Introduction

The Assignment activity is extremely flexible, and can be modified in many different ways. Most faculty will use the Assignment activity to collect one document from students, and provide typed feedback and a grade. This only requires a small number of settings when creating a new Assignment. 

Default settings

If you were to create a new Assignment in AsULearn using all of the default settings, you would create an Assignment that:

  • Is due at midnight, one week from its creation date
  • Is worth 100 points
  • Allows students to upload up to 20 documents
  • Allows the instructor to provide feedback through typed comments and uploaded files

Using these default settings, the only information you'd have to enter is the Assignment's name, and the instructions for students. 

Creating a simple assignment

1. Turn editing on in your course.

2. Click the  Add an activity or resource  link inside any topic.

3. Select " Assignment".

4. In the  General  section, enter the  Assignment name.

5. Provide instructions for the assignment in either the Description or Activity instructions field.

Description versus Activity Instructions

What's the difference between an assignment's Description and Activity Instructions? Both can be used to provide instructions to your students. The difference between the two is when the students can view them.

Description is always visible to students, and can even be set to display on your course home page. 

Activity Instructions are only visible to students once they click the Add Submission button inside the assignment (the button will display as "Begin Assignment" if your assignment has a timer).

If you don't want the students to see an assignment prompt or instructions until a certain time, use the Activity Instructions field. If they should be able to see it at any time, use Description.

7. Under the Availability heading, set the Due Date for your assignment.

Due Date versus a Cut-Off Date

A Due date tells AsULearn when submitted work is due, but students can still submit work past this date and time. AsULearn will clearly label late work for you if it's submitted past the due date. 

If you no longer wish to allow submissions from students, use a Cut-off date as well. AsULearn will not accept any new submissions after the Cut-off date has passed. 

8. At the bottom of the page, click the Save and return to course or Save and display button. Click Cancel to abandon creating the assignment.

I want to create a timed assignment

Enable the Time limit setting under the Availability heading. 

Instructions and time limits

As a reminder, anything you enter in the Activity instructions field will not be visible to students until they begin their attempt. Once they begin their attempt, their timer starts. The timer will not stop or pause until it expires. Students will be warned twice about these consequences before beginning a submission for a timed assignment. 

I want students to type something instead of, or in addition to, uploading a document

Enable Online text under the Submission types heading. 

I want to annotate student work in my browser

Enable Annotate PDF under the Feedback types heading. 

Annotate PDF only works with PDF files

This feature only works for files students have uploaded as a PDF. You will need to incorporate this requirement into your assignment instructions so students know to export their work as a PDF before submitting it in AsULearn. 

I want to only accept certain types of files

Use the Accepted file types field under Submission types to restrict which files students can submit. This can be helpful in specific scenarios. For example, if you want to use the Annotate PDF feedback type, you would use this setting to restrict submission types to PDF files. If you primarily use Windows, you can use this setting to prevent students who use Macs from uploading Pages documents (which cannot be opened on Windows). 

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