Assignment: Students' Attempts and Submissions

The options and customization you choose when setting up an assignment can affect one another and how the student interacts with an assignment. The choices you make when creating the assignment depend on how you want to treat the submission. Given the multiple options you have in AsULearn to set up your assignment submissions and the requirements you apply to the submission, such as a graded assignment, a graded assignment with a reduced graded submission cut-off period, or simply an ungraded draft, you should explore the ways these options support your requirements.

See Assignment for additional steps to set up an assignment and the associated options.

Assignment with "Require students to click Submit button" set to Yes

Here is a quick example of a basic assignment with "Require students to click Submit button" set to Yes and how the students interact with the assignment.

1) Submit the Assignment with Due Date and Submission button, e.g. for a graded Assignment.
1.1.) Turn Edit On, select Add an Activity or Resource and select Assignment

1.2.) Set Up Assignment

PLEASE NOTE: If you want to make this a full stop assignment, where a student cannot submit beyond the Due Date, then enable the Cut-Off Date to match the Due Date.

1.3.) Set up Grade Type and Save and Return to Course

1.4.) From the Student perspective:

1.5.) And finally, the Teacher perspective:

Additional Behaviors and Other Customizations Depending on Your Settings:

Any text entered or files uploaded by the Student are considered a Draft, which can be edited before it is officially submitted.
When the Student clicks the Submit assignment button, the text and/or files are, in effect, turned in, and can no longer be edited.
When it is submitted after the Due date, it is marked Assignment submitted late.
If a Cut-off date is set, the Student's unsubmitted attempt is closed when the date and time passed (if enabled).
If the assignment is not officially submitted by the Due date or the Cut-off date, it is marked Draft (not submitted) and Assignment is overdue.
If submitted as a draft, the Teacher can review and provide feedback, but the draft is not retained when the assignment is submitted.

Assignment with "Require students to click Submit button" set to No

Here is a quick example of a basic assignment with "Require students to click Submit button" set to No and how the students interact with the assignment.

2.) Submit the Assignment with Due Date and Cut-off date as seen in the previous message, e.g. for drafts, extra credit, or other additional exercisers.

2.1.) Turn Edit On, select Add an Activity or Resource and select Assignment (illustrated above)
2.2.) The submission can be edited even after the Due date has passed, but it will be marked Assignment submitted late. Be sure Students are aware of this if you penalize for late assignments.
2.3.) Cut-off date is a total closure of the assignment and students can no longer submit regardless. And example of using Cut-Off could be to give extra time with clearly expressed penalty if submitted between Due date and Cut-off date, or if there is a simple date that a draft is simply no longer accepted.
2.4.) Submission Setting is NO
2.5.) Only the Edit submission button is shown for the Student.
2.6.) From the Student perspective what happens next depends on this setting, such as: Clicks on the Assignment on the main course page to open the Assignment page. If the Due date has passed and the Cut-off date has not, the Student clicks the Add submission button, enters text and/or uploads files, then clicks Save changes and will see Assignment submitted late but can be edited until the Cut-off date passes. If no Cut-off date then the students can edit until the assignment is no longer needed.
2.7.) The Teacher can review and provide feedback on the submission without grading.

To Keep Students' Drafts

In the previous examples, although you can see whatever Students have written or uploaded for an Assignment before it is submitted and provide feedback, the versions of these drafts are not retained and feedback is not linked to the drafts. If you want to retain student drafts and the feedback you've provided, choose one of these two options.

Option 1: Create an Assignment for each stage, for example, White Paper Outline, White Paper Draft 1, White Paper Draft 2, White Paper Final. For each Assignment set Attempts reopened to Never or Manually (if you want to be able to give a Student another shot at a draft), Require students to click the submit button to Yes, and set a Due date. Each draft turned in will be retained as the assignment. The drafts can have no grade or grades configured to be part of the whole White Paper project grade. The Feedback at each stage will be kept with each assignment.

Option 2: Create an Assignment and set Attempts reopened to Manually and set Require student to click the submit button to Yes. Set the number of Maximum attempts to be how many drafts you'd like to see plus 1 more for the final, 4 attempts would be for 3 drafts and the final. Students will see their submissions as Attempt 1 (4 attempts allowed).
After reviewing a Student's submission, at the bottom of the grading screen set Allow another attempt to Yes. The Student will see buttons Add a new attempt based on the previous submission (the text and/or uploaded files from the previous attempt will be copied into the new attempt) and Add a new attempt (the text entry field will be blank and no files copied). By requiring the submit button, Students' submissions will be deliberate and the Teacher won't waste time reviewing an earlier draft when the Student has not made any changes. Set the Due date for the final assignment (the last attempt) and make it clear to Students there are not system due dates for each attempt (like there are for Option 1). Students will have their submissions and feedback for each of the Previous attempts on the Assignment page. The Teacher can review all the attempts for a Student at the bottom of the grading screen: click the link View a different attempt, select the attempt, then click View (see image).

Once students submit, you can give feed back and than open the submission for another attempt for multiple or individual by selecting the Edit beside the student and select Allow Another Attempt:

And if you want to review previous attempts, when you are in Submissions (like above), select Grade beside the student, and do the following: