If your students have been recording reflections using the ePortfolio tool – whether via Forms or via self-initiated Reflections – you may want to assess their work at some point.

Students can submit individual ePortfolio items to you via a Dropbox. However, if you would like students to submit several ePortfolio items for assessment, it may be preferable for them to create an ePortfolio Presentation. A Presentation is a web page (or collection of pages) containing items that the students have added to their ePortfolio over time. The Presentation can then be submitted to a MyLO Dropbox for assessment.

If you would like to get your students to create ePortfolio Presentations for assessment, these printable instructions [PDF] will help guide them through the process.

You can use Grademark to apply comments to electronic assignment submissions. Students can then view the comments once their assessment results have been published.

Why use Grademark?

Grademark allows you to insert comments onto a student’s assignment. You can use an existing bank of comments, known as a Grademark Set, or create new comments as you go. This is somewhat like writing comments in the margins of a student’s assignment. It is potentially much quicker than the analogue method, as you can re-use comments across student submissions.

What can be marked with Grademark?

You can use Grademark to add comments to files that have been submitted to a Group or Individual Dropbox in MyLO. The Dropbox must have Turnitin enabled. A range of different file types can be used with Grademark, including Word documents, images, PDFs and PowerPoint files. View this post to learn how to enable Turnitin/Grademark when setting up a Dropbox. For further information about file types that can be used with Turnitin and Grademark, view this post. Note that some file types will not work with Turnitin or Grademark.

Essential vocabulary

• Quickmarks are drop and drag comments that you can ‘drag’ onto a students work.
• Quickmarks can be categorised into sets. Sets can then be used across different assessment submissions in a unit, or exported for use in other units.
• Text comments are unique to a student’s submission. They cannot be used in other assignments.
• Bubble Comments can be used to highlight text and make comments about. They can also be saved as Quickmarks.

How to mark with Grademark

These short videos will show you how to mark student submissions with Grademark. Alternatively, you may wish to download these printable instructions. One important thing to remember – Grademark saves (most) of your work automatically, so simply close the window and you’re done!

View a student’s submission in Grademark

Add, edit or remove a Text comment (unique to this student’s work)

Add a Bubble Comment

Change between Quickmark Sets and drag Quickmarks onto a student’s submission

Create a new Quickmark Set and add new Quickmarks to it

Edit and delete Grademarks

See an overview of the Comments (including Grademarks) that you have made so far (on screen or in print)

Turnitin and Grademark/Feedback Studio can work with a variety of file types. The table below indicates the types of files that students may submit, and whether these file types can generate an Originality Report (for plagiarism checking) and/or be viewed in Grademark/Feedback Studio (note that Feedback Studio combines both the Originality Report and Grademark views on one screen). Note that, to be submitted to Turnitin, a file must be no larger than 40MB.

File type	Originality Report in Turnitin	Comments in Grademark/Feedback Studio	Settings
Microsoft Word [DOC or DOCX]			Must enable Turnitin. Submissions must contain at least one line of text.
PowerPoint [PPT or PPTX]			Must enable Turnitin. This will only work if the PPT file contains text. It will not work if the file consists of images or videos.
HTML (web page)			Must enable Turnitin. Must contain at least one line of text.
Plain Text [TXT]			Must enable Turnitin.
Rich Text Format [RTF]			Must enable Turnitin.
Portable Document Format [PDF]			It will depend on how the PDF has been generated. If a PDF contains images and no text OR it consists of a series of scanned pages (images), it may not process effectively. Must enable Turnitin.
Hangul [HWP]			Must enable Turnitin.
Corel WordPerfect			Must enable Turnitin.
Adobe Postscript			Must enable Turnitin. Must contain at least one line of text.
Image Files (specific types below)			Currently not possible.
JPEG			Currently not possible.
GIF			Currently not possible.
PNG			Currently not possible.
TIFF			Currently not possible.
BMP			Currently not possible.
PICT			Currently not possible.
Video Files			N/A
ePortfolio Items (e.g. Forms or Reflections)			N/A

MyLO Rubrics can be used to mark submissions made to Assignment Submission Folders. They are also useful as a means of providing feedback to students about their performance on a task.

If you plan to mark with Rubrics, or your Unit Coordinator has asked you to mark with Rubrics, you will find the following guides helpful.

• RECOMMENDED: Change your Dialog Setting to increase ease of marking with a Rubric.
• Access the Rubric: from an Assignment Submission Folder or; from a Grade Item.
• Marking with a Custom Points Rubric (generates a score).
• Marking with a Text Only Rubric (no associated points).

Are you planning to use group assessment tasks in your unit? A list of useful links are provided below to help you create your chosen Assignment type (and an associated Survey if you need one).

Useful resources

• Setting up a Group Assignment Submission for submission of group work
  Provides step-by-step instructions to help you create a Group Assignment Submission Folder. Contains useful tips about marking too.
• Setting up an Assignment Submission Folder to collect student assignments
  Step-by-step instructions showing how to create an Individual Assignment Submission Folder.
• Setting up a Survey and a Report
  Explains how to create a Survey, step by step. Also explains how to set up a Report associated with your Survey.
• Accessing a Survey Report
  Explains how to generate a Report to see the results of a Survey. You can save the results as a PDF and share them with students or colleagues, if you wish to.

What does it do?

The Assignments tool is used to facilitate electronic submission of individual or group assessment tasks. Assignment Submission Folders can be associated with Grade Items, Rubrics, and Competencies, which enable online marking, grading and feedback. Staff can also restrict access to Assignment Submission Folders by date and time, group membership or mode of study. Assignment Submission Folders can give specific students special access permissions like extended submission dates, to cater for those with special circumstances or Learning Access Plans. Staff can see students’ submission times, download all of the submissions to their computer at once, view submissions online and grade online using Rubrics and Grademark (when Turnitin has been enabled).

Useful terminology

• Folder: students submit their work for a particular assessment task to a particular folder (submission folder) in the Assignments tool.
• Category: you can group folders into categories. This feature is useful if you have to manage several folders.
• Turnitin: third party plagiarism detection that can be enabled for each folder.
• Grademark: if Turnitin is enabled, Grademark, a third party grading tool, can be used to electronically mark up feedback (in the form of comments) on a student’s submission.
• Individual Assignment Submission Folder: Each student submits work individually. The work is also marked individually.
• Group Assignment Submission Folder: Groups of students submit work (one or multiple members of the Group can submit to the same folder). Students receive the same grade and feedback. You can alter individual marks in the associated Grade Item (and add individualised comments there) if you need to.
• Grade Item: The grade (score) recorded for a student/group’s submission to an Assignment Submission Folder is recorded here after you publish marks and feedback.

What is Assignments best for?

• Collection of assignments, including Word and PDF documents, video files, audio files and presentations. ePortfolio items can also be submitted to an Assignment Submission Folder.
• Submission of a file (or collection of files) created by a group of students (Group Assignment Submission Folder).
• Plagarism detection (if Turnitin is enabled).
• Online grading and provision of feedback.

Tool capabilities

Assessable?
Turnitin?
Peer review?
Grademark?
Rubric?
ITR Supported?

Helpful resources and instructions

• Setting up an Assignment Submission Folder to collect student assignments
• Setting up a Group Submission Folder for submission of group work
• Providing extensions to students
• Getting distance students to submit presentations
• Student Resource: How to locate Grades and feedback associated with an Assignment submission

This Blog Entry explains how students can find their grade, feedback, Rubric feedback and Grademark feedback via the Assignment tool.

Please feel free to add the link to your MyLO  site, or print it and hand it out to students, if you feel it would be helpful.

Would you like to be able to record student grades for exams, tutorial presentations, attendance or participation? These sorts of tasks can be graded using a Grade Item in the MyLO Grades tool.

These instructions explain how to create a Grade Item in your unit.

From time to time you may need to provide students with extensions due to illness, technical issues or personal issues.

If a student needs an extension on an online assessment task, you can use the Special Access feature to provide different types of extensions to different students.

This video from Tam Lynch demonstrates how to provide a student with Special Access to a Quiz. Alternatively, you can view it in full screen mode on YouTube (opens in new window).The instructions in the video are also applicable to Assignment Submission Folders.

For advice or assistance regarding Special Access in MylO, please contact the relevant team in your faculty or school.

Presentations are a common form of assessment for group and individual assessment tasks. Presentations are usually delivered during face to face tutorials. How can we ‘translate’ the task of delivering a presentation into something that is feasible for distance students? Here are three possible solutions.

Presentations during online sessions

If you have a relatively small cohort of distance students, it may be possible to arrange a presentation session, or sessions, during which students can ‘present’ to you and/or the rest of the class. It is also possible for students to meet online and record their own session, and submit the recording for assessment.

Setting up

1. Set up sessions in Blackboard Collaborate (Web Conferencing) for your presentation session, or sessions.
2. You may wish to get students to register for a particular presentation time. This can be achieved using the MyLO Groups tool. For more information, please contact the TSBE Flexible Education Team.
3. If you want to mark this form of presentation in MyLO, you could ask students to submit their slides to an Assignment Submission Folder and associate it with a Grade Item. Alternatively, you could create a standalone Grade Item and record the marks directly into it. For advice about setting up a standalone Grade Item, please contact the TSBE Flexible Education Team.

Considerations

• It can be difficult to find a mutually convenient time for distance students to present. If it is not possible for groups of students to meet online with you, an alternative method of presentation may be required.
• It is possible for students to meet in their own Online Session as moderators and record a presentation. It is not currently possible to ‘lock’ this room to a specific group – but naming the session accurately should be enough.
• A link to the recording can then be submitted to a Assignment Submission Folder for assessment. However, students will need practice and guidance for this method to be a success. If you are considering using this method, please contact the TSBE Flexible Education Team for advice.
• Practice makes perfect – give students access to a room as Moderators so that they can practice setting up and using their microphone, uploading slides and so forth. You could set up a room for a group of distance students for the purpose of assignment preparation.
• Have a plan for the session: you may still need to act as Head Moderator, wrapping up overtime presentations, prompting students to ask questions, introducing presenters and so on.
• Recording the session will allow you to review student presentations. This could be very useful for marking and review purposes.
• If your session occurs after hours (after 6pm), the IT Service Desk will not be available to assist you or your students.
• You (and your students) may feel more comfortable using other common tools like Skype for presentation sessions. Skype can record presentations however testing to ensure the settings are correct for recording audio is essential.

Recording a video and submitting the file to an Assignment Submission Folder

If you are happy for students to present without slide content, you could ask them to record a video of themselves and submit the video file to the Assignment area for assessment. Note that this method is suited to individual presentations, not group presentations.

Setting up

1. Link to this document from your Assignment, and/or Assessment folder (in Content) and/or in a News item. The document provides advice to students about appropriate video file formats, in addition to information about submitting a video file to an Assignment Submission Folder.
2. Set up an Assignment area and associate it with a Grade Item.

Considerations

• Students will usually have access to some form of device with video recording capability: smart phones; tablets, webcams and most digital cameras can all be used for recording purposes. However, students may not have the technical know-how when it comes to using these devices to record video. Due to the plethora of devices and video apps on the market, there is no single solution or ‘lock-step’ approach to video that is guaranteed to work for all students.
• The only thing students should need to worry about, aside from the quality of their presentation, is the video file format and whether they are visible and audible in their video. Emphasising a need for perfect video techniques may prompt some students to waste countless hours trying to edit out every “um” and “ahh”. Remember: you are not assessing them on their video editing skills – you are assessing them on their general communication skills.
• File format and size can be an issue when uploading to an Assignment Folder. Some students may experience significant delays or time-outs during the upload process. In cases where students experience genuine difficulties uploading video files (e.g. their connection times out), advise them to support their video with some form of written document, for example, an overview of the main points of their presentation. They can upload it to the submission folder along with their video file. The written document can be processed through Turnitin (this feature is turned on when you set up the folder) and associated with a Grade Item, meaning you can use GradeMark to provide feedback on the whole assignment.
• Some students may experience time-outs when they try to submit to the MyLO assignment folder. If so, an alternative submission method may be required. For example, your students could upload their file to YouTube (free for a video of up to 20 minutes duration), or put the file up to a Dropbox or Google Drive account (free). They can then submit the link to the video to you for assessment. They would need to place this in the Assignment Submission Folder comment area.
• Set a submission date during the week, not over the weekend. That way, students can contact the IT Service Desk if they encounter difficulties uploading their work.
• It is difficult (and near impossible without special tools) for students to record both footage of themselves AND a presentation (e.g. PowerPoint) in a video. Consider what is more important: seeing the student, or seeing the presentation? If seeing the presentation is more useful, consider the next option.

Recording audio in a PowerPoint presentation and submitting the file to the Assignment Folder

Recent releases of Microsoft’s PowerPoint have included the ability to record audio with a microphone. The tool is known as Record Slide Show and it can be found in the Slideshow ribbon, as seen below. The resulting PowerPoint file can be uploaded to the Assignment Folder for assessment. It is also possible for students to record audio to slides individually.

Setting up

1. Consider providing students with a link to helpful information about including audio in a PowerPoint, like this tutorial from Microsoft.
2. Set up an Assignment Folder and associate it with a Grade Item.

Considerations

• Turnitin cannot interpret PowerPoint slides. If you wish to use Grademark to add comments to a student’s work, consider asking the student to submit a PDF of their presentation, along with the presentation itself. The PDF file can be processed by Turnitin, allowing Grademark to also be used as well. To save their presentation as a PDF in PowerPoint, students will need to go to File > Save As Adobe PDF.
• Not all students will have access to MS PowerPoint at home. What will you do if they don’t have access to PowerPoint? Is there an alternative that they can use (e.g. submission of a video).
• A microphone is required to record the student’s voice. The microphone could be in the form of a headset, an external webcam (which usually include a microphone), or an inbuilt microphone.
• PowerPoint files with embedded audio can get quite big, so some students may experience difficulties uploading their files to an Assignment Folder.
• When you go to mark the presentation, you will need to open the file in PowerPoint. You may need to click on an Enable Editing button first. Select the Slide Show ribbon, then choose the From beginning option to launch the presentation.