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Keywords: assessment, feedback, grading, marking, plagiarism, referencing, reference.

Please refer to guide M09 - Digital Assessment - an Overview for the different phases of digital assessment at UCL.

On this page:

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As well as letting you collect work submitted by students, Moodle Assignment allows you to mark work, both online and offline. It offers a range of ways to give feedback and a place to record a numeric grade.

Assessment Assignment grading in Moodle 3.1 (Video)quick guide on Moodle Docs

Why use it?

  • Digital feedback is more reliably comprehensible than handwritten feedback.
  • It is available to students when they need to refer to it in their subsequent work.
  • Different feedback modes can be combined to improve student engagement including specific annotations, structured marksheets, general comments, video and audio feedback, and feedback files (which allow for annotations on student work, screencasts, spoken feedback etc).
  • The feedback can be accessed via MyFeedback, which encourages students to cross-reference and take an integrated view of progress.
  • MyFeedback also allows students, personal tutors and other selected staff to follow progress over time.
  • Moodle Assignment can handle independent ('blind') marking because it allows inboxes of submissions to be downloaded (preserving anonymity if needed) along with a marksheet.
  • Similarly Moodle Assignment can handle offline marking by allowing submissions and marksheet to be downloaded, preserving anonymity if needed.

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Usually assessors need to hide marks and feedback from students until a provisional date. To do this, refer to guidance on hiding grades is available from moodledocsMoodle Docs.

Choosing feedback types

When you are setting up your assignment, you decide on the mode type of feedback you will give. In your the Assignment 's settings and scroll go to the Feedback types section section, which allows you a combination of feedback modestypes. Further feedback modes are available determined in the the Grade > Grading method setting. setting (through the use of Simple direct grading, Marking Guide or Rubric)


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titleFor online markers
  • Annotations (enabled by default in the Grader) - can be filtered, optionally including a bank of your frequently - made comments. See moodledocs Moodle Docs for guidance on annotations.
  • Feedback files - you can upload files (these could be the student's original submission with your annotations, or a spoken recording, or a screencast, for example).
  • Rubric - a marking grid plotting criteria against levels of achievement. See moodledocs Moodle Docs for guidance on Rubric.
  • Marking guide - a table allowing marks and feedback for each criterion, optionally including a bank of your frequently - made comments. See moodledocs Moodle Docs for guidance on Marking Guide.
  • Record audio and video feedback - you can select either option from the text editor. Note. : The maximum length of a recording is 2 minutes, but you can record multiple times.
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titleFor offline markers
  • Feedback comments - summary comments.
  • Offline grading worksheet - summary comment and grade. 
  • Feedback files -  (can be in combination with the grading worksheet) upload files e.g. the student's original submission with your annotations, or a spoken recording, or a screencast.

The different feedback types are explained on moodledocsMoodle Docs .

How do I mark?

Step 1: Access the Assignment submissions

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Click on View all submissions.

This will open the submission inbox or "View all submissions" page. From this page, you can grade, download and upload submissions, and release grades.

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Tip

The columns within the inbox can be collapsed. This will allow you to only see the ‘useful’ columns when viewing submissions.

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Step 2: Prepare submissions for marking - ensure marking is hidden from students

If marking workflow is turned on, you You should see a paper 'status' on the View all submissions page. So If Marking Workflow is turned on, so long as the status is not set to Released,  feedback feedback and grades will be hidden from students.

If you didn’t set an end date on Moodle when on Moodle when creating the assignment, choose you can choose Lock submissions at the bottom of the page to prevent new uploads.

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  1. If you want to do offline marking, on the “View 'View all submissions” submissions' page, choose the relevant action from the Grading action from the Dropdown boxdropdown menu, at the top left of the submissions window, such as 'Download all submissions' and 'Download grading worksheet'. 
  2. The submissions will be downloaded as a zip file that you can extract to your computer. 
  3. Each student will have their own folder (usually anonymised by number) containing their submitted file(s). You can then annotate their submission, or add further files (for example marking sheets, audio or video feedback files) into the same student folder. 
  4. The grading worksheet will contain a row for each student (identified by submission number matching the submission folder number, if anonymous) and you can use this sheet to enter the grade and any general feedback.

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  1. Zip the files back together (Note. zip the student folders together, don't zip the assignment folder which contains the submissions. You can re-name your zipped folder if necessary it should not impact upload).
  2. Return to the submission inbox, and select "Upload multiple feedback files in a zip" and follow the prompts to upload the zipped folder to the Moodle. Additional files will be attached as feedback to each student's submission.

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  1. Click on Grade in the Assignment to grade each student one-by-one.
  2. Fill in the feedback box (you can add video and audio feedback using the text editor) , add some annotations, and enter the Grade in the space provided.
  3. If you have enabled marking workflowMarking Workflow, set the status of the paper to 'Marking completed' to keep a running record of marking. 
  4. Click Save Changes. (Don't tick “notify students” as you should send this all at the same time).

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When marking is complete,  g o back to the Assignment  and click  click View all submissions

If you have enabled marking workflowMarking Workflow:

  1. you You can select all or a subset of submissions using the checkbox.  Note.  clicking the checkbox at the top of the table, selects all the submissions.
  2. From the  With selected...  drop-down menu choose  Set marking workflow Marking Workflow state and  click Go.
  3. In the subsequent page, change the marking workflow Marking Workflow state to 'Released' and click 'Save changes'.  This will release grades and feedback to students without revealing student identities to markers. 

If you have NOT enabled marking workflowMarking Workflow:

  1. From the 'Grading action' drop-down menu, choose “Reveal identities”choose Reveal identities. It is only now that the grades will be added to the Gradebook (see below).

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Check the grade has been released in the Gradebook

  1. On your Moodle course main page, under click the This Course tab go to Grades menu.
  2. Click the User report tab.
  3. Select a random student from the Select all or one user Search Users drop-down.
  4. Select User for the View report as drop-down.

You should now be able to see the grade as it appears to studentsthe student(s).

Check in the Gradebook that the assignment and grades are set to visible:

If you have followed the steps provided, grades and feedback should be released to students.

However, occasionally If an assignment is hidden in the Gradebook, which this will , in turn, hide the assignment grade and feedback.

  1. On your Moodle course, under click the This Course tab go to Grades menu.
  2. Click the Gradebook Setup tab
  3. Make sure you are on the Gradebook setup sub-tab
  4. Check if your assignment appears in light grey text. If it does, then it is hidden.
  5. The assignment is hidden from students if it displays with a crossed out eye symbol to the right of it. You can un-hide an assignment by clicking Edit and selecting ellipses under the Actions column, then selecting Show.

Email students that their feedback and grades are available

Send email a message to all students that the grades and feedback should now be available on Moodle in on Moodle in their "My Feedback" section (they won’t get an email apparently). Instruct students to “download the annotated PDF (if any) rather than just previewing it. Preview .  (This will be received in Moodle messages, and students will NOT receive an email notification).

Instruct students to download any annotated PDFs, rather than simply accessing via the 'preview' screen. The preview sometimes displays comments in a way that obscures the original text”text.

  1. Go to Participants via the Navigation box on the right.
  2. Select “All students” for “Current role”
  3. Go to bottom of the page, click “Select All”Within the Moodle assignment (or via the Participants menu on the main course page - to send to all students on the course).
  4. Select individual or all students (You can click the Select tick box at the top left of the page).
  5. Go to bottom of the page,   from the dropdown “with selected users” choose “Send a message”at the "With Selected" drop down menu click Send a message.

(These instructions have been adapted from instructions provided by Kris Thielemans from the Faculty the Faculty of Medical Sciences.)


Info
titleFurther help

Further guidance on using Assignment is available from moodledocsMoodle Docs.

If you find any inaccurate or missing information feel free to update this yourself (it's a communal wiki).

If you have a specific question please contact the Digital Education team.

Organising markers

  • One way to allocate markers to work is to put students and markers into Groups.
  • However, if you want to allocate markers on the fly e.g. based on area of expertise, or if dates for each marking stage are a bit more fluid, you can use Marking Workflow - see this Workflow video for an overview; guidance on Workflow is available from MoodleDocsMoodle Docs.
  • Multiple markers who don't need to be independent ('blind') can both mark online - but they need to decide in advance how to enter feedback and marks. Where there is blind marking an approach is for one assessor to mark on Moodle and the other to mark downloaded submissions and use the offline grading worksheet to make notes or give feedback.

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  • Do take active steps to hide marks and feedback from students - otherwise they show one by one as you mark. Refer to the MoodleDocs Moodle Docs guidance on hiding grades.
  • Give focused, concise feedback. Although Moodle Assignment offers several different modes of feedback, feedback is demanding of students. They need to relate the different bits of feedback to each other, to the criteria, to their mark, sometimes to a model answer, and to the decisions they made with their work, sometimes weeks previously. Give focused, concise feedback. 
  • Uploading an offline grading worksheet will overwrite any existing marks and summary feedback.
  • The maximum length for video and Audio feedback is 2minutes2 minutes. However, you can add multiple video and audio recordings. 

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Elodie Douarin (UCL SSEES) used Moodle Assignment, including rubrics, to help her students relate feedback to assessment criteria. Read her project report.

Questions & Answers

See:

Further information

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