Assignment

Assorted comments.

1. Re: the presets thing. No other bit of UI in Moodle works that way. The requirement you are trying to implement is a good one, but I think you need to find a better way to do it.

2. Well, with the new wiki in 2.0 (and new workshop), the module went on being called wiki, and successful upgraded from previous versions. Why not keep the name mod_assignment in the same way?

(On the other hand, forumng installs along-side forum. It does not upgrade old instances during install, instead, there is an option that you can use later to convert any forum to a forumng.) If you have to go for another name, I would choose mod_assign, or mod_assignmentng (like forumng). You are not allowed digits like 2 in internal plugin names.

It will be easier to comment more once you have more of the proposed design.

Thanks Damyon,

Keen to see the progress being made on these issues as I have also had requests for several of them - the primary ones for us being the receipts for assignments submitted and TurnItIn (plagiarism) integration although i think that knowing that issues such as blind marking etc. are also being developed as part of a single module will also prove popular with the teaching staff here.

If I can do anything to help with the work (testing etc.) then please let me know.

Richard

For us, the improved ability to deal with large cohorts of students submitting assignments is very interesting. Being able to download all submissions in one go and upload comments and grades via a speadsheet would improve the adoption of electronic assignment submission. This would be a real step forward.

Hi Damyon,

This sounds very encouraging. We are doing some work with Lancaster University in the UK and the planned changes tick off quite a significant number of the gaps which are there are the moment. We hope to be able to support you in this development.

Some things which I don't see much mention of but are relevant to us

• More flexibility for late submissions (e.g. allow late submissions for a week after deadline date only, au)
• Conditional release of feedback

I have attached a brief feature list which was compiled for by Lancaster University for some of their needs (independently of the work you have been doing) for info about their needs.

Thanks,

Dan

Excellent, we welcome this development and the opportunity to provide feedback.

Firstly I think the amalgamation of the four assignment types into one is the right way to go.

I've looked at the wiki page (http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Assignment ) and see most of our wishes are recognised though one is out of scope.

There are many things listed which we would dearly like to have in the assignment tool but if I had to list my top 5, here's what we have prioritized:

1. Ability to set a second due date (for the end of the late period) .
2. Ability to blind mark (aka anonymous marking)
3. Ability to second mark/moderate before the grade is released (and for there to be a way of manually setting second marking as complete - in other words not have to second mark all submissions).
4. Ability to set defaults (i.e. number of files to be submitted, send for marking (Yes/No), allow late submissions (Yes/No) etc, so these don't have to be addressed every time an assignment is created.
5. Ability to pre-populate the Description text box with default formatted text (so all an institutions' assignments can carry the same information and point to an 'assignment brief' file for information specific to any particular assignment.

Good Luck and have a merry and peaceful Christmas.

Bob Ridge-Stearn.
Newman University College, Birmingham.

Hi Damyon,

This is a great!

Use case 3 (Anonymous marking) and 11 (second marking process) are two areas that we have identified as being key! To further flesh out Use case 11 we have the following process.

Use case 11

• Student submits work
• Marker grades and leaves feedback
• Second marker, checks grades and feedback - makes any amendments
• Second Marker, releases grades to student(s), thus locking the assessment so no changes can be made

In addition to this it would be useful if the module would tell the student where in the process their assessment is; ie. awaiting marking, awaiting moderation etc...

Also is the plan that these functions would work across all assignment types?

Regards

Mark 

At our school (and, I believe many others) the easiest method for submitting an assignment that is to be critiqued and potentially returned for resubmission is through Google Docs. I would be disappointed if this were not included in the new assignment interface as an option.

Great work Damyon,

Much of what we would like to see in the assignments module has been included as in-scope which is great news!

If we had to prioritise, our list would look something like this (I tried to limit it to 5 but just couldn't):

1. Ability to set extension dates for individual students, have this new date visible to markers and ensure that submission isn't flagged as 'late'

**2. Set an end date for late submissions (cut-off date). Any submission after the due date should be flagged/highlighted as 'late'

3. Team/group assignments

*4. Block unacceptable file types. Priority is nasties at system level (eg. lnk), others at assignment level (lower priority)

5. Blind marking

6. Ability to turn the student declaration on/off as an assignment setting. (I have added a note to http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Assignment)

**7. Better handling of resubmissions. Provide the ability for the marker to flag students as being eligible for a resubmit. It is possible to use the 'revert to draft' function, however the terminology and function is not quite right. Perhaps a function that operates in a similar way but uses resubmission terminology...with the ability to set a new due date for the resubmit.

*Currently listed as out-of-scope
**Not currently listed

We also really like the addition of rubrics to assignments and would like to see this functionality extended to allow each achievement level being given a mark range - eg Unsatisfactory = 0-9, Outstanding 16-20 etc. The marker could then apply some judgement and allocate marks within this range. Not sure whether this is in or out of scope.

Cheers,
Grette

Where an assignment has been submitted as an attached file, perhaps an MD5 signiature of the file should be created and sent as part of the recipt and recorded in Moodle. This way all parties can verify that the assignment subbitted is the one that recipt was generated for.

Maybe related to Online Text (case10), but option that the submission is a URL.

This will allow portfolio addresses or website/blog addresses or even SLURLs to be easily entered and maybe verified.

--

I'm also looking at how the cases are building - should the options when the assignment is set up by the tutor be divided into sections such as

1. Set Assignment Brief (and dates, groups etc)

2. Set Submission type (text/file/URL/other/third party)

3 Set Marking/Grading type

4 set Feedback Type.

in the sense that it is likely that someone is going to want a combination that has not been considered. This would allow the user to independently set the 4 sets of critea.

--

Case 2 - starter file. As well as a file, can we have a URL field to link to a brief if it's held elsewhere/on another system?

We have been working of the spec for an "assessment brief" module which is entirely seperate from the moodle/turnitin/mahara/physical atrefact/exam/other  assignment submission process. This is designed to allow tutors and quality staff to develop assessment, approve them, and then publish them to students (including via moodle).
It is envisaged that there will be a field to link to the assignment if it is online somewhere and also integration such that if it is a moodle assignment cross linking/data sharing can take place (ie pre-fill some of the form fields).
This is still in the design stage (business process) and only a very simplistic proof of concept is coded for moodle 1.9 however I'm happy to share when we've got a bit closer to it making sense.

--

I've asked the team here to have a think on Assignment changes for 2.3 so maybe some more input to come.

Roger

Hi,

Great to see you taking this work forwards Damyon

Is there any more detail for the wiki page's Design and Implementation Plan sections that hasn't made it to the page?

A question for anyone: Am I right in thinking that, when mod_assignment (the old one) is removed, I will still be able to use a customised version of it by reinstating the files?

Background: I'm trying to decide the best approach to porting my group's customised version of mod_assignment from 1.9 to 2.x:

1. Port existing module as-is, using mod_assignment
2. Re-build based on mod_assign, taking advantage of it's new features (which cover some of my customisations)

Naturally I'd like to take option #2 as the forward-looking choice, but this will depend on how feature development progresses - so I need to consider #1 as a route, and whether mod_assignment deprecation would be a problem.

I'm taking a look at https://github.com/netspotau/moodle-mod_assign to get a feel for working with it.

Cheers,
Dave.

Hi Damyon,

Its great to see this work going ahead. The Lightwork team is also working to include Lightwork in Moodle 2.3 core (see http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=187818) and it will be great to work with you to integrate our changes.

I noticed that your specifications talk about extending the zip download feature to support offline marking. Lightwork provides full support for offline marking which is much more than just uploading/downloading of zip files and so I feel that it would be good to include the integration of Lightwork in your specification for offline marking.

We've also done a lot of work developing the Team assignment type that implements all of the requirements that you have listed. We decided against using the existing groups/grouping structure for implementing teams since it was too restrictive. Instead we created separate team, team_student tables. The team assignment type allows students to create their own teams (I don't think you have included this as a requirement) which we also found to be important. Please have a look at what we have done at http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=3780 and http://lightwork.massey.ac.nz/projects/show/moodle-teams. We are currently working on the Team assignment type for Moodle 2.2.

Cheers, Paul

Hi Damyon,

I have had a couple of suggestions re improving some of the "Flinders Changes", notably:

1. Adding a "back to site" link on the submission confirmation screen (rather than relying on the breadcrumbs)

2. Adding the course name to the filename of the csv in the zip download (to avoid having multiple files of the same name and to assist in finding the desired csv at a later date).

Cheers

Grette

One thing that is very important, especially for the college environment, is to allow tutors to mark the work (i.e. PDF) live inside the web browser. A plugin called UploadPDF by Davo Smith provides this functionality as a Moodle add-on and it works wonders. 

Having experienced the old method of downloading files and uploading response files, to marking the work live inside the VLE browser, these features are keys for success:

• Ability to set file types for submission i.e. PDF only
• Ability to auto-attach a cover sheet (custom) with student details, id code and date uploaded (id code needs entering to agree)
• Ability to mark student work (annotate) inside the web browser
• Ability to revert to draft for a 2nd submission, attaching to the original annotated document

Hi Damyon and everyone,

Yesterday we had a very useful online meeting with the Electronic Assignment Management (EAM) consortium where we discussed the new Assignment changes and how they overlap with Lightwork and how we can work together. Following on from that meeting I thought it would be useful to share the Lightwork team's high level vision of how we see the new Assignment module and Lightwork working together to enhance and improve Moodle. It would be great to have feedback both from those at the meeting and the rest of the community to ensure that our visions are aligned.

The functionality of managing and allocating assignment submissions to markers was one of the topics that was discussed and since this is a key feature already implemented by Lightwork, I'll use it in the following scenario to explain our vision for assignment marking in the Moodle assignment module.

In Moodle
=======
1) An assignment is created
2) The teachers (marking managers and markers) can access it and view the list of students who can submit assignments.
3) The marking manager could choose to create a rubric on which the marking would be based. The rubric would be published for the students to view.
4) The marking manager could choose to allocate students to markers for marking. This could be done manually or via an algorithm.
5) Students commence submitting assignments (if a rubric is being used then this would normally follow on from rubric publication)
6) Markers begin marking the submissions of the students that have been assigned to them
7) Markers finish marking and submit their marking to the manager for review
8) The marking manager releases the marking back to the students via gradebook

Lightwork
=========
Any of the teachers (marking managers or markers) may choose to use Lightwork to perform all or some of steps 2-4 and 6-8 described above. They may wish to use Lightwork instead of the Moodle web interface because:
a) They wish to work offline
b) They wish to take advantage of Lightwork's ability to manage locally, all the files and students assigned to them for marking.
c) They wish to easily create and manage their student feedback and annotations
d) They wish to take advantage of Lightwork's ability to generate feedback PDF documents based on a rubric

I believe that the key to achieving all of the above is to incorporate Lightwork's marking management database tables and logic into the new assignment module. Please let me know what you all think and whether our visions are aligned.

Cheers, Paul

Hi everyone,

As we discussed, I have set up our Lightwork Moodle 2.1 development site with the Team assignment type so that you can see how it could fit our needs for Team assignment in the new assignment module.

The site can be accessed at http://lightwork-dev.massey.ac.nz. The course is "301 Social Environment" where I have created "Social Env team assignment 1". There are currently 4 teams:

Team 1 - This has 2 student members. Membership is now closed because they have submitted the final submission for marking.
Team 2 - This has 2 student members. Membership is now closed because they have submitted the final submission for marking.
Team 3 - This has 2 student members. Nothing has been submitted yet
Team 4 - This has 2 student members. Nothing has been submitted yet

In order to test this I would suggest logging in as another student. Select the help icons for an explanation of the various actions. You can use any of the following student logins (they all have password "password"):

jbarry, abashir, cbates, jbeader, jbears, gbell, abellman, rboyd, ycao, jcarter, mchoa

Once you login and access the team assignment as one of the above students you could:
1) Create your own team
2) Join one of the existing teams (where membership is still open)
3) After joining a team (you can only join one) you could submit an assignment for marking

You could also test team assignment as a teacher. The teacher login is cchadwic with password "password". After opening the assignment you will see that you can view and mark the submissions:
1) By team - where you give a single mark to the whole team
2) By team members - where you give individual marks to team members

If you wish to experiment further you could also create a new team assignment.

Please remember that this version of team assignment has been ported from the Moodle 1.9 version and so there are still a few bugs that need to be addressed. Note also that the current version is designed to allow students to create the teams. Due to popular demand we also plan a modification to allow teachers to create teams and have more control over membership.

Looking forward to your feedback,
Paul

As the discussion here seems more on a usability level then development level I am not sure if these comments go here or should go elsewhere (Dev forum, MDL issue?), so feel free to point me elsewhere.

What I am missing is the extensibility of the new assignment module.
All I found was that it was deemed an 'Optional requirement'.

The system I currently work on has quite a bit of core changes.
A good number of these are in the code that handles the way an assignment is implemented.

All of that was done, just so I could change part of the mod_form for an assignment, have it submit to my slightly changed submit/data processor and restyle the L&F of the form.

I had to tinker with the /course/mod_edit.php because there are hardcoded paths in there like;

$modlib = "$CFG->dirroot/mod/$module->name/lib.php";
$modmoodleform = "$CFG->dirroot/mod/$module->name/mod_form.php";
redirect("$CFG->wwwroot/mod/$module->name/view.php?id=$cm->id");

I had to add code to change the value of $module->name back and forth in specific places.

Because of this I also had to create a new module which extends the standard assignment module. But because there is no real way to extend the standard assignment, I had to copy a lot of code and make it call the standard code. The lib.php of this newly created module is a good example of what I would have liked to avoid;

require_once(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)).'/assignment/lib.php');
function mymodulenameassignment_supports($feature) {
   return assignment_supports($feature);

Now if I could have extended the assignment module class, only change those parts I needed to, and if there would have been 'factory functions' to generate the above mentioned hardcoded paths, which I could then also have overridden where needed,

my guess is that the assignment module would have been flexible enough to easily extend it to do just about whatever without needing full copies or the subtypes.

Oh, and another feature I would like is to have the mod_form use a renderer I can override where needed

Is any of this implemented, if not are there plans to, or am I just missing something and is this flexibility/extensibility really not needed?

Anne.

In most Open Source projects and initiatives with this much discussion, varying-wide opinions - there are usually community calls to find a consensus & collaborate? 

I am concerned that the team_assignment table replacing the groups will tie our hands with regard to groupings. 

If this change was made because students can't modify/create groups, then why are we not exploring an addition set of permission/role assignment instead?  I have a lot of questions like this.  But I also have time to help answer them & contribute. 

Can we have a call?  Drupal has some handy IRC channels - Mozilla uses Etherpad install...  Moodle could benefit in this situation.  I can volunteer to isntall Etherpad on my domain if the main contributors could commit to attending?

I would like to see two new aspects to assignments:

1. Setting different due dates for different groups (or groupings).
2. Allowing a response file for the offline assignment.

Thanks for letting us have the opportunity to ask.

Hi,

In which version of Moodle the team assignment feature is plan to be released? I can't seem to find this information in tracker or documentation.

Thx!

Jean-Philippe

Hello Damyon,

I hope this is the right forum for this question about blind grading.

Can you tell us how you propose to identify students during the 'blind' period? From what I can find online, it looks like a hash of student ID or username would be used.

However, in some cases it would be useful to use candidate numbers to identify students instead, as that is often the way universities and colleges are already doing their 'blinding'.

It would be tricky - you'd have to have a new permission, denied to teachers, that would allow someone to view and edit the candidate number assigned to each student.

Just wondered if it had been considered and what you think of the idea?

Cheers

Steve

Hello Damyon,

am I right if I assume that the assignment 2.2 module will be supported at least until the release of moodle version 2.5? I can't find anything about it in the moodle 2.4 release notes...