Assignment Plugin Ideas

Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -
Number of replies: 32
There is a post in the journal forum from tom (here) asking for assignment plugin ideas so how about it? I have been sitting on a few ideas myself which I will post to get the ball rolling.

Please discuss / critisise / post your own smile I hope to get funding to develop some of these ideas so the more comments in the melting pot the better.

Dialogue after assignment upload

Purpose: To provide the option to allow students to reflectively comment upon teacher feedback which could turn into a dialogue between the two.

  • Option to allow/disallow dialogue in assignment settings
  • Tick box for 'teacher would like you to respond to comments' (unchecked by default)
  • Teacher (only) can close a dialogue
  • Teacher can repoen a closed dialogue
  • Email notification
  • Student can start dialogue with, say, upload to provide additional information
  • Very similar to current dialogue mod (needs to be independant)

Mock-up attached



Attachment assignment_001.jpg
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -

Writing framework for assignment uploads - student

Purpose: To allow students to comment online on different aspects of their uploaded work.

  • Teacher can specify number of comment elements required
  • Each comment area (text / HTML box) has an associated question
  • Possibly allow other form interfaces for responses (drop down, radio, etc)
  • Attached to the file upload screen or possibly prompted on a second screen after upload.

Mock up attached


Attachment assignment_002.jpg
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas: student reflection

by Tom Murdock -

Ah, interesting.  This is additional information about the learning experience that the student attaches to the activity, right?

I can imagine a number of ways that allowing reflectiveness at this stage in the process would be useful to teachers and learners.

We'd want this to be flexible, right?  Like "Custom reflection," just as we have custom scales?
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In reply to Tom Murdock

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas: student reflection

by Darren Smith -
I got the idea partially from the workshop module where a teacher can add custom marking criteria so yes you would be able to add your own bands and how ever many you wanted.
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -

Marking Framework for assignment uploads - teacher

Purpose: Critereon based marking similar to workshop

  • Teacher can add many criteria for an assignment
  • Drop down responses linked to seperate criteria
  • Possibly marks set by teacher linked to comments in drop down box
  • Each criteria has a traffic light value set by teacher (red for not submitted)
  • comment bank where you can double click (see workshop)

Mock up attached

Attachment assignment_003.jpg
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -

Marking Framework for assignment uploads - teacher


and/or this ...

Alternative Mock

Attachment assignment_004.jpg
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- custom rubrics

by Tom Murdock -
These two mock-ups remind me of the excellent custom rubrics that we have in the workshop and exercise modules.

I'd like a space in Moodle where we can create these and add them to all activities -- not just the assignment. Currently I imagine choosing "Rubrics" from the drop-down grading menu of an activity (just as now we see numeric grades + custom scales). Could rubrics just be a different flavor of custom scales?
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In reply to Tom Murdock

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- custom rubrics

by Enrique Castro -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Hi Tom,
I do like rubrics, and the above mockups. I use a similar scheme for grading projects/assignments in my teaching.

But I see the Rubric/band/section grading scheme as done in Exercise and Workshop rather cumbersome. And this is a widespread feeling in my University. Looking at module usage, we have hundreds of assignments, but only a few (<10 and that include "testing" instances). The custom grading in those modules tend to put them apart. And, in the end, those modules do have to "reduce" their grading to a regular moodle scale in order to be recorded by gradebook. So I do not see the point in making that very different interfaces to grade.

I think that the table proposed by Darren above could be done using regular moodle Custom Scales. All that is need is an assignment plugin that may allow to associate several gradings (each in his own scale) to one submitted work. To be fully useful, a help button by the actual grading menu could help to remember (to teacher and students) what that names appear on the scale actually mean. In the below image, the info button for bibliography might open a popup with the explanation
Excellent: relevant information sources are cited within the text and organized in a well formated reference list
unformatted: the reference list is not formatted uniformly, according to the style rules that apply.
inaccurate: previous work is cited randomly. Relevant sources are missed and irrelevant ones included.
Non-existent: information sources are not identified within text

I see that this approach would allow easy re-use of those scales. For example if you assign several such works to students during the course, or if you teach several courses. Now, every time you add an Exercise instance you need to re-do the grading scheme.
Perhaps the first thing to actually use rubric-like custom scales is to get used to write down full-detailed descriptions of the scale items (that not necessarily need to for a "scale", just items) in the "description" field that do exist in current implementation.


- Enrique -

Attachment grading1.jpg
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In reply to Enrique Castro

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- custom rubrics

by Peter Evans -

I think rubrics have a lot to offer the teacher and the student.

The approach I have taken is to get Moodle to do the assignment submission, and return and maintain the grade and do the rubric outside Moodle in Word. That way I get more flexibility with the rubric and the marks and students can also use the rubric to self assess their work.

A YouTube video demonstrating this is at:

Peter Evans

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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by John Rodgers -
Multiple criteria marking would be a big plus from our (Ontario) perspective.  If there is voting going on, count mine several times please.
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -

Also (no mock ups I'm affraid)

Image bank

Emoticons assigned to assignement feedback so student can quickly glance at the work to see what the teacher thinks of it. They should reflect the effort the student has made and not the ability / grade. Efforticons!

  • Really happy
  • Happy
  • Content
  • Could do better
  • Disapointed
  • Angry

Progress of resubmissions

Purpose: To provide evidence of assignment progress during a resubmission.

  • Previous assignments are not overwritten
  • Teacher comments specific to file version
  • Teacher can delete previous uploads - student can't

Moderation notes on assignments

Purpose: To allow teachers to add moderation notes to a piece of work. Generally student belong to another teacher or teacher leaving notes for other teachers to read.

  • Not visable to student
  • Only visable to teacher / admin
  • Optional - not always present
  • Possibly can form a dialogue between teachers
  • Unseen moderation notes should be displayed in marking block?
  • Unseen moderation notes should be emailed to the receiving teacher?
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Tom Murdock -
I hope that it is ok that I'm reviewing each of these.  They are good ideas!

IMAGE BANK
Efforticons make me laugh, but I can imagine uses for them.  Currently I just create a custom scale with those gradations (though I try to avoid telling the student that his lack of effort actually makes me angry. smile)  Still, making these into images rather than words might lend some empathy to the tasks.

PROGRESS OF RESUBMISSIONS
This is a powerful idea.  Similar to a wiki functionality, without learning weird wiki ways. wink
What if we created an assignment type called: MULTIPLE DRAFTS and just made a really nice grid of versions, dates, comments, etc..?
I could use this one yesterday.

MODERATION NOTES ON ASSSIGNMENTS
I think this is a great application for the "meta-tagged" messages that we discussed elsewhere.

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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- attaching messages to acivities

by Tom Murdock -
So this discussion has been handled here. Sounds like the idea is evolving into "tagging a message with a specific activity info" (so that occasional student/teacher messages can be stitched into the fabric of everyday activities).

This sounds promising. I like your mock-ups Darren. Can you post a shot of an interface idea where students or teachers would initiate such a discussion?


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In reply to Tom Murdock

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- attaching messages to acivities

by Darren Smith -
Yeah, I can do that!

I must warn you that my ideas are seperate from the direction Martin indicated in your link. Starting to play around with the concept a little more made me realise where he was coming from in terms of monitoring and dealing with all of of these extra messages (and reading the link he posted also made me think!).

Anyway, working with the new interface for consistency, how about simply an extra button for the teacher to click? Replies are highlighted the same way outstanding assignments are.
Attachment dialogue_001.jpg
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- attaching messages to acivities

by Darren Smith -
When the discuss / reply button is pressed a pop up appears in a very similar way to the new way of marking (Ignore the extra toolbar at the bottom!).

Attachment dialogue_002.jpg
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- attaching messages to acivities

by Darren Smith -
The student interface shouldn't really have pop ups and I wouldn't want a text entry box always there as this may encourage students to submit any old rubbish (imagine that!) so you could have an appear / disappear button like when you add a resource which would display the text / html area called something like add comments.

Of course I now need to rethink this a little based upon Martin's suggestion of linking comments to activities / resources through the new IM system. This doesn't really do it for me in this situation as I want the comments to be permanent and also the comments are linked to the grade. Nobody is suggesting putting the grade feedback into IM directly so this is where I am coming from.

Still don't think I have nailed it yet.

Thoughts?
Attachment dialogue_004.jpg
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- attaching messages to acivities

by Tom Murdock -
These are great screenshots and I can see the value in them.

So are we far-away from Martin's idea? Maybe. Because to see these messages, we would need to go to the individual activity pages, right? I could imagine difficulty in hunting down all of these discussions with students.

However, let's talk about the content of the discussions. If the content is simply a reflection on the assignment, it might make sense being a discrete notation attached to the activity. In this way, the reflection is part of the assessment -- part of the thing the teacher comments upon.

But that particular notation is different from a normal message exchange, I believe. Less of a dialogue and more a chance to comment on the process or to identify concerns/problems that the teacher should consider.
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In reply to Tom Murdock

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas -- attaching messages to acivities

by Darren Smith -
OK, I've had time to sleep on this particular issue sleepy

So are we far-away from Martin's idea? Maybe. Because to see these messages, we would need to go to the individual activity pages, right? I could imagine difficulty in hunting down all of these discussions with students.

Martin was just floating ideas around for 1.6 so yes this is a while away. That said, it's pointless me coming up with a solution which will become obsolete if/when messages linked to activities come into play.

However, let's talk about the content of the discussions. If the content is simply a reflection on the assignment, it might make sense being a discrete notation attached to the activity. In this way, the reflection is part of the assessment -- part of the thing the teacher comments upon.

Yes. I think I am talking about a number of different scenarios here:
  • Student reelection with submission
    • Possibly graded
    • Possibly one or a number of boxes to fill in
  • Dialogue with teacher concerning reflection
    • Possibly graded
    • 1 box per reply
  • General discussion with teacher about submission
    • Not graded
    • Not compulsory
    • opportunity to provide additional information with submission
    • Opportunity to discuss teachers comments / grade
The first two bullets are covered in my post (to a certain extent) with the title writing framework for assignment uploads - student.

Having slept on it I now feel the third point should not be separate from the teacher comments (In my screen caps I had two buttons) but integrated for both student and teacher. Also, I can see this killing 2 birds with one stone.

Current if I wish to add a second (or third, or forth ..) comment (especially after resubmission) I have to edit the original comment. I usually put a hr tag in to preserve the original comment but students get mixed up about which comment is the most recent so I have to write that in also for every submission.

How about every teacher comment has a new box and old comments can't be edited (like dialogue). If a student wishes to comment upon the feedback (if allowed in the assignment settings) then it will appear in between the teacher's comments. IE

Teacher comment
Teacher comment (resubmission)
Teacher comment (additional thoughts)
Student comment
Teacher comment (response to student comment)


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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Andy Hawkins -

I like the many ideas you have here.

How about adding the ability to link assignments into a sequence (called a 'pathway' or something?). A bit like a lesson but without branching and the need to be correct before progressing.

Each student would see a task and then submit a (new style) assignment. This would then trigger the next assignment (without needing a teacher response/assessment, or maybe with this as an option in the setup) and so on.

At the end, the student's work would be viewed by teacher for comment/assessment (and student for checking) in similar format to book module - sections/chapters with option to preview/print whole in single page to keep exam boards happy (if not the environment).

Hope this makes sense. Sorry if this is not the right place but it seemed to be a veritable plethora of imaginative ideas for the developing assignment module.

Andy

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In reply to Andy Hawkins

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -
That's an interesting concept. Conditional multiple file uploads. Very nice.

It may be interesting if these pathway assignments were in-line entries then moodle could combine them all at the end so the teacher would just have to mark one piece tongueout

Where you envisaging these assignments to have 1 deadline at the end or lots of little deadlines for the various stages? I would imaging the former would be easier to implement.
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Enrique Castro -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Hi Darren,
Have you seen the "Project Module" threads?
I think your ideas wil be valuable there, and you may find something interesting for you wink

- Enrique - 
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Andy Hawkins -

My first thoughts were that the multiple assigments were in-line (having just seen a thread about the 1.5 assignment module). I suppose it would be feasible to have a 'pathway' of logically linked uploaded (or offline) assignments, though there would be no end of path consolidated assessment/view/print facility.

As you say - a single assessment at the end may simplify more complex assignments - not least for the teacher wink. However, some comment/grade on each stage may also be appropriate in some contexts.

Deadlines - the tasks I have in mind would set one at the end - but this raises the idea of nested 'pathways'! (perhaps limited to 2-3 deep - else you may as well use a topic though this would lack the link and summary view)

Andy

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In reply to Andy Hawkins

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Andy Hawkins -

A further thought:

Would the linked assignments be:

  • one assignment with subtasks/uploads/etc OR
  • several pre-existing assignments linked by a separate structure

The latter would allow the same assignments to be used in different 'pathways' (simultaneously?).

Andy

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In reply to Andy Hawkins

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -
This week I have been collating (printed) GCSE project work and should send comments to the moderator.

I can see me using the example in your second bullet to link all of the project assignments in a course together to provide me with a list of marks and comments for each section which I can then print and attach to the project. I would then like to just pick another kids name from a drop down and print that one and so on. When electronic submission to the exam board comes in I could just paste these comments into their moderation boxes cool

Are there any specific situations you are thinking of, A?
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Mark Mead -

I'm avidly following all these interesting assignment threads with 1.5 on the way.  Thanks to A Hawkins for pointing me in the direction of this thread.

I am trying to do something similar.  I'm wondering if it is possible to make a single assignment module accept multiple submissions from students.  Hopefully, the assignments are logged by date and time. 

The idea is, my remedial and freshman students can receive some mentoring from senior AP students.  A student would be made a teacher, and accept essays out of the queue, and offering specific strategies for improving the draft.  Ideally, the same student could resubmit (this is where my problem starts) without erasing evidence of the previous essay.  This function would be especially important for record-keeping or if a student submits two different essays.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Mark 

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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Andy Hawkins -

The concept of a 'pathway' grew out of our use of Moodle for GCSE ICT coursework (non-UK readers - student practical/written work that counts toward final academic grade for a subject, usually in conjunction with a written exam. Some UK courses rely more on this in the form of a 'portfolio'. UK Exam boards are moving slowly towards electronic submission, but at present they largely like paper! Coursework is often broken down into sections or stages which in  turn have separate criteria and/or tasks)[Darren - is that a reasonable description?]

We set each section of coursework broken down into stages. Each stage would build towards a report (the final preview/print) for that section. The mark for that section would be required by the exam board. Some ideas elsewhere discuss selective grading (at present it seems you get everything in a text download, except comments).

ie similar to your needs.

Even better if we could somehow combine a selective aggregation of pupil assignment grades and comments (a bit like the student log but without the system bits) which could be used as the basis of information for parents etc. (sorry to throw in another idea)

A = Andy

 

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In reply to Andy Hawkins

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -

Hi Andy.

Which exam board are you with for GCSE ICT out of interest? We are with edexcel (switched from AQA about 4 year ago)

This year I changed the way I provide feedback to students. To save time (and to provide a them with a quick overview of improvements) I started to use a traffic light system in a spreadsheet. Basically I have the mark scheme set out for each section and red = not done / rubbish, black is borderline and green = criteria met. Also some space for comments next to each piece of criteria. See attachment big grin

The students loved this approach surprise and are demanding that all of my feedback be presented in the same fashion!

If you imagine each section is an assignment (identify, analyse and so on) then I would like to get moodle to allow me to mark basically the same way and then have a combined view of all comments / colours for me / student / moderators.

Thoughts?

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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Andy Hawkins -

Hello Darren

Sorry for delays in replying - tying up coursework loose ends etc.

We use OCR B for GCSE, and OCR ICT for As/A2. The structure of much GCSE coursework however is a sequence of tasks.

I have been reading other threads about activity linking - much of it too technical for me. This seems along the lines I was thinking with pathways, though it is very early days yet and not sure it includes single summative grading.

Like your traffic light system. I use something similar (not coloured) for A level.

It would be good to be able to bring together progress, comments, marks, grades and formative and summative comments within a course - downloadable to mailmerge with our admin system. Moodle already does much of this - hopefully 1.5 will get us that much closer.

Couple this with the interactive frameworks and dialogues, linked assignments (with summative grading) etc and there is an even more powerful tool to support most UK secondary teachers.

Andy

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In reply to Andy Hawkins

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Darren Smith -

Good to hear back from you - it's a busy time of year isn't it!

You may have noticed I was following activity linking with the same thoughts. Can't make my mind up whether I need that (and it does look good) or if the Moodle system Mike Churchward produced with 'completed' ticks is more what I need. I s'pose the good thing about moodle is I can try both!!!!!

It would be good to be able to bring together progress, comments, marks, grades and formative and summative comments within a course - downloadable to mailmerge with our admin system.

Your timing is great big grin. I just approached Mike Churchward this week concerning some assignment developments I have mentioned here along with ideas for reporting, stats and the like. Not so much for importation into our admin system - more for inline feedback to for staff AND students and also copy/paste into formal reports.

Your sentence puts in a nutshell what we are after. If you want to develop your ideas further and provide more specific requirements, screen caps, whatever then now would be a good time wink

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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Andy Hawkins -

I'll try and think it through and produce something more concrete over half term. (next week - if that timescale is OK)

Andy

[I am also replying privately.]

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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas. Avoid cache old files

by Oscar Garcia -
To prevent transparent proxies I suggest to add the date to the file name.

Here (I am from Spain) transparent proxies are very common and proxies often sent files that they are old cached versions.

In a separated thread I posted a useful patch to avoid cache proxies send old files.

Congratulations for the project and the mod smile
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Peter-Anne Wissema -
I've made the suggestion before, but it would be great to be able to assigne various activities (starting with asignements) to specific groups. It is already possible in the calendar, why not in some more places?
It would make a lot of teachers happy.
Also see bug 3075
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In reply to Darren Smith

Re: Assignment Plugin Ideas

by Francesco Tamagni -
Hi to all!

I'm working for a networking course, in italy. Discussing with a professor about using Moodle, we thought that would be a nice thing if it would be possible to group together Assignments related to each other. In fact allowing students to see a group of questions or uploads expanded together in the same page.

how can we do it? is there a simple way or it is a matter of rewriting something deeply? it is a stupid idea or somone else is already working on something similar?

thanks,

Francesco
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