Audience: City University Academic and Course Office Staff
Are your students submitting assignments at the end of Spring Term? Then read on for some tips on preparing for online assignment submissions.
Assignment information
Have you provided relevant instructions to students to help them to complete the assignment? O’Reilly and Kelly (2008, p.240) outline 8 elements that should be included in all online assignment instructions.
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Name of the assignment (This should be the same name as listed in the syllabus).
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Learning objective(s) to which this assignment relates.
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When the assignment is due.
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Any resources that you recommend using to complete the assignment.
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Expectations (length, level of effort, number of citations required, etc.).
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Level of group participation (individual assignments, group or team projects, and entire class projects).
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Process (how students turn in the assignment, if they provide peer review, how peers give feedback, how you give feedback).
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Grading criteria (include rubric if you are using one).
Assignment types in Moodle
There are a number of assignment types in Moodle, make sure you have set up the assignment that enables your students to submit their files in the correct format and that enables you to mark and provide feedback in an effective way.
|
Assignment type |
Submission files |
Methods of grading & feedback |
|
Moodle individual assignment |
File types up to 200MB maximum. |
Very flexible and supports different methods of providing feedback. To find the most effective way for you to provide feedback have a look at the Moodle staff guidance. |
|
Moodle groupwork assignment. Before setting up your assignment make sure that you have your groups set up ready to be attached to the activity and if students belong to more than on individual group then you need to use groupings. More advice on using this assignment type is available in this guide. |
File types up to 200MB maximum. |
Very flexible and supports different methods of providing feedback. To find the most effective way for you to provide feedback have a look at the Moodle staff guidance. |
|
Turnitin assignment |
Restricted to the following file types: •Microsoft Word™ (DOC and DOCX) • Corel WordPerfect® • HTML • Adobe PostScript® • Plain text (TXT) • Rich Text Format (RTF) • PDF. Maximum assignment upload limit is 20MB. |
To use GradeMark, Turnitin’s grading and feedback option, you need to mark online. Guidance on interpreting originality reports and on the feedback options available in GradeMark are available in the grading Turnitin assignment guide. |
|
Video assignment |
Audio and video file type including Quicktime, H.264, Flash flv, wmv and mp4 up to 2GB. Restricted to one file per video submission area. |
In order to view the video assignments and provide grades and feedback you need to be online. More information on marking a video assignment is available in this guidance note. |
|
Group submission with peer grading Before setting up your assignment make sure that you have your groups set up ready to be attached to the activity. Important: You will only be able to use one set of groups for this activity. Any students in more than one group will not be able to submit their peer grades or assignment submission. Make sure to remove any students from their duplicate groups. |
File types up to 200MB maximum. |
Enter feedback in the feedback comments area online or attach an offline feedback file. Feedback and grading on peer assessment guide. |
Preparing your students for submitting assignments
If your students are using a new assignment type for the first time do include a link on your Moodle module to the guidance providing step-by-step instructions for students.
Photo by freefotouk (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Group submission with peer grading
References
O’Reilly, D. and Kelly, K. (2008). Assessment and Evaluation in Education for a Digital World Part 2. [online] Available from: http://www.colfinder.org/materials/Education_for_a_Digital_World/Education_for_a_Digital_World_part2.pdf (Accessed: 6.3.14)
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