Moodle Assignment - Allowed Attempts Setting
The Allowed attempts setting in a Moodle Assignment determines whether students can make additional submissions after receiving a grade or feedback on their initial submission. Enabling multiple attempts allows students to resubmit their work, with each attempt able to receive its own grade and/or feedback.
Allowed attempts is set to 1 by default. We strongly recommend keeping it this way for all summative assignments.
Students with 1 allowed attempt may still edit and resubmit their work as many times as needed, both before and after the deadline (provided the submission has not been manually locked and no cut-off date has been set). However, they will receive only one online grade and one set of feedback. This ensures fairness by allowing each student a single assessed submission with one corresponding grade.
Enabling multiple attempts allows for multiple grade and/or feedback instances, which may be useful in formative assignments, such as to provide iterative feedback.
When Allowed attempts is set to more than one, Moodle provides the following options for granting additional attempts:
Automatically – A new attempt is automatically opened once the tutor has graded or provided feedback to a submission. Once opened, the submission Status column is updated to ‘Reopened’ and the grade and feedback of the initial attempt is stored within a unique attempt record. The grading interface will appear blank. If the student has not yet submitted within the new attempt the document area will also appear blank. The tutor must scroll to the bottom of the grading interface in order to view the previously entered grade or feedback of a prior attempt.
Manually – Tutors can manually enable another attempt by clicking the option at the bottom of the grading interface. Once a new attempt is opened the student’s document and grade is removed from immediate view and the and grading interface will appear blank. So too will the file viewer, until the student resubmits to complete the additional attempt.
Automatically until pass – Students are granted individual attempts, which each receive grade, until they achieve the required passing grade.
Important
Once a new attempt is opened, previous submissions are not immediately visible within the grading interface, which can make the grading process more difficult.
When a second attempt is granted (manually or automatically) the grades and feedback from the first attempt will be released to the student, even where ‘Use Marking Workflow’ is enabled.
If multiple attempts were enabled and you have not yet graded submissions, you can revert the assignment settings to set ‘Allowed attempts’ back to 1. This is not recommended if students have already submitted multiple attempts.
When a new attempt is opened the submission Status is updated to ‘Reopened’. This is visible in the Status column on the Moodle assignment.
Bottom of the grading interface, where the tutor can manually grant another attempt
Tutor can view individual attempt data by selecting the required attempt from the bottom of the grading interface
Student view after a new attempt is granted