Moodle in English: Best way to handle student editing of submitted assignments?

I am using Moodle 2.5, and recently upgraded to the new version of the Assignment activity.

Since then, we have gotten a large number of complaints from students that professors have told them they did an assignment incorrectly (such as submitting the wrong file), but they are no longer able to go in and resubmit the assignment, since it was already submitted for grading.

I know that professors could use the "revert the submission to draft" button to allow students to submit a new version, but our professors are not technically savvy, and so in many instances we end up having to do that for them, which is creating quite a burden for our admins.

I thought today that I could turn on the "Enable Send for Marking button", and that way the students' submissions would stay as drafts. From what I understand, professors can grade the drafts, they just won't show up in the gradebook.

I am wondering though, Would professors get notified of a newly submitted draft via email? Ideally, we would want them to be notified so that they could do grading as usual.

More broadly, is there a better solution to this problem? Ideally, I would like things to go back to the way they were in the earlier version of the Assignment activity so that students could continue to edit their assignments after they were submitted.

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Re: Best way to handle student editing of submitted assignments?

by Drake Pitts - Sunday, 16 February 2014, 4:02 AM

The current flow of activity for assignment submission is as follows:

Student uploads file(s) to the Moodle assignment
- Student may revise the uploaded file(s) until completing step 2.
Student confirms submission of Moodle assignment.

I feel like the problem with this setup is that step 2 is redundant given the fact that a deadline for the assignment exists. It would be better for the system to automatically confirm the submission of whatever is uploaded on the passing of the deadline. Perhaps even better would be to not confirm submission on the deadline but instead never require that the assignment be submitted, and then provide information about when the last upload/revision was made, so the instructor could determine whether they will accept the assignment given its upload date relative to the assignment deadline.

In truth, the whole "confirm submission" step is superfluous. There seems to be little benefit to either the student or the instructor.

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Re: Best way to handle student editing of submitted assignments?

by ben reynolds - Sunday, 16 February 2014, 6:32 AM

Drake,

As a writing teacher, I understand the back and forth work flow of "submit" and "revert to draft." The idea is there's a dialogue BEFORE the deadline. Then the deadline steps in and that ends the dialogue.

In practice, we don't use it in our writing courses. It would take a bit of training for the rhythm, but also, our curriculum includes revision already, making this workflow extraneous or painful, depending on who you are

What you're looking to do, I think, is turn OFF submit for marking and just use assignment. Then you get goodies, especially in 2.6, like extending the deadline, allowing late submissions, multiple submission, etc.

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Re: Best way to handle student editing of submitted assignments?

by ben reynolds - Sunday, 16 February 2014, 6:26 AM

Our production server is 2.5+

We don't use the send for marking option because about 50% of students don't ever click the button "submit," and so instructors don't know that they have something to grade.

We do use multiple file uploads - usually 3, and if the wrong file is uploaded, the student is notified and can then upload the correct file (they can also delete the previous file by default).

In 2.6, instructors see notices on the home page of assignments in various courses awaiting grading. Don't know how that works for send for marking: You have assignments that need attention

Hmm, rethinking this. Send for marking is the only way you can have a "revert to draft" button. So, your "send for marking" is already turned ON.

If you turn it off, instructors get notified when students touch the assignment from the student side. Just tested this on a fake student who already had a grade and submitted two files in October. Submission settings:

Require students click submit button No
Require that students accept the submission statement Yes
Attempts reopened Never < -- !
Maximum attempts not specified

Student could edit submission, upload a 3rd file, save and exit. Instructor got an email "CTYonline Student1 has updated their assignment submission for 'Test Adv Uploading' at Sat, 15 Feb 2014, 5:08 PM"

AND the assignment tells the instructor there is a submission to be graded. Even though the assignment told the student

Submission status	Submitted for grading
	This assignment is not accepting submissions

Probably, this is not the way it is supposed to work, but it sure seems to fit your needs for the moment.

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Re: Best way to handle student editing of submitted assignments?

by Jon Fila - Monday, 17 February 2014, 11:23 PM

In my courses under Submission settings on the Assignment I set the Attempts reopened to Automatically until passed. Then I set the Maximum attempts to Unlimited. In the gradebook I click on categories and items and then the settings icon for that activity. There you can set the grade to pass, which I typically set at 100% of whatever points are allowed on that activity. That way students that don't get 100% on an attempt automatically have their submission re-opened for editing.

The only warning I have about this is that if your completion tracking for that assignment is to only be marked complete when a student receives a grade then the student will see a red X in their progress indicator.

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