QMplus assignments
Creating a standard QMplus assignment
Assignments allow students to submit work to their teacher for grading. The work may be text typed online or uploaded files of any type the teacher’s device can read. Grading may be by simple percentages or custom scales, or more complex rubrics may be used. Students may submit as individuals or in groups.
Find out about how to set up the Assignment activity on Moodle docs.
Updating Assignment settings
The Assignment activity includes a wide range of settings for you to choose from.
Explore the Assignment activity settings in more detail on Moodle docs.
Setting up a group assignment
The group settings allow students to collaborate on a single assignment, e.g. working in the same online area or uploading, editing and reuploading an MS PowerPoint in the common assignment area.
Learn about the different group settings that are available on Moodle docs.
Using the Assignment activity
In this guide, you'll find out about the different types of assignments, how students submit assignments and how teachers can grade them.
Learn about using the Assignment activity on Moodle docs
How to submit an assignment on behalf of a student
It is possible for staff to submit an assignment on a student’s behalf. This can be necessary if the student has been unable to submit online for some reason.
Note that now Turnitin is integrated with the standard QMplus assignment, submitting to Turnitin on a student’s behalf is done in exactly the same way.
First navigate to the assignment you wish to submit to, you do not need to have editing turned on. Click on the assignment.
How to grade assignments
When students have submitted their assignments, they can be accessed by clicking on the assignment activity link. This will bring up the Grading Summary page.
The Grading Summary page displays a summary of the assignment, including; number of participants, number of drafts, number of submitted assignments, due date and time remaining.
Clicking 'Grade' will take you to the first student in the list so you can start grading individually. If you wish to grade several assignments, clicking Save and Show next will take you to the next submission.
Clicking 'View all submissions' will take you to the grading table where you see all students.
The Grading Table contains columns of information about the student, the status of their submission, a link to grade their submission, a link to each submission and feedback comments and files (if enabled).
Filtering submissions
A dropdown menu accessed from the 'Options' section allows you to filter submissions so you can for example quickly see which students have not submitted yet. You can also filter submissions which have had extensions granted.
Allocating submissions to markers
If you need to divide submissions between more than one person, you can apply groups to the assignment and let markers know which group(s) to mark. Note that because group membership is not itself anonymised, this may make anonymised submissions that bit less anonymous, though as long as the groups aren't very small this should be acceptable.
An alternative is to use marking allocation - this allows anyone with a teacher role to allocate one marker to each submission. This works particularly well if marking is allocated by subject specialism.
Submission status
If you will be assigning grades to student work, you may want to take note of the submission status before you begin the marking process. If you have required students click the Submit button, you may find that some submissions are still marked as Draft (not submitted), meaning the student has either uploaded a file(s) or entered some text, but has not clicked ‘Submit assignment’.
Find out more about the submission status.Marking (grading) workflow
When grading in QMplus, this lets you keep grades and feedback hidden until you are ready to release them to students. It is also useful if you want to show your progress in grading, or co-ordinate multiple markers/graders. The feature can be enabled from the assignment settings under 'Grades' along with 'Marking allocation'.
The phases are:
- Not marked (the marker has not yet started)
- In marking (the marker has started but not yet finished)
- Marking completed (the marker has finished but might need to go back for checking/corrections)
- In review (the marking is now with the teacher in charge for quality checking)
- Ready for release (the teacher in charge is satisfied with the marking but wait before giving students access to the marking)
- Released (the student can access the grades/feedback)
Marking allocation
Marking allocation can be used if marking workflow is set to Yes. Teachers can then be selected to grade or review submitted work of specific students.
How to bulk download assignments
You can download a zip file containing all of the assignment submissions by selecting ‘Download all submissions’ from the 'Grading actions' menu at the top of the grading table, or in the settings menu.
File submissions will be downloaded in the format uploaded by the student. Online text submissions will be downloaded as html files. Each file in the zip will be named with the student first and last name followed by a unique identifier (not the user ID number).
Find out more about downloading submissions on Moodle docs.
Grading work that students have done offline
You can create an assignment to grade work that students have physical handed in. To do this, uncheck the submission types when setting up the assignment.
Students won't be required to upload anything, but you can use the assignment to grade them for work done outside of QMplus.
Allowing additional attempts
You can change the submission settings to allow students to make additional attempts at an assignment.
Find out which settings are required to allow additional attempts on Moodle docs.
Anonymous marking
Anonymous marking, known as Anonymous submissions in QMplus, hides students' names when grading and instead shows randomly generated Participant numbers.
With Anonymous submissions, students cannot see the final grade until all of the students' names have been revealed. Rubrics will also be hidden from students' view until the names are revealed.
To reveal student names after you are finished grading, from the Grading action dropdown menu, select Reveal student identities. Feedback comments will appear whether or not student names are hidden or revealed.
Please note: Anonymous submission settings will be locked once a submission or grade has been made in relation to this assignment.
Extending blind marking to include additional identifiers (Admin)
If you are not a category administrator but require this extension to blind marking, please contact your school's Learning Technologist or Digital Learning Advisor.
This extension enables the surfacing of additonal identifiers (Username and/or IDnumber) on the View Submissions screen.
Enabling the extension for a school
- Go to your profile and scroll down to the Miscellaneous section, select QMUL blindmarking block settings.
- Select your school from the drop down list (if not already selected)
- Then select the required identifier, usually username, and click Add Block Settings
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A confirmation message will appear at the top of the screen and your selection will appear in the list of schools below. If you need to change your settings, click Remove Settings and redo the selection.
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Effect on blind marked assignments
In addition to the randomly generated Participant ID, Username and/or Idnumber will appear on the View Submissions screen (for course administrators, teachers and non-editing teachers).
How to turn off the "Submit Assignment" button
In the assignment settings, if Require students to click submit button is set to 'No' students can make changes to their submission at any time. (If you want to stop them changing work once you are ready to grade, click 'View/Grade all submissions'; locate the student and from the Edit column, click the action icon and select 'Prevent submission changes'.)
If set to 'Yes', students can upload draft versions of the assignment until such time as they are ready to submit. Clicking the submit button tells the teacher they have finished drafting and want the work to be graded. They can no longer edit it and must ask the teacher to revert to draft status if they need to change it again. To do that, click 'View/Grade all submissions; locate the student and from the Edit column, click the action icon and select 'Revert the submission to draft'.
Can you turn off the student comments function for submissions?
The student comments function allows those whom are submitting assignments to add text, noting anything that concerns the assignment. Comments submitted by students are not visible to their peers.
There is no way to turn off the student comments function on assignments without turning it off for all assignments across QMplus.
Granting extensions for students
If you are not a category administrator
If an assignment has a deadline, a teacher or administrator can grant individual or group assignment extensions by selecting the Edit link next to a particular student or group.
Find out how to grant an extension on Moodle docs.
How to bulk upload feedback files
Markers can upload feedback files to QMplus. These files may be the marked up student assignments, documents with comments, a completed marking guide, or spoken audio feedback.
Find out more about the different types of feedback and how you can upload feedback files on Moodle docs.
Useful Resources
How to set up the Assignment activity (Moodle doc)
Assignment settings (Moodle doc)
Submission group settings (Moodle doc)
Using the Assignment activity (Moodle doc)
Downloading student submissions (Moodle doc)
Allow students to make an additional attempts at an assignment (Moodle doc)