Assignments

1. On the Assignment Submission Folders page, click New Assignment.

3. If you will be grading the assignment, click in the Grade Out Of field, and enter the number of points the assignment will be marked out of.
NOTE: This does not necessarily need to be the same as the weight toward the final grade in the course, but if the weight is different, you will need to confirm that the grade item settings reflect that.

4. Click on the dropdown to the right of the “Grade Out Of” field, and choose one of the following, depending on your situation:
- Edit or Link to Existing - to select an existing grade item from Grades or change which existing grade item you are associating with this assignment.
- Not in Gradebook - if the assignment needs to be connected to a grade item that does not yet exist in Grades.
- Reset to Ungraded - if you will not be grading this assignment, and it will not count toward the final grade in the course.
See below for details of how to use each of these options.

Click on the dropdown to the right of the “Grade Out Of” field, and select Edit or Link to Existing.

1. In the popup that appears, select Link to an existing grade item.

2. Click on the dropdown, and select the grade item you wish to associate with this assignment.

3. Click on OK.

Click on the dropdown to the right of the “Grade Out Of” field, and select Not in Gradebook. 

Click on the dropdown again, and select Add to Gradebook.

The grade item creation process has started, but you still have a few more steps to complete. You will now see the selection change to In Gradebook.

Click on the dropdown to the right of the “Grade Out Of” field, and select Edit or Link to Existing.

In the popup that appears, select Create and link to a new grade item. 

If your grade item needs to be in an existing grade category (ie. a series of weekly assignments), click on Choose Grade Category, then select that category from the dropdown. Most of the time, you will probably not need a category.

The other default settings will usually remain as they are. However, if you wish to give letter grades instead of numeric grades for this assignment, click on Change Grade Type & Scheme, and change the Grade Type to “Selectbox”. 

Click OK to proceed.

If you will not be grading this assignment, and you have not entered points, leave it as it is.

If you entered points, and the dropdown does not indicate “Ungraded”, click on the dropdown to the right of the “Grade Out Of” field, and select Reset to Ungraded.

The due date marks the exact time the assignment is due. This is an optional field. Setting the due date does not impact whether or not a student can submit, or if there is a penalty for submitting late. It merely tags the student’s submission in red, if it is submitted after the due date, so that you can take notice, and decide how to proceed.

To set a Due Date for the assignment, click on the Due Date field.

A calendar displaying the current month, with today highlighted will popup. Use the arrows to move to a different month, if necessary, and pick the date by clicking on the day.

The calendar will collapse, and you will now see a time field. Click on the field, and you will see a dropdown list of times. You can select a time from the list, or type in the time you wish. Click outside of the box to close the picker.

Type or copy and paste the instructions for students. You can include images, or formatting if needed.

This can include the assignment description from your course outline, desired file format, expected length, etc.

Attachments (optional)

Files, links and existing activities from your Brightspace course can be added to assignment submission folders as attachments.

These may be materials that will assist students with their assignment, such as guidelines, examples, templates or a “take home” exam.

To attach an item to your assignment submission folder, click on the appropriate button near the bottom of the page, and follow the instructions to either drag and drop or navigate to add your file(s). You can upload a file, link to an existing D2L activity, attach a weblink, or link to a file on Google Drive. You also have the ability to record audio or video to be included. 

Learn more about this in the section about leveraging different types of attachments near the bottom of this page.

Before you move to the next section, click on the grey Save button, to ensure your work is saved.

In fact, any time you spend more than a few minutes on one page while making changes, it’s a good idea to save, to make sure you don’t lose your work.

Visibility

This option completely hides the assignment and any results (grades, feedback) entered into the assignment from the students.

By default, while you are creating an assignment, it is hidden. After you have set a start date (see the availability section), you still need to unhide the assignment for that availability to take effect.

If the eye icon has a slash through it, the students will never see the assignment, regardless of the other availability settings.

This feature can be handy if you want to hide the assignment results after it has been completed. Check this box after all submissions are in to ensure the grades and feedback are not visible to the students after publishing, until you are ready to reveal that information to the class.

The availability section allows you to control the start and end date of your assignment folder. The start date marks the date and time students can begin submitting files to the folder. If an end date is set, students will no longer be allowed to submit a file to the folder. If there is no end date, or the end date is later than the due date, students can still submit an assignment past the due date but it is marked as late. All assignments are time-stamped.

To set availability and other conditions for your assignment, near the upper-right of the page, click on Availability Dates & Conditions (or the arrow to the right) to open the panel.

You will now see the expanded panel, where you can set the availability of your assignment, add release conditions, and manage students who require Special Access. See below for instructions for each of those settings.

To set the start or end date and time, first click in that field, and select the date from the calendar picker. Then, you will see the time field appear. Click in the time field, and type or select the desired time.

Add new release conditions if, for example, you want the assignment submission folder to be available to users only after they fulfill other specified tasks, or if they belong to a particular segment of students. You can edit and change release conditions by clicking the Remove icon or Remove All Conditions.

To add a new condition, click on Add Release Condition, then select Create New.

In the popup that appears, click on the Condition Type dropdown, and select the type of condition that applies (ie. visited a content topic, or submitted a different assignment).

A Condition Details dropdown will now appear. Click on the dropdown, and select the specific detail that applies (ie. which piece of content, or which assignment).

Click on the Create button to create your release condition.

You will now see your release condition listed in the Availability Dates & Conditions panel.

If you realize you made a mistake, click on the X to the right of the release condition, to remove it.

If you wish to add an additional release condition, click on Add Release Condition.

If you have added more than one condition to an assignment, you will see a dropdown appear above those conditions. You must decide whether the student should only see the assignment if:

• All conditions must be met
  OR
• Any condition must be met

NOTE: Sometimes, if a student can’t view an assignment, this setting may be preventing them, even though they have met the condition you intended.

Modifying Date/Time for Select Students

You can change the start, due, and end date of a particular assignment for students who require special access, allowing them extra time without a late designation to the assignment.

Release Conditions take precedence over Special Access.
Please keep this in mind when determining how to give someone access to an assignment.

If students have accessibility requirements that allow them extended time to work on an assignment, you can grant students special access by clicking Add Users to Special Access. You can customize unique start, due and end dates for these students only.

In the Availability Dates & Conditions panel, click on Manage Special Access.

In the popup that appears, for most assignments, you will leave the first setting as it is, Allow users with special access to submit outside the normal availability dates for this folder. This will mean that most students will submit the assignment during the regular start/end window, and the students you add here will submit with alternate conditions.

If you select the second option, Allow only users with special access to see this folder, this means that most students in the class will not have access to this assignment, and ONLY students you add here will have access to this assignment, each with their own conditions. (An example of this might be a make-up test, where only certain students need access.)

Click on Add Users to Special Access to add students and their conditions.

In the popup that appears, set the due/start/end dates and times for the first student. Keep in mind that if the student is provided additional time to submit the assignment, both the due and end dates must reflect this.

Click on the checkbox to enable “Has Start Date”, then click on the date field to see the date picker. Then you will see the time field appear. Click on the time field to type or pick the time. Repeat for each date option you wish to use.

Scroll down and select the student you are adding to Special Access, by selecting the checkbox in front of their name. If you have multiple students with the same conditions, you can select them all now.

Click on Save.

You will return to the main popup, and will see the student(s) you added, and their conditions. If you realize you made a mistake, you can click on the pencil icon or the X to the far right of their name, to change their conditions, or remove the student from Special Access.

Repeat the process above to add additional students.

Click on Save and Close.

In the Availability Dates & Conditions panel, you will now see a summary that lists how many students have Special Access.

As long as the assignment is set as visible, you can add students to Special Access, even if the end date has passed.

For most typical assignments (individual, file upload), the default settings in the Submission and Completion Settings panel will be fine.

Here are some that you may need to change:

Assignment Type:

Please keep in mind that once you set the folder type, you cannot change it, so be certain of your decision before proceeding.

• Individual Assignment - each student will submit their own assignment.
• Group Assignment - students will work together in groups on the assignment, and one student will submit for their group. All students in each group will receive the same grade and feedback.
  NOTE: You need to set up groups (found in Communication > Groups) before you set up a group assignment. Also, if students are not enrolled in their groups, they will not be able to see the assignment.
  See the section below on Group assignments for more details.

Submission Type:

Note that you cannot change the submission type after the assignment has been created.

• File submission - students upload 1 or more files to D2L.
• Text submission - students enter their submission directly in the text editor in Brightspace. This is not recommended for Turnitin-enabled assignments. Also, you cannot use annotations to mark up a text submission.
• On paper submission - students submit a physical item to the instructor in person, and not online. This might be a printed paper, painting or model.
• Observed in person - students submit their work in a way that is observed but not collected (i.e. presentation or performance).

Click on Evaluation and Feedback to open the panel.

In this area, you can:

• connect a rubric (which you have already created in the Rubrics tool) with your assignment.
• make annotation tools available for assessment.
• hide student names during assessment.
• enable Turnitin similarity reporting for this assessment.

If you wish to grade the assignment using a rubric, it’s best if you go to the Rubric tool, and create the rubric, then return here to connect it. 

Or, you can click on Add rubric > Create New, and follow these instructions to create your rubric. When you are done, you will return to the assignment settings.

If you have previously created your rubric in the Rubrics tool in D2L (highly recommended!), and you are ready to connect your rubric to the assignment, click on Add rubric > Add Existing.

In the popup, you will see a list of rubrics that exist in this course shell. Select the checkbox to the left of the rubric(s) you wish to use.

NOTE: It is possible to have more than one rubric connected to an assignment, for example, if students have a choice between two options for the assignment. However, when grading, you will need to choose which rubric to use to grade each student’s assignment.

At the bottom of the popup, click on Add Selected, to connect the rubric with your assignment.

You will now see your rubric in the Evaluation & Feedback panel. If you made a mistake, click on the X to the right, to remove the rubric.

If you have added more than one rubric for this assignment, and you anticipate using one of the rubrics more often than the other(s), click on the Default Scoring Rubric dropdown, to select which rubric should be the default.

If you select the checkbox for Make annotation tools available for assessment, you can mark up submissions using highlighting, free hand drawing, shapes, and associated commenting directly from the Evaluate Submission page.

Annotations can be used on the following file types: DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT, ODT, PPT, PPTX, PPSX, ODP, XLS, XLSX, JPG, JPEG, PNG, TIF, TIFF, and GIF.

When you're ready to grade the assignment and provide annotated feedback, please refer to our View and evaluate submissions instructions.

If you have used Turnitin markup in the past, you may wish to continue using Turnitin Feedback Studio instead, as it is more fully-featured.

By default, the annotations tool is on. Even if you don’t anticipate using annotations, it won’t cause any problems if you leave the tool on.

This is a way to avoid bias while grading, as the student's identity is disguised. If you wish to use anonymous grading, select this checkbox, then please visit our tutorial for more information.

Some assignments require plagiarism detection using Turnitin Feedback Studio. This feature can be added to any D2L Brightspace assignment through the options when you click on Manage Turnitin. Since this process requires some special consideration, please review our instructions on how to Enable Turnitin Feedback Studio for assignments.