Over the last year we have made a few changes to the assignment tool in Moodle to improve the student and tutors’ experience.
We tried to simplify assignments by removing the confusing (or never intentionally used) options and adding in a few features our tutors did need including a ‘release the feedback’ button.
For tutors part of the work involved rationalising the rather confusing and dated view submissions table.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Our improvements for tutors included:
- reducing the number of options available, such as “send for marking”
- enabling automated renaming of files using student name or candidate number so that they were unique
- enabling anonymization for blind marking
- enabling all submissions to be downloaded at once (in groups if desired)
- improving the student submission list and making it responsive so it works on all platforms including mobiles
- improving the experience when giving feedback and grading
- allowing tutors to choose when grades are released
For students the experience is hopefully clearer and simpler.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Our improvements for students included:
- displaying the due date on the course page
- making the due date prominent in the assignment itself
- improving the display when uploading their assignment – giving important information
- improving the display when receiving feedback
We appreciate that improvements are being made to the core assignment tool which we are looking forward to seeing in Moodle 2.6.
I will be posting shortly about our proposed solution for Turnitin and Grademark integration with Moodle.