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Standard assignments - grading

The Grade Centre enables you to review and grade assignments. It resembles a spreadsheet. Each row displays one student in your subject and each column includes information for each gradable item, such as an assignment, test, graded blog entry or survey. You can provide grades and comments directly on the Grade Centre page, on the Grade Details page, and from a tool, such as the Discussion Board.

When an assignment is created, a column is added automatically to the Grade Centre.

Note: If you have added an assignment and wish to see how and where the student will see their grades and feedback, use your student test account to submit an assignment.

Full Grade Centre

Once students have submitted their completed assignments, you will have access to the students' submissions for reviewing, providing feedback and grading. Assignments that have been submitted by students and need grading can be accessed from:

  • Needs Marking page OR Full Grade Centre page

The Needs Marking page is the faster option for viewing and grading the submitted assignments, so we will go through this first.

How to access submitted assignments from the Needs Marking page

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Needs Marking

For subjects with many enrolled students and gradable items, the Needs Marking page can help you determine which assignments need marking first. For example, you can sort by the date submitted to provide feedback to the earliest submitters first. An assignment that has been submitted, but not graded, is indicated with an exclamation mark — the Needs Marking icon Needs Marking icon

To access the Needs Marking page:

  1. In the Control Panel, expand the Grade Centre section.
  2. Select Needs Marking. The total number of items to mark appears on the Needs Marking page.

To Filter and sort student attempts:

  1. Use the Filter drop-down lists to narrow the list of items to grade by Category, Item, User, and Date Submitted. For example, make selections in both the Category and User drop-down lists to display assignments submitted by a particular Student.

    Needs Marking Page
     
  2. Click Go. The filtered items appear on the Needs Marking page.
  3. Click any column heading or the caret to sort the assignments. For example, sort the assignments by Item Name.
  4. Click Grade All on the Action Bar to begin marking the assignment attempts.
  5. The filtered assignment attempts appear on the Grade Assignment page in the order they were sorted and filtered on the Needs Marking page.

How to mark assignments from the Grade Assignment page

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  1. On the Grade Assignment page, view the submission text, attached files and comments.
  2. Under Grade Current Attempt, type a Grade for the assignment.

Grade Current Attempt

  1. If you would like to provide feedback to the Student, type comments in the Feedback to Student box. Use the Text Editor functions to format the text and add files, images, links and multimedia.

Note: You can also annotate the student’s downloaded assignment with your feedback and attach this file so that the student can access your feedback.

Text editor

  1. Optionally, type comments in the Instructor Notes box. This text is NOT seen by Students.
  2. Click Submit. You will be returned to the Full Grade Centre, the Needs Marking page, or the Grade Details page, depending on where grading began.
  3. Alternatively, click Save as Draft to save changes and continue working later.

Note: If multiple attempts for an assignment have been allowed, a Student's grade is not released until all of the attempts have been graded.

How to mark assignments from the Full Grade Centre

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The Full Grade Centre will display all students, including students who have not yet submitted their assignments.

Contextual menu

To access the Full Grade Centre:

  1. In the Control Panel, expand the Grade Centre section and select Full Grade Centre.
  2. Locate the cell for a Student's assignment. An assignment that has been submitted, but not graded, is indicated with an exclamation mark — the Needs Marking icon Needs Marking icon.
  3. Move the mouse pointer over the cell to see the Action Link Action link icon.
  4. Click the Action Link to access the contextual menu.
  5. Select Attempt. The Grade Assignment page appears.
  6. Alternatively, marks can be entered directly in the Grade Centre.
  7. Locate the cell for a Student's assignment containing an Needs Marking iconNeeds Marking Icon
  8. Type in the mark.

Cell in Grade Centre

  1. Press the ENTER or RETURN key on your keyboard.

Note: If ENTER is not pressed, and you attempt to exit the entry cell or Grade Centre, a dialog box ask you if you would like to save the grade entry.

  1. Select OK to save the grade.
  2. Students will be able to view their grades and feedback from the My Grades option in your subject.

How to download results from the Grade Centre to a spreadsheet

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Instructors can grade assessments offline and then import grades back into the Grade Centre. To obtain a file that is formatted correctly for uploading, download the data from the Full Grade Centre first and open it in an Excel spreadsheet. Existing columns will have Column ID numbers that must be included in future uploads.

To download a copy of the Grade Centre data for updating in Excel:

  1. From the action bar of the Grade Centre, point to Work Offline and select Download.

    Download Grade Centre

  2. Using the drop-down list, select an assignment column and its data. Select the check box to Include comments for this Column. Included comment text can be edited offline.
  3. Select the file delimiter, Tab.
  4. Select whether to Include Hidden Information in the downloaded data. Hidden information includes columns and students that have been hidden from the view in the downloaded file.
  5. Select the location for the download and click Submit.

Download Grades

  1. On the next Download Grades page, click the DOWNLOAD button and save the file to your computer. DO NOT change the file name while saving, as the Grade Centre needs the information it contains to deliver it to the appropriate column when uploading.

Note: If you open the file in Excel and find that the leading zeros for Usernames are not appearing, then follow these instructions on how to restore those zeros in order to be able to successfully upload the file back into the Grade Centre.

How to format the spreadsheet and correctly upload results

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Instructors can upload grades from an Excel spreadsheet or a Comma-delimited file. Data must be formatted very specifically to upload correctly and be synched with existing Grade Centre data.

To upload your updated Grade Centre data:

  1. From the action bar of the Grade Centre, point to Work Offline and select Upload.

    Grade Centre Upload
  2. Click on Choose File button and select the file on your computer.
  3. Select the Delimiter Type - Tab.
  4. Click Submit to upload the selected file

    Upload Grades

  5. Review the list of data from the file to be uploaded on the Upload Grades Confirmation page. Use the check boxes to de-select any data to be excluded from the upload. Using this method, it is possible to upload only the desired columns of data from the file.
  6. Review the Data Preview Column to ensure the correct data is being uploaded. Data that appears incorrect can denote an improperly formatted file. The Data Preview will only show a sample of the data in each column in the file.
  7. Click Submit to confirm and upload the file.

    Upload Confirmation
     

Note: Large files take significant time to process and a warning message will be displayed for any files that need extra time to process. To avoid long processing times, break up large files into separate uploads.

 

Technical Information
Data files are tab delimited with a file extension of .XLS - or comma delimited with a file extension of .CSV.

Each data file uploaded to the Grade Centre requires a header row with one record per line subsequently. Minimum fields needed to successfully upload data into the Grade Centre are the Username and Results fields.

Data in each column of comma-delimited files (file extension of .CSV) must be contained within a quote character, the most common being quotation marks ( " " ). Data in each column of tab-delimited files does not require a quote character.

UTSOnline recommends using tab-delimited files for uploading into the Grade Centre to avoid having to use quote characters and because tab-delimited files open directly in Microsoft Excel.

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