With the release of the new Assignments module (which is an improvement over the previous Homework module), we’ve expanded the flow for handling assignments over the portals in QuickSchools. Here’s a rough summary:
Posting Assignments
Teachers can now post assignments in real-time, or schedule an assignment to be published at a specific date / time in the future. This means that teachers can plan out and configure assignments for the entire academic term, and the system will publish them automatically:
When creating an assignment, teachers can specify if the assignment requires a submission, and whether the assignment will be graded. For graded assignments, a column in the Gradebook can be created and linked automatically.
Submitting Assignments
Students can very easily view all upcoming assignments. Assignments can be filtered by subject, and sorted by the column headers:
For assignments that require an online submission, you’ll see a “Start Assignment”, “Continue”, or “Review Submission” button, depending on whether the student has started, saved or submitted the assignment. Students will be able to type in a response, and attach files before submitting.
If the student unintentionally submits the assignment prematurely, the student can make changes to the response, and re-submit at any time.
Reviewing / Grading Submissions
When reviewing submitted assignments, teachers can easily see the status of each student in the class and whether an assignment has been submitted:
Clicking on the assignment allows the teacher to review the submission. If this is a graded assignment, the teacher can enter the grade and gradebook comments directly from this screen. Grades saved here will be reflected directly in the QuickSchools Gradebook.
In the near future, we’ll support annotations, so teachers can make annotations on submitted assignments, which can then be shared back with the student.
Discussing Submissions
Once an assignment is submitted by the student, the teacher and student can start an online discussion about the assignment from with the submission screen:
The online discussion is like a chat feature, similar to the Class Discussions. If users are online when a message is received, the user will see the message immediately (without having to refresh the screen). A notification will also be sent when users comment on an existing thread.
For other ways to communicate with Students, check out this article.
Resubmitting Assignments
Students can freely resubmit assignments, even after the assignment is due. The system tracks each submission separately, with a timestamp. When the teacher opens an assignment, by default, the system will automatically load the latest submission BEFORE the due date. Any submissions past the due date are clearly marked “Past Due”:
It is then up to the teacher to decide whether to use a different submission, based on his/her discussion and evaluation with the student.
Future Improvements
As mentioned above, we are looking to provide an Annotation feature, teachers will be able to write/annotate directly on submitted assignments, and share it back with students.
If you know of other features you’d like to see if the Assignments module, do let us know.
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