Creating Assignments

A broad set of options are available to instructors for creating an Assignment Dropbox. Within the assignment experience, the options are arranged with the most used options appearing directly on the Assignment Dropbox page and the “advanced” options hidden in the three collapsible submenus on the right-hand side. The three submenus are Availability Dates & Conditions, Submission & Completion, and Evaluation & Feedback.  Follow the instructions below to create an Assignment Dropbox for use in your course. 

Learn about: 

 

Initial Setup

  1. From your course navbar, click Tools and select Assignments.
    Daylight Banner

  2. On the Assignments page, click New Assignment.
    New Assignments

  3. Name your Assignment Dropbox. If this assignment will not be graded, skip to the next step. Otherwise, click on the Grade Out Of box (which initially says Ungraded as the default). Fill in the Grade Out Of box with the number of points associated with this assignment. Enter a Due Date (this will not prevent late submissions, but submissions will be time stamped). Use the In Grade Book drop-down to choose whether to link your new dropbox to an existing gradebook item (Edit or Link to Existing), omit it from the gradebook (Not in Grade Book), or remove the current grade value and set back to the default setting of Ungraded (Reset to Ungraded).
    Name Assignment

  4. Include any instructions for the assignment and add any supplemental files associated with your assignment prompt.
    Name Assignment 2
     
  5. Identify special settings and conditions for the assignment (see remaining help materials on this page for details).

  6. Finally, decide if you want to go ahead and make the Assignment Dropbox visible to students, then select Save and Close.
    Save and Close

 

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Availability Dates & Conditions

Availability Dates & Conditions allow you to identify a Start and/or End Date for your assignment, to set release conditions for the assignment, and to manage special access. 

  • Start Dates indicate when an assignment will be made visible to students, and End Dates close access to the Dropbox (that is, students will not be able to make submissions after this date). To create a Start Date and/or End Date for your assignment, simply fill in the blocks with your desired date and time.
  • Release Conditions allow you to create a custom learning path for students to proceed through your course materials. For example, below are 3 common use-cases where release conditions are beneficial:
    1. Students need to submit assignments in a specific order, and you want to automate this process.
    2. You would like an assignment to become available after they take a Quiz, automatically. 
    3. You would like to restrict an assignment to a specific group of students.

Release Conditions can be set using a condition type based on 10 different areas in eLC. These areas are: Assignments, Awards, Checklist, Classlist, Competencies, Content, Discussions, Grades, Quizzes, and Surveys.  

  • Manage Special Access allows you to restrict availability to only a select group of users or individualized due dates for certain users. There are two options here: Allow users with special access to submit outside the normal availability dates for this folder and Allow only users with special access to see this folder.

Manage Special Access

 

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Submission & Completion Options

Submission and Completion options include the ability to categorize your assignments and control the number and type of submissions students can make. 

  • Category allows you to categorize your assignment types. This can be a useful way to organize course materials for students, graders, and instructors. For example, you might create a category for homework assignments, one for quizzes, and one for major projects.
  • Submission Type allows you to choose between 4 different options. 
    • File Submission - students upload and submit a file to the assignment.
    • Text Submission - students post text and/or images in a text box.
    • On paper Submission - No file upload is required to complete the assignment. Instead, students submit a physical copy of their assignment directly to their instructor, who provides feedback and a grade using the Assignments experience. 
    • Observed in person - No file upload is required to complete the assignment. Instead, instructors observe learners as they perform tasks (e.g., in-class presentations), and evaluate them using Assignments. 
  • Files Allowed Per Submission allows you to choose how many files students can submit (unlimited or only one). The advantage of using the Unlimited option is that it is easier for students to upload new files if they mistakenly upload the wrong file.
  • Allowable File Extensions option lets you restrict the file types that students can upload. When you use this option and students try to upload a file not listed, they will get an error saying it is restricted by security settings. Your options here include the following:
    • No Restrictions
    • PDF Only
    • Annotatable Files
    • Files that can be previewed without conversion (i.e., .HTM, .HTML, .MHT, .MHTML, and .BMP)
    • Images and Videos (i.e., files such as .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG, .BMP, .TIF, .TIFF, .SWF, .MPG, .MPEG, .RM, .MP3, .MP4, .M4V, .AVI, .ASF, .MOV)
    • Custom File Types
  • Submissionsdetermines how many of a student's submissions to an assignment are retained.
  • Notification Email allows you to designate a specific email address (or addresses) to receive notifications when assignments are submitted.

Submission & Completion

 

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Evaluation & Feedback Options

Your options here allow you to add a rubric, activate annotation tools for the assignment, activate anonymous marking, and leverage our integration with Turnitin. 

  • Rubrics: Add rubric if desired. Click Add Rubric if you have created one to be used with this assignment; click Create Rubric in New Window to create one "on the fly." More information can be found in our documentation on Rubrics. 
  • Learning Objectives: Manage Learning Objectives is not used at UGA.
  • Annotation Tools: If you would like to use the annotation tools to edit the assignment with your feedback after students submit files then select this
  • Anonymous Marking: This option anonymizes submissions to help prevent bias in grading. If this option is chosen, then you will want to instruct your students not to include their names on their assignments or in the assignment names. The option can be activated by selecting the checkbox next to it.
  • Turnitin Integration:Turnitin is a tool that can be used for plagiarism detection and that is meant to be a pedagogical tool for helping students better understand how to cite their sources and create original content. By clicking on Manage Turnitin here you will enable its use for this assignment. Please Note: To use Turnitin's peer-review functions called PeerMark, you instead need to go to Content and add PeerMark (Turnitin) under Existing Activities. 

Evaluation & Feedback

 

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Copy Assignments to Other Courses

  1. To create a copy of an existing assignment, first navigate to Assignments. Once there, click the chevron next to the assignment to be duplicated, and select the desired option. To create a copy of the assignment within the same course shell, choose Copy Assignment; to copy the assignment into another course, choose Copy to Other Courses. Please note: to copy an assignment into another course shell, you must have a role in both courses that allows you to copy material (e.g., you are an Instructor or Exporter/Reviewer in both courses).
    Copy to Other Courses

  2. When copying the assignment within the same course, you will have the opportunity to edit any and all details for the copied assignment. Click Save and Close when you have checked and finalized your options.

  3. When copying an assignment to another course, you will first need to select the course(s) to which the assignment will be copied, then click Next and confirm your selections by clicking Copy. In this case all assignment properties/attributes will be copied except the following:
    • Instruction quicklinks and any files you have attached to the assignment (those files will need to be copied over to the new course separately, and re-attached to the new version of the assignment).
    • Any images in the assignment instructions that were inserted Insert Image (and so relies on files specific to the original course).
    • Availability Release conditions and special access settings.
    • Evaluation and Feedback information, including Turnitin associations, competency, and outcome associations.
    • Content topic associations (for example, if the assignment is linked from content).

 

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Last Updated: 11/07/2024 by Duncan Lord