TABLE OF CONTENTS

• TABLE OF CONTENTS
  • Overview
    • Making an assignment
    • New Assignment window
    • Settings (overview)
  • About group activities
    • Students create groups
    • Use course groups
    • Notifications
    • Assessing groups

Overview

Assignment With the activity “Assignment” you give your learners a work instruction that is submitted directly to itslearning. You can design the instruction freely - from simple reading tasks to complex group work with different materials and media. After the learners have submitted their answers, you can also comment on it directly in itslearning, grade it if necessary and give the learners individual feedback.

When creating an assignment, you can insert content and/or directions into the rich text editor.  Use the rich text editor to provide ample information to students on how to complete the assignment.  For example, you may ask them to watch a video and submit a summary.

Making an assignment

When you create an assignment, your page will look like this

Lets look at the two parts

New Assignment window

As you can see, the assignment has got a title and a description. Thanks to the rich text editor, you can format text and embed media files in the description, thus making it a powerful tool when creating assignments. 

To add files simply press the "Add files" button to choose where to add them from (depending on the setup of your itslearning account) 

When you have chosen the file, and it follows certain formats (like docx), you can choose wether the student can view the file (and download it), or to "make a copy for each student". If you choose to make a copy for each student, they each get a virtual copy of the assignment that they can work in. There is no need to download or upload anything this way. When made like this, a student can open the file, write directly in the page, and deliver it with the push of a button. And even if they forget to press "send" after completion, you can open the file as a draft, see what they have done, and assess it. It doesnt get much easier than that ;)   

Settings (overview)

Visible: If an assignment is visible, students can see it.  It is possible to make an assignment visible forever, only for a specific period of time, or not visible. Deadline: When students submit their work, the assignment response will be stamped with a submission date and time.  If you choose to give students a deadline for an assignment they will have up to that point in time to submit their response.  It is also possible to allow students to submit a response after the deadline.  In that case, the date and time will be marked late.  Homework: It is possible to mark an assignment as Homework.  By doing this, it adds a purple tag that says Homework to the assignment so students know it is homework.  This tag is added to the assignment, the students’ tasks block, and plans. Learning objectives: must first be added to the course and then attached to the assignment. When standards are attached to an assignment, the teacher may track standards mastery.  Standards-based rubrics with assessment criteria can also be created. Assigned to: You can choose to assign an assigment to individual students, groups or the whole class.  Assessment Scale: When grading an assignment, it is important to select an assessment scale and if the assignment will be added to the grade book. Peer and self assessment: allow students to assess themselves or fellow students. Teachers can also select to enable 'anonymous peer assessment'.  Results: It is possible to make results of the assignment visible to the students.  Note they will only see their results, they will not see any results for other participants. Group Activity: Allow students to work in groups. The groups can be predefined by you, or the students can make their own groups.  Anonymous Submission: Disguises student names from the teacher until all grades have been calculated. More details further down the page.  Plagiarism Control: Checks for student plagiarism (subscription required.) Not Mandatory: Students can view progression of a course with mandatory assignments using follow up and reports. Only visible if the Progress report is enabled for the course.

For more detailed information about different settings, look at this article:

About group activities

You have the option to create the groups for the students or allow students to create their own. 

Watch the video

There are 2 options:

• 'Students create groups': Students can freely create their own groups by inviting other students in the course
• 'Use course group': These groups are usually predefined by the teacher.

The assignment can be changed into a group assignment (or vice versa) until there is at least 1 submission.

Students create groups

When students are allowed to create their own groups, they can invite other students to work together on the assignment.

Until the student has created a group - or has chosen to work alone (submit individually) - it is not possible to answer the assignment.

To create a group, students type in the name of the student(s) they want to collaborate with.

When saving the created group, invited members will get a notifications that they have been added to a group.

In the assignment itself, the group members are shown at the top of the page. It is now possible to start answering the assignment.

To add or remove members, a group member can click the Edit group button. This opens the same dialog as the one for creating the group. It is also possible to withdraw from a group.

Note that changing a group is currently only possible as long as there is no answer submitted.

Use course groups

With course groups, a student can submit using one of the existing course groups they are a member of. These groups are created and managed by the teacher.

Instead of 'Create your group', the assignment will show the button 'Select your group'. Clicking it will list all groups the student is a member of.

As long as there are no answers, the student can select another group - if available - or choose to submit the answer on their own.

Notifications

When being added to a group, the student will get a notification (bell icon). The same happens when a group member withdraws from the group.

There is also a notification when a student submits an answer on behalf of the group.

And when an answer is saved as a draft

Assessing groups

In general assessing a group answer works in the same way as assessing individual answers. YThe teacher will be able to see the members of the group.

The assessment given on the answer will be given to all members of the group. It is currently not possible to give a different assessment for certain group members.