Assignment blocks allows users to submit assignments through Glasshouse for grading by assessors, managers or buddies. Learners can resubmit assignments multiple times (optional) and be awarded grades by their assessor. The assignment feature will automatically send an email to the assessor once a learner’s assignment has been submitted, and the learner will also be notified once their assignment has been graded. Assessors can give feedback on each assignment, viewable by the learner both through email and in Glasshouse.
A grading scheme for the assignment must first be setup before the assignment can be added to the page. Grading schemes are often pass/fail.
Start in the Settings tab in the Navigation panel.
Repeat steps 4-8 to add another grade (eg fail grade) and any other grades required.
A learner needs to have an assessor (either an individual user or a group) assigned to them to assess their submitted assignment. The assessor can be a manager, a buddy or a group. If a group (eg administrators) is chosen, one user within that group will be assigned the assessor role for that learner. This selection process is random, but can be manually changed later. If you are using a predefined group as the assessor, this option is selected when setting up the assignment block itself. The steps below are for manually adding a buddy or manager as the assessor for a learner.
Start in the Security tab in the Navigation panel.
Assignments are set up as blocks on the page you would like the assignment to appear on. Start in the Page management area, in the Main tab.
1. Click on the (Select type to create) dropdown menu above the Blocks area, and select Assignment Block.
2. Click Add.
3. Enter a block heading and content in the Main tab as required.
4. Click Save and Publish.
5. Click on the Assignment tab.
6. Within the Content configuration section:
a. Enter some instructions to the learner about what sort of submission is expected in the Submission instructions for the Learner content field.
b. Enter content to show the learner after they have submitted their assignment into the Text to show after the Learner has submitted the assignment content field.
7. A grading scheme will be loaded by default into the Grading scheme dropdown menu. If there are multiple grading schemes, select the appropriate one from this menu.
8. If you’d like to award a Learner an Achievement on submission select one from the Achievement dropbox menu, otherwise leave as default.
9. In the Notifications section:
a. Select a type of notification recipient from Notification Recipients dropdown menu
i. If you’ve selected Group then select a group (created in the Security section of the Glasshouse interface) to receive notifications on submission in the Notification Group dropdown menu.
ii. If you’ve selected Select Individuals select some individual Members from the below Individuals listbox. These Members will receive notifications on submission.
iii. Selecting The Learner's Buddies or The Learner's Managers will cause the Learner’s Managers or Buddies to receive notification upon submission. There is no need for further configuration with these options.
b. Toggle the Is random? switch to select a random Member from one of the above cohorts rather than notifying all Members.
c. NOTE: You need to save after updating the Notification Recipients for more options to appear.
10. Under the Submission options section:
a. If you want learners to be able to upload files enable Allow file submissions.
b. When you're allowing a file to upload you often don’t when the text box. This can disabled by enabling the Disable text submissions options.
c. If multiple submissions are allowed, toggle the Allow resubmissions? switch.
11. Click Publish.
An email will be sent to the chosen assessor (manager, buddy or member of chosen group) once the learner has entered their assignment and clicked the Submit button. The email includes the content of the submission, which submission attempt this is, and who the learner is. There is also a link for the assessor to provide feedback for the learner on their submission.
The Click here to provide feedback link takes the assessor to the Submissions tab in the Assessments area of Glasshouse. This can also be accessed at any time by clicking on the Assessments tab in the Navigation panel.
If the Email the feedback to the learner when it's saved checkbox was checked, an email will be sent to the learner showing the assessor’s feedback and their grade. If this was not checked, the feedback and grade will be shown on the page with the Assignment block (after refresh). If the grade was fail and resubmission is allowed, the Assignment input field and Submit button will still be available to the learner in the front end of the page. If resubmission is not permitted, or the grade was a pass, only the learner’s results and feedback will be shown. After a resubmission, the assignment grade and feedback from the multiple attempts will be shown.
