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Giving feedback - using Assignments

Although Assignments is mainly an assignment management tool, it is also has its own grading mechanism. Students can see their own grade and any comments provided for each assignment distributed and gathered using the tool. Though it can send grades to Gradebook like other tools, students may be better able to reference and track how well they have done with their assignments within Assignments. The following information can help guide you through the Assignment tool’s grading process.

If you are using the Gradebook tool, keep in mind that the only way to create an assignment that will calculate points into the course grade is to select "Points" from the options for grading. Other options for grading are: Ungraded, Letter grade, Pass/Fail, and Checkmark.

grades menu

Assignments are available for grading once students have submitted them. You can tell when work has been suibmitted when you enter the Assignments tool by checking the "In/New" column in the assignment’s row. When you are ready to grade (or if you just want to check submissions), click the "Grade" link under the assignment’s title. This will take you to the assignment’s submission area.

Grade link

To grade an assignment, click on a student’s name; the name becomes a link after the student makes a submission. This will take you into the student’s submission.

student name link

If the assignment had called for the students to enter their work into a the tool’s text editor (Inline submission), comments can be inserted by using double braces surrounding the comment (eg. {{this is a comment}}).

student submission

Scrolling down the submission page, you will see an area where you can enter a general comment regarding the submission. Below that is the area to enter a grade. The sample was for a point grade, so a number was used.

grade/comment area

If you prefer, you can choose to just "Save" the grade; this saves what you have done but the student will not see the grade. To release the grade, click the "Return Assignment to Student" button. The "Preview" button simulates what the student will see. The "Cancel" button deletes any changes made to the submission.

In this example, the submission was saved. If it had been returned, you would see "Returned" under the Status column. Students will only see their grade after their assignment is returned.

assignment status