Published on: 08/08/2025 · Last updated on: 11/08/2025
External guidance
Visit the FeedbackFruits website for their full guidance: Teacher Guide | Student Guide
Create the activity
The instructions below assume you have already created the Assignment Review activity in Moodle. If not, please do that first with instructions from the ‘how to create a FeedbackFruits activity’ article.
The instructions below highlight settings where you may need more information to help you set up your activity, or where we offer a recommended approach.
Section 1 – Instructions
Adding instructions
Instructions for students can be typed into the available text box, but you also have the ability to upload documents (such as an assignment brief, marking criteria, assessment rubric or an exemplar). You can also add audio, video or a screen cast.
- Click the ‘Add items’ button.
- For video and audio, you will see a browser pop-up for you to confirm you want to give access to your mic and/or camera.
- In the top right corner of the panel, you can add notes which will only be visible to staff (i.e. Teacher or Non-editing Teacher roles).
Student collaboration
Collaboration options need to be selected before students participate in the assignment – once a student starts the activity, the configurations can’t be updated.
- Click the Change button, select the appropriate options and follow any Next links to complete the process.
Individual submisisons
If you want students to submit an individual piece of work, they can do this within the appropriate SAMIS cohort grouping, or within any other grouping you have created. With large cohorts it can be useful to use groups/grouping to make it easier to filter the list later (e.g. if you have multiple assessors, they can find their students more easily).
Group submissions
If you want students to submit a group piece of work, they can do this by being appropriately mapped to a suitably named grouping (which includes the relevant groups).
Assessors can grade the submission as a group (i.e. the same group grade given to each member of the group) or as individuals (a unique grade for each member of the group).
Section 2 – Submissions
Scheduling deadlines
It is recommended that you set deadline for submission. If you choose not to set a deadline, students will be able to see feedback as it is added (i.e. one at a time).
- By setting deadlines you can control when the students can submit and when feedback is published.
- If you want students to be allowed to submit late, then you need to enable that setting.
- The resulting analytics will highlight where a submission has been added late.
Giving extra time or an extension
Click the icon next to the submission dates in order to add extra time for individual students. You can also do this while the activity is running, without returning to the Edit screen.
Submission visibility
FeedbackFruits allows you to make submitted work visible to all students, or only those who submitted, after the deadline has passed. This can be useful for some types of formative activity, but usually you will only want the assessor/tutor to view the submissions so ensure the option ‘Only the allocated reviewer(s)‘ is selected.
Section 3 – Give feedback on student work
Section 4 – Received reviews
Grading
Grading is optional
The grading panel is optional. If you don’t want to include grading, and instead just provide feedback to students, you can remove this panel by clicking the cross in its right hand corner. However, it can be beneficial, even for formative activities, to including a small grade for completion to encourage participation.
If using the Grading panel, you should aim to configure the grading options before students start the activity. Also, this configuration should be checked following any changes to the grading criteria to ensure you have taken those changes into account in the grading.
- Click the Configure button to choose which elements of the activity you want graded, and to decide the weighting of those activities.
- Ensure the total is set at 100%.
Grading options
It’s recommended that you don’t change these settings.
Add (optional) learning steps
Automated feedback on writing
This additional step can be added so that students can receive AI-generated feedback on their writing. This should be used with caution. Although you can configure what writing issues the AI provides feedback on, it can be flawed and may cause confusion. If you wish to try this, it is recommended that you create a stand alone activity just for this step. [See Automated feedback guide].
Student reflections on the activity
This additional step can be added to give students on opportunity to reflect on the task but also on the feedback they recieved. This can be an effective way to have students actively consider the feedback you have given them, and how they will act on any suggestions for improvement.
You will also be able to get a sense of how clearly they have understood your feedback.
- Click the Add button to include a Reflections step. It will be placed before the Grading panel in Section 5 of the activity.
- You can specify a word count, schedule a deadline (recommended) and add some additional notes of guidance if required.
Running the activity
Editing after the activity starts
If you need to edit the activity after students have started it, you can click the Edit button in the top right corner. Some settings will not be able to be changed at this point, and they will be disabled (greyed out) or a message will explain the reason.
Student submissions
When students start to submit work you will see it in the analytics panel at the top of the activity, titled ‘Overall student progress’.
To start assessing go to Section 3 and click the Start reviewing button.
Please note that embedded audio and video, provided by students in documents and slide shows, cannot be played in FeedbackFruits, and instead will need to be downloaded to review them.
Full screen & search
When you are working with large cohorts you have some features to help.
- Click the full screen icon to expand the table showing the live data, or
- Use the search to filter by groups or individuals.
- Click View submissions to read the work submitted by the students.
Marking submissions
To mark submissions, you can go to Section 3 and click ‘Start reviewing’. You can then view student work and add comments or marks as needed. Use the navigation arrows to move from student to student.
You can also use ‘explanation cards’ which act as your comment bank. These can be set up before marking so that you can add them quickly during assessment.
Releasing feedback and grades
To manually release feedback, click the Publish feedback buttton and similarly with the grades, click the Publish grades button. This will display the feedback and grades to students within the FeedbackFruits activity, and if you have chosen the setting to pass grades back to Moodle they will also appear in the Moodle gradebook.
If required, you can also make manual grade adjustments byscrolling to that column (or clicking the fullscreen button).
After the activity is completed
Storing submissions and data
As an external service, FeedbackFruits activities are not captured in the Moodle summer snapshot (which becomes the Moodle ‘Archive’). This means students, in subsequent years of their course, will not be able to go back and look at these activities. Therefore, It is recommended that staff export submissions and analytics data from any FeedbackFruits activities, and store them securely for future reference as required by university regulations. Additionally, students should be encouraged to download their feedback so they can learn from it going into future assessments.
Select the activity, and in Section 1 click the Export Analytics button. This will download a spreadsheet with current data.
To download all submissions, go to Section 2 and click the download icon.
Student feedback
Advise students to access the activity and click ‘View feedback’, in Section 4, and then click the download button to export their feedback to a PDF file.
