Setting up your digital assignment

Which technology or platform?

For essays or file uploads to be marked by staff, Moodle Assignment or Turnitin Assignment.

• • To decide between UCL technologies, see 'Choosing the right assessment platform'. 
  • A further detailed comparison of Moodle Assignment and Turnitin.
  • To set up, see our Moodle Resource Centre guides on Moodle Assignment and Turnitin Assignment.
  • Contact your School's Digital Education Advisor to discuss settings.
  • Generate test Moodle users and try out your setup from a student point-of-view.

For work which will be peer marked, use Moodle Workshop to make the allocations and apply deadlines according to your settings (we don't recommend Turnitin Peermark currently).

For tests (including examinations), Moodle Quiz has a highly configurable range of question types for testing and self-testing, and is good for providing individualised feedback. Students can be involved in setting up their own multiple choice questions using Peerwise: http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz.

For online exhibitions and other web-based work, UCL offers MyPortfolio (Wordpress to come).

Consider setting up all your assignments in Moodle so that the feedback you give displays to students and persona tutors in the Moodle MyFeedback Report.

What to tell students

Instructions are crucial - use the Description field in your assignment's settings for these.  Be concise - link out or attach any other materials or details needed.

Ensure students know how to upload work (e.g. link to Digital Education instructions for students), confirm that their work has been successfully uploaded, and where and when to expect feedback and marks.

Moodle and Turnitin Assignments prompt you to enter a Due Date and time - this will display to students on the assignment itself and also on Moodle's front page, as well as in blocks on the Moodle My Home page (e.g. Calendar, Upcoming Events).

To let students know how a given assignment contributes to their overall mark, you can set this up in Moodle Gradebook and direct students' attention there, and to where this information appears in your module handbook.

Check your instructions display as intended by generating a Moodle Test Student account.

Be clear about assessment criteria

Both Turnitin and Moodle Assignment enable assessment criteria - these both communicate to students what good work is, and also allows markers to give feedback which refers to these descriptors.

• Moodle Assignment Rubric.
• Turnitin Assignment Rubric.
• Moodle Marking Guide.
• Turnitin Grading Form.
• Moodle Workshop peer marking activity gives students a practice marking opportunity.

Giving students feedback they can use

Let students know

Students usually need to be guided to engage with feedback.

• • Via the Announcements Forum of that particular Moodle space; students receive these messages by email, and you could enable the Latest News block to display most recent messages on your Moodle area's front page.
  • Via social media if you use it. Again, you can display this in a sidebar block on your Moodle area front page.

Help students work with their feedback

• Practical guidance on enacting educational principles with assessment technologies.
• Arena Centre Assessment and Feedback Quickguides.

Feedback only, without numeric marks?

To engage students with feedback, consider temporarily withholding the numeric mark. The Moodle Gradebook lets you multi-upload feedback and marks separately, or you can do this student-by-student if your cohort is smaller.

Feedback-only rubrics? When using Moodle Rubrics, Moodle prompts you for numeric points, but if you want to use your rubric to give feedback without a numeric grade then you set the Rubric to hide numeric marks from students, and set the Gradebook to hide the final calculated grade from students.

Further information

• Assessment and feedback mythbusting panel - a write-up
• Audio feedback
• Building Moodle quizzes quickly
  • Generating a Moodle question bank using the Maths Quiz GUI
• Building quizzes outside of Moodle
• Consistent student feedback in digital assessment
  • How rubrics display to students
• Coversheets to encourage reflection on feedback
• Credit Bearing assessment & feedback
  • Typed Essay-style Examination Options
    • UCL Exams on Laptops project summary - 2009-10
• Diagnostic assessment & feedback
• Enacting educational principles with assessment technologies - a practical guide
• Formative assessment & feedback
• How to merge PDF documents
• NUS Charter on Feedback & Assessment - The Ten Principles
• Peer assessment and feedback
• Plagiarism
• Tips for developing good Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
  • Moodle quiz description template
• WebPA guidance

Educational guidance

• UCL Arena Centre Quick Guides on Assessment

For further guidance on technologies used in assessment and feedback please see: 

• JISC: http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/62880549/Resources%20and%20guidance
• Reading University's Assessment tool kit: http://www.reading.ac.uk/engageinassessment
• NUS Feedback and Assessment Charter: http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/asset/news/6010/FeedbackCharter-toview.pdf

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