have the same names as before. Upload this newly zipped folder. You will be presented with a confirmation screen displaying your feedback files. Figure 25 - Upload multiple feedback files in a zip RESOURCES Moodle YouTube Channel Moodle 3.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brlff1af-ie&list=plxco_mfwqbddjemrwhljxcvstnfmr_cl8&index=30 Learn Moodle 3.1 August 2016 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plxco_mfwqbddjemrwhljxcvstnfmr_cl8 New Features in Moodle 3.1 Competencies https://docs.moodle.org/31/en/competencies 14 HOW TO SET UP A MOODLE ASSIGNMENT - LEARNING TEACHING AND CURRICULUM, EDUCATIONAL DESIGN, 2016 (SH)