University of St Andrews

4 Creating and Editing Assignments

Introduction

This chapter will cover how to create, edit and delete assignments. As part of how to create an assignment it will cover the different configuration options available on the 'Assignment tab' of the coursework configuration page. To access the configuration page click the Configuration Icon in the toolbar in the top right of the coursework tool.

• Creating Assignments
• Editing an Assignment
• Deleting an Assignment

For more details on Turnitin assignments see the Turnitin section of the guide.

Creating Assignments

Once you are on the coursework configuration page you will see a table, which this guide will refer to as the 'Assignments Table'. This table will list all created assignments with their current configuration, an example is given in Figure 4.1. To create a new assignment just click the 'Add Assignment' button. The new assignment will appear in the table.

Figure 4.1: An example of the Assignments Table on which you can create, configure and delete assignments.

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Editing an Assignment

Once an assignment has been created you will be able to edit any of the configuration options by adjusting the values in the table. The available options are:

• Assignment Name — The name of the assignment

• Short Name — This is displayed where the available space is limited but can be the same as the assignment name.

• Due date — The date in which the majority of the students have to submit the assignment (individual students or groups of students with different due dates can be handled using extensions. The due date can be entered manually (using the format dd/mm/yyyy) or by clicking on the calendar icon and selecting the date. The time can be entered using the format hh:mm.
  • Note: The due date will default to hh:mm:59, allowing the student to submit at any time within the 'due' minute.
  • Turnitin Note: If no due date is added in MMS, Turnitin will use the MMS module dates.

• Feedback window — This is measured in days and is the time between the submission date and when students can expect their marks and/or feedback. The is a guide value for the students and will not effect mark or comment visibility.

• Relative weight— the weight of an assignment relative to the other assignments. This can be calculated in a range of ways but there are two main methods:
  • The part method — consider the total coursework mark as being made up of parts, so for example one part Essay 1, two parts Essay 2 and one part Essay 3. In this case Essay 1 and Essay 3 will be given a weight of 1 and Essay 2 will be given a weight of 2
  • The percentage method—The percentage of the Coursework grade that each assignment counts for (as a whole number), so in the above example Essay 1 and Essay 3 will be given weights of 25 and Essay 2 will be given a weight of 50

• Style—This controls how MMS will handle student submissions. There are four options:
  • Turnitin Submission - used to create an assignment in Turnitin (Turnitin Note: this should only be used for files that Turnitin can accept. For more details see Turnitin section of the guide.).
    
  • MMS upload - this will create an upload slot on the student's view of the coursework tool allowing them to upload either a file or a zipped folder.
  • Paper Hand-In - the assignment will be visible to the student so they will see any configuration details and any marks and feedback that have been released but they will not be able to upload any work
  • Staff Only - This assignment type is only visible to staff, students will never be able to view any information in this assignment type, including marks and feedback

• Grade Visibility— The visibility of the assignment grade and feedback. This can be altered at any time and currently has five options:
  • Hidden — students will not see either grades or feedback.
  • Feedback visible — student will be able to view feedback on their submission but not the grade
  • Grade and Feedback visible — students will have complete visibility to the current grade and feedback.
  • Per Student (Def: visible) — The per student (def: visible) option will allow you set the grade and feedback visible or hidden on a per student basis but will default all students to visible
  • Per Student (Def: hidden) — The per student (def: hidden) option will allow you set the grade and feedback visible or hidden on a per student basis but will default all students to hidden

Please remember that if you choose the 'Per Student' options then visibility will need to be individually set for each student on the View Feedback page for the submission.

• Allowed types — Can be used to restrict the file types a student can submit. If left blank students will be able to submit all file types. To add a restriction type in the file extensions allowed, separated by a comma e.g. 'doc, docx, pdf' (without the quotes). (Turnitin Note: This option will disappear for Turnitin submissions as Turnitin has it's own file limitations.)

Once you are happy with the configuration click the Save Configuration button before creating additional assignments. Saving the configuration will update the pie chart under the assignment table. The chart displays the relative weightings of each assignments in the coursework tool. 

It may be the case that the assessment setup requires students to submit to X of Y assignments, for example only submit 1 out of 3 essays. At the bottom of the table there is drop down box to let MMS know how many assignments it should expect from each student. Click the Save Configuration button to save. In this case if a student submits multiple assignments then MMS will take the highest mark(s) as the expected submissions. If the assignment structure is complex then the structure can be modelled in JavaScript on the Result Script tab.

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Deleting Assignments

To delete an assignment locate the row which contains the assignment on the configuration page. Check the tick box within the delete column in the left and then click the Delete Selected Assignments button. If you have deleted an assignment in error please contact the MMS team who can revive it.

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