Published on: 30/08/2023 · Last updated on: 02/09/2024
Preparing to grade an Assignment
Before beginning marking it’s important to understand how your assignment has been setup, so that you can ensure that you are not showing marks and feedback to students before you are ready for them to see them. By default, Moodle assignments hide grades and feedback from students through the ‘Marking Workflow’ option. To get started please read the ‘Preparing to Mark’ guidance below.
When you create an Assignment, the ‘Marking Workflow’ setting will be enabled. This automatically hides any marks and feedback that you upload for students until you take specific steps to release the marks and feedback. This is a ‘safer’ option for the requirements of most Teachers.
Guidance on releasing Marks and Feedback, and sending a notification to students with a few clicks, using marking workflow can be found below.
If you prefer instead to turn off the marking workflow option you can do so within the Assignment’s settings, under the ‘Grade’ settings. Note that doing this will mean that any marks and feedback added to Moodle will be immediately visible to students!
If you have turned off Marking Workflow, but you also don’t want students to see marks and feedback as soon as they are uploaded, you will need to hide the Assignment link and Gradebook item until you are ready to reveal the marks and feedback.
The guidance below shows how to turn off Marking Workflow (if you wish) and how to hide the Assignment link and Gradebook item:
- Find your Assignment and click the Settings tab.
- Scroll down to ‘Grade’ settings and expand them
- Set use marking workflow to no
- Save changes
Note: Any marks and feedback you add will now be immediately visible to students!
To manually hide marks and feedback from students you will need to hide the Assignment’s Gradebook item and the Assignment link (which is often not practical where there are late submissions)
To hide the Gradebook item:
- Go to the Course Homepage and choose Grades:
- From the Grader Report dropdown, choose Gradebook Setup
- In the row for the Assignment that you wish to hide, in the Actions column, choose Edit then Hide .
- Save Changes
- The Gradebook item will now have a crossed through eye icon to show that it is not visible to students.
To hide the Assignment link from students:
- Navigate to the Assignment and, from its Edit menu, choose Hide on course page:
- You can now begin marking
- When are ready to release marks and feedback to students, don’t forget that you’ll need to make the Gradebook item and Assignment link visible again.
Lock submissions to prevent changes
Before you begin marking it’s a good idea to lock submissions. This will prevent students from making any changes to their submissions once marking is underway. To do so, navigate to your Assignment and View all submissions, then:
- Tick the box at the top of the ‘select’ column to select all user submissions
- From the With selected… dropdown choose Lock Submissions
NB: If you have a large number of students you will need to select the option under the table to ‘show all students on one page’.
Download submissions/Mark offline/Upload Annotated submissions
It is possible to download student submissions in order to annotate them offline. Moodle allows all submissions to be downloaded in a single zip file and to be returned after annotation, with any additional files if desired, in the same manner. You can also download the Grading Worksheet, add marks to it, and re-upload to Moodle to award marks to all students. Please see the video below for full details, or follow the steps underneath it:
To download student scripts and the Grading Worksheet:
- Navigate to your assignment and select it.
- Click the View all submissions button.
- Note the option, (found at the bottom of the page underneath the Grading Table) for download submissions in folders:
- if the submission is more than a single file, or if you have a feedback form to return to students, tick the box.
- if the submission is only one file, which you will annotate and return to students, leave unticked.
- From the Grading action menu at the top choose Download all submissions.
- A Zip folder will be downloaded to your machine. Right click the folder and choose ‘Extract all’ (or similar), then click ‘Extract’. Files will be extracted.
- You can now open the files to read and annotate them. Important! When saving annotations DO NOT rename the files.
- Return to Moodle, and from Grading action menu, choose Download Grading worksheet (Bath version).
- Save the file, noting that it is a .CSV file, not a standard Excel document.
- Open the file from your Downloads folder (if using a Mac you may need to right click on it and specify ‘open with Excel’) and add grades to the Grade column as desired. Important! DO NOT change any column headings.
- You may optionally add short comments for students in the Feedback comments column.
- Save changes ensuring the file type is .CSV
To return summary comments and the completed Grading Worksheet to Moodle:
- Navigate to your Assignment and select it.
- Click the View all submissions button.
- From the Grading action menu at the top choose Upload Grading worksheet.
- Select the .CSV file you saved (drag and drop, or ‘choose a file’) and click Upload grading worksheet and confirm. Grades and any summary feedback comments that you included will now be shown in the Grading table.
To return annotated scripts to Moodle:
Before returning the annotated scripts as feedback files, you must add them to a .zip folder.
If you downloaded all of the submissions in a single .zip file:
- Navigate to the folder that you have stored the annotated files in, and open it so that you can see all the file thumbnails.
- Select all of the files (CTRL+A on Windows or Command+A on Mac).
- Right-click and choose Send to…then Compressed (Zip) folder (on Windows) or right-click and choose Compress (on Mac).
- The new .Zip folder will be automatically named after one of the files, this isn’t a problem, but rename it if you wish (right-click and Rename).
- Return to the Moodle Assignment, and from the Grading Action dropdown menu (where you downloaded the files from) choose Upload multiple feedback files in a Zip
- On the next page, Choose a file or drag and drop the .zip file into the file upload area on-screen.
- Click Import feedback file(s), then Confirm and Continue.
- The annotated feedback files will now be displayed in the Feedback files column in the Grading Table.
If you downloaded the student submissions in folders:
- Navigate to the folder containing the folders of annotated files (and any additional feedback files you are returning to students) and open it.
- Select all of the folders (CTRL+A on Windows or Command+A on Mac).
- Right-click and choose Send to…then Compressed (Zip) folder (on Windows) or right-click and choose Compress (on Mac).
- The new. Zip folder will be automatically named after one of the folders, this isn’t a problem, but rename it if you wish (right-click and Rename).
- Return to the Moodle Assignment, and from the Grading Action dropdown menu (where you downloaded the files from) choose Upload multiple feedback files in a Zip.
- On the next page, Choose a file (or drag and drop) to get your .zip file into the file upload area on-screen.
- Click Import feedback file(s), then Confirm and Continue.
- The annotated feedback files will now be displayed in the Feedback files column in the Grading Table.
Marking a Group Assignment
Where one student has uploaded a file on behalf of her Group, the file will appear against all Group members, and any of these can be marked. On the individual student grading page, an option to ‘apply grade and feedback to all members of group’ will appear. If ticked the grades and feedback will be applied to all group members.
Allocate Assignments to another Marker
You can use the Marking Allocation feature to assign student submissions to another marker in your course.
- Marking allocation – this allows allocation of markers to work after the deadline. Marking allocation depends on Marking workflow being enabled.
Marking Workflow and Marking Allocation must be enabled in your assignment settings:
Once these have been enabled, to allocate assignments to a marker.
- Click on your Assignment link.
- Click on View all submissions.
- Tick the box to the left of the student whose assignment you want to allocate, then choose Set allocated marker and click Go (see image above).
- At the prompt click Ok, then on the next page select your allocate marker from the dropdown and click Save Changes.
How to lift anonymity in an Assignment
If you are using Anonymous Marking (blind marking) in Moodle, once you have completed marking, it is necessary to lift anonymity in order to release grades to the Gradebook. Please note that lifting anonymity can only be done once, (you cannot return the assignment to an anonymous state once it has been lifted), so ensure that you have completed all marking before going ahead.
To lift anonymity:
- Click on the assignment link, then click on View all submissions.
- From the grading actions menu choose Reveal student identities.
