Help students keep track of their assessments in Moodle

Published on: 05/04/2023 · Last updated on: 03/09/2024

Introduction

Students often study multiple units at a time and are given access to a separate Moodle space for each unit.  Within each unit lecturers will set activities with deadlines (i.e. a coursework assignment with a due date). Students can see an overview of their deadlines in a number of ways.

1. In the Assessment tab of the Moodle space
2. In the Moodle Calendar
3. In the Timeline tab of the Moodle Dashboard

Important

The information students receive via Moodle relies on staff adding appropriate dates to activities.  If activities are not added appropriately students will not get an accurate picture, for example:

• If due dates are not included on Assignments, then they won’t appear in the calendar or dashboard
• If due dates are created far into the future (instead of the actual submission date) students could be misled
• If due dates for submission points that only apply to a sub-set of students (e.g. those taking supplementary assessment) have not been restricted to that sub-set group, then all students will receive reminders to submit, which could cause undue stress

Assessment tab

When Assignments or Quizzes are created, they can be ‘tagged’ as either summative or formative.  This will ensure they appear in the Assessment tab at the top of the Moodle space.  This provides a quick overview of Assessment for a single unit.

Note: you can add information, including due dates, for assessments held outside of Moodle in the External System Assessments area.  For example, you could add placeholders for exams.

Moodle Calendar

Any activity or event that has a due date will appear in the Moodle calendar.  If required there is a way of adding the Moodle calendar to Outlook as a shared calendar.  This will provide an overview of all deadlines across multiple units.

Add your Moodle calendar to Outlook

Timeline tab of the Moodle Dashboard

In the Dashboard students can view the Timeline tab where they will see a list of activities with deadlines.  They can customise this list to view ‘by course’ and over differing timescales (All, Next 7 days, Next 3 months, etc.).  This provides an overview of all deadlines across multiple units.

Below is the 1-minute video guidance provided to students on how they can view their activity deadlines through the Timeline on the Dashboard.