Adding/Editing an Assignment

The Assignment settings section allows you to determine the assignment characteristics, due dates, when students will be able to submit etc.

Allow submissions from

The Allow submissions from setting prevents students from submitting their assignment before the shown date. This option allows an teacher to set a day, month, year and time (24 hour clock) from which learners can begin to submit their assignments. Please note that this setting does not hide the activity from the learners. Instead, the learner will see the activity, be able to view the instructions and use any materials you have included in the description, but the learner will not be able to submit or complete the assignment until the Allow submissions from date.

If you also wish to hide the assignment description from students until a set date, you can use the Always show description setting (see below).

By default the Allow submissions from date is Enabled (ticked) and is set at the day and time you selected Add Assignment. To Disable this feature simply ensure the Enable checkbox is not marked.

Due date

The Due date setting prevents students from submitting their assignment after the shown date.

This option allows an teacher to set a day, month, year and time (24 hour clock) before which learners must submit their assignment.

By default the Due date is Enabled (ticked) and is set at 7 days ahead of the day and time you selected Add Assignment. To Disable this feature simply ensure the Enable checkbox is not marked.

Notes on Date Settings

The Due date is displayed for learners in the assignment details, and is also marked in the course Calendar as a visible reminder for participants and provides a link to the activity.

Your use of the Allow submissions from and Due date settings will probably be dependent on the overall structure of your course. If you are facilitating an open ended course or a course with rolling enrolment, then you might find it easier to not apply the Allow submissions from and Due date settings. This arrangement will allow the learners to access the assignment according to their own schedule and progress within the course.

Alternatively, if you are working within a more structured format or adhering to a timeline, the Allow submissions from and Due date settings are useful for keeping learners on schedule. Using the Allow submissions from setting will make it possible for learners to preview upcoming activities, while at the same time, prevent them from finishing the course in the first week and not returning for additional activities or information. Likewise, the Due dates help keep the learners from lagging too far behind and decrease the likelihood that the learner will become overwhelmed by having to complete several weeks worth of work at once.

Note: Assignments without a Due date will appear on the My home page with “No Due date” displayed.

Always show description

This setting is used in conjunction with the Allow submissions from setting. If it is set to Yes, the assignment Description will become visible to students at the Allow submissions from date. If it is set to No, the assignment Description will be hidden from students until the Allow submissions from date, only the assignment Name will be displayed (as shown below).

If Allow submissions from is disabled then the Always show description setting has no meaning, ie. the assignment description will always be visible to students.

Prevent late submissions

Setting Prevent late submissions to Yes will prevent learners from being able to submit this assignment after the Due date (where specified). If you set Prevent late submissions to No, then learners can submit the assignment as long as the assignment is visible or accessible to them but their submissions will be marked as late.

Require students click submit button

In previous Moodle versions this setting was known as “Enable Send for Marking button”.

The submit button allows students to upload draft versions of the assignment until such time as they are ready to submit. It allows students to keep a draft version of their assignment on the system until submission. Once they click the submit button they indicate to the teacher that they have finished working on the assignment.

Note: this means that the learner can no longer edit their submission (to do so would risk invalidating any work their assessor had done on their submission). If students regret their decision and wish to edit, they need to request that somebody with course editing access reverts them to Draft Status. Likewise the teacher may choose to revert the assignment to draft status (if it requires further work, for example).

To revert to the draft stage or let a student resubmit, click on the assignment activity, then click on the View/Grade all Submissions button. On the grading table locate the student and click the action icon in the Edit column. Select Revert the submission to draft.

If this setting is No then students are not required to click the submit button and are able to make changes to uploaded files at any time. This scenario may be applicable to situations where teachers are providing feedback on drafts, or where the assignment is iterative in nature.

If this setting is No and at some point as the teacher you wish to grade students work, then you can stop students from making further changes by using Prevent submission changes. Prevent submission changes can also be used in cases where students have neglected to click the Submit button and grading has commenced.

To prevent submission changes, click on the assignment activity, then click on the View/Grade all submissions button. On the grading table locate the student and click the action icon in the Edit column. Select Prevent submission changes.

If you wish to either “Revert to draft” or “Prevent submission updates” for a number of students, or the whole class, you can use the With selected menu at the bottom of the grading table. Click on the assignment activity, then click on the View/Grade all Submission link. Using the tick boxes in the Select column, tick relevant students or place a tick in the box at the top of Select column to select all students. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select either Lock Submissions, Unlock Submissions or Revert the submission to draft status and click Submit.

Notifications to graders

In previous Moodle versions this setting was singular and was known as “Email alerts to teachers”. In Moodle 2.3 onwards. you are able to choose whether graders receive email notifications whenever a student submits an assignment (early, on time and late) or whether graders only receive email notifications whenever a student submits an assignment late. Only teachers who are able to grade the particular assignment are notified. So, for example, if the course uses separate groups, teachers restricted to particular groups will not receive notifications about students in other groups.