Core/Assignments - Submissions, discussions and corrections

MySchool has the possibility to manage student submissions (Homework) and discussions (Forums). Teachers can also upload corrected homework and share it with the student and their guardians. Students can submit text and file attachments for their assignments. This feature allows Teachers to centralise their students' work within the MySchool platform. They can manage student workload, determine hand-in dates, and store the returns as pieces of evidence for the new assessment module. To assist students during their projects and coursework, Teachers can open a discussion thread (Forum) for each assignment. 

How to access

To access these new features, you need to create a new assignment, open the assignment menu, and open the assignment grade grid. Homework submissions are managed on the assessment tab of an individual assignment.

Educators can also manage homework submissions and interact with the students via the forum within the VLE course resource pages. 

How does it work?

Teachers start by creating a new assignment. Make sure the mandatory fields are completed on the planning tab. The submissions and discussion options are available in the Options tab.

The submissions drop-down has four options available;

1. Do not accept

This is the default setting for assignments, and will not open the submission fields on the student portal.

2. Text only

This opens a text box in the student portal. Students can submit online text with formatting options. The result will appear in the assessment tab of the assignment. Note that this will not be represented on the grade grid view.

 3. Attachments only

Selecting this submission option allows students to upload a file to their portal. This again is stored on the assessment tab.

4. Text & Attachments

This allows for both a text submission and a file upload.

Admins note that if you wish for a different submission type to be the default, then contact our support team, and we can quickly and easily set this to whichever option you wish.

Let's look at the student portal

Students click on the Assignment menu header or their My Courses. By default, the student's active assignments are classed as Due this week, Due next week, and Due after this week. 

Open the assignment, and the slide-over window appears. It allows students to enter their text with formatting and/or file submissions.

1. The text submission has a rich text entry field. Your students can create customised submissions using this formatting menu. There may be limitations when copying from other word editing programmes. We would advise students to enter their text submissions using the MySchool options available.

2. If file submissions have been enabled, the student selects add file and attaches it from their file explorer. 

3. If they wish to submit their work, then select the Submit button. If they wish to come back and amend the submission, then encourage them to Save as a draft. 

Assessing the submissions

As the course Teacher, the student's submissions are visible in the assessment tab of the assignment. Teachers can now add a grade, give feedback and return corrected work. Even if the submission is set to not accept, teachers can still attach a reply and send it back to the student. This is useful in case of set questions, sharing general advice, or giving set curriculum guidelines in relation to the assignment content.

If the assignment has a learning outcome attached, then the assignment will be recorded as evidence. Look at the subject specifications article to learn more about setting learning outcomes for your subject.

Once the assessment page is saved by the Teacher, the file will be available on the student and guardian portal.

If a student has wrongly submitted work, then Teachers can delete their submission using the red X, which will allow the student to reupload from their portal.

We can change the system settings to allow for one submission only from the students or allow them to submit multiple times. Please contact our support team to configure this for your school system.

It must be noted that students can always submit homework once, even if the due date has passed. However, Teachers can use an assessment status, Handed in late. The status can be assigned a different colour to make it stand out on the grade grid.

Time-stamped submissions

Following a suggestion submitted on our ideas board, we have implemented a timestamp for student submissions. This only works with submitted files. If your school is set up to accept multiple submissions, then the most recent submission time will show, not the history. Click on the i next to the file for the note to show the details. 

Discussion threads

Teachers may wish to open an online discussion forum for their students. They can provide guidance and assist them with research material, for example. This is available on the options tab of the individual assignment. The assignment must be saved first in order to apply a forum. Select Assignment only from the drop-down options. When the forum is open and applied, a text box will show on the options tab. All students attached to that assignment will be able to participate using their portals. 

Use the arrow icon on the right to validate the entry and publish this. If you wish to reply in line, then use the back arrow within the message thread. Note that you can only delete your own comments. To refresh the thread, then use the arrow highlighted next to the discussion group title.

Assessments combined 

All of MySchools' tool kit is designed to work together to facilitate communication and administration, and provide the best for online learning. Here are some combined tips to improve your student engagement and assessment process:

• If you have learning outcomes attached to the subject, then an assignment can be used to show evidence for the end-of-year assessment.

• Check to see if Topics are enabled for the subject. Topics are used within the VLE course resource page to group lesson content and assignments together. They can be a great way to organise your assignment grade grid.

• Assignments do not always have to be homework, projects or set work. They can be used to record lesson content. Combine this with an achievement scale based on effort or participation levels, so that you can give feedback and encourage the students outside of the classroom

• Use the corrected homework to hand out lesson notes to your students instead of printing them. 

• Combine great feedback by logging positive behaviour using the Behaviour event log and positive status.

• Students may not all have access to word processing software on their preferred devices. Encourage them to use the text submission part for smaller tasks for assignments