Moodle – Workshop (summative)

Published on: 14/09/2023 · Last updated on: 24/07/2026

Assessment Type: Coursework

The workshop activity allows students to add their submissions to the activity, distributes the submissions between the students, and allows students to grade and / or provide feedback on their peers’ submissions. The workshop has 5-phases and only one phase can be open at a time.

This provides an overview of the key steps to create and manage a workshop activity. There are a variety of peer review scenarios available with Moodle Workshop. Follow the links to each scenario for full guidance.

Potential options:

• Student review generic Tutor-supplied submission
• Student reviews submissions of other individuals
• Student reviews submissions of their group mates

If you are setting up a formative workshop visit Moodle Workshop – Formative.

Recommended workflow:

1. Provide detailed information about the assessment

It’s important to provide all the necessary information for students about the assessment.This should include: the assessment brief (using the standardised template defined by your Faculty/School), marking criteria and/or rubric, and information on submission format, deadlines, and submission method, and/or assessment conditions. This includes information about the use of GenAI, for which there is further information and suggested assessment brief text on The Two-Lane Approach to GenAI Assessment Categorisation. This could be provided via a detailed resource such as a Moodle Page.

Level 1 Reasonable Adjustment

2. Create the Workshop Activity

• Give your workshop an appropriate name and description.
• Amend the settings for Grading, Submission, Assessment (including instructions for students), Feedback, Example submissions and Availability settings
  • Under Availability we recommend that you do not enable the ‘Switch to the next phase after the submissions deadline’ option. Manually switching between phases gives you greater flexibility to manage the activity.
• Choose the settings according to your peer review scenario

3. Complete setup (Setup Phase)

• If you have not used this activity before, allow plenty of time for set up.
• Set the workshop description and Provide instructions for submission should have been completed, as indicated by a green tick, during the set-up of the activity.
• You can now choose to Add or Edit assessment form, to set out the assessment criteria
• Complete the setup according to your peer review scenario
• When you are ready to launch the activity, switch the workshop to Submission Phase.

4. Students submit document (Submission Phase)

• Students upload their document for peer assessment within the deadline.
• You will need to monitor submissions and send reminders. There is no facility to manage individual extensions.
• Allocate the submissions for assessment (manually or with random allocation).
  • A minimum allocation of 3 peer reviews in needed for calculation of the Assessment Grade (each student should be allocated at least 3 other submissions).
  • If you use Separate groups mode, you can filter by group and manually allocate submissions within each group.
• When allocation is complete, manually switch the workshop to Assessment Phase.

5. Students assess peer submissions (Assessment Phase)

• Students complete the assessment form to assess the peer submissions allocated to them.
  • If enabled in the settings, students may also complete a self-assessment and / or assess an example.
• You will need to monitor assessments and send reminders.
• When assessments are complete, manually switch the workshop to Grading Evaluation Phase.

6. Grades calculated and adjusted (Grading Evaluation Phase)

• You can now review students’ peer assessments and choose to calculate final grades. Students cannot modify assessments in this phase.
• Follow the guidance for your chosen peer review scenario
• When grading evaluation is complete, manually switch to Closed Phase.

7. Activity concludes (Closed Phase)

• You can add a Conclusion statement to your workshop to provide students with general feedback on the activity.
• In the Closed Phase, students can view their own submission and assessments received from peers.
  • Students need to scroll down the page and click on their submission link to view their peer assessments. To help students in finding this, you can add explanation in the workshop conclusion, such as “To view grades, comments and feedback about your submission, look in the section below ‘Your submission’ and click on your submission title link.”
  • Students will see the total Grade for Submission awarded by each peer, as well as break down of marks in the assessment form.
• Students can view their final overall grade within the Moodle Gradebook.

8. Grade Transfer

• It is not possible to use Moodle-SAMIS Grade Transfer to transfer marks from Moodle to SAMIS.
  • Marks will need to be downloaded from the Moodle Gradebook in a CSV file and imported to SAMIS via their CSV import, or a dummy Moodle assignment.