Downloading and assessing assessments
You can download assignments from students to assess them while offline. After you have assessed these assignments offline, you can update the changes made onto Brightspace. Then you can assign a score and publish the assessment and feedback for your students to see.
- Navigate to Activities in the navbar of your course.
- Click Assignments.
- Click on the assignment you want to assess.
- Filter the assignments by student (User) or group (Groups). This way you can easily download all assignments from the students in a specific group (this is useful if there are multiple teachers in the course that assess assignments; now you can assess one or multiple groups per teacher). Click Apply. If you have chosen Groups you now have to select the group of which you want to see the assignments.
- Click Show Search Options for more filter options.
- Select Users with submissions in the drop-down menu if you only want to see the students who have handed in their assignment.
- Select the submissions you want to assess offline. Select all assignments at once by clicking the box in the upper left column.
- Click Download. A new window will appear.
You can only download the submissions of students that are displayed on the current page of your screen. At the bottom right side you can adjust the maximum amount of displayed students to 200. This means that you can download a maximum of 200 student submissions at once.
- Click on the file name to download the Zip file onto your computer (or another device). The download will appear at the bottom of this window.
- Click Close to close the window.
- Open the Zip file. You will see a separate folder for each student. You can now open the submissions and assess them in the desired program.
- Save your feedback in this folder (do not change the file's name of location).
Do no change the structure and the names of the folders and files within the download (including the index). Otherwise it will be more difficult to import the files back to Brightspace.
Students can hand in their assignments in different file types, such as a Word file or a PDF file. If you want your files to be of a specific type, you have to let your students know beforehand (for example a Word file, so that you can use the correction function in Word when providing feedback).
You can upload the files onto Brightspace for each separate student, or all at the same time. If you upload them all at once, the assessed submissions will appear as an attachment to the already submitted assignments in Brightspace.
Uploading assessment per student
- Navigate to Activities in the navbar of your course.
- Click Assignments.
- Click on the assignment of which you have assessed the submissions.
- Click on the submission that you want to add the offline feedback file to.
- Enter the score the student has acquired.
- Click the Add a File icon.
- Click My Computer.
- Click Upload and search on your computer for the file you want to upload.
- Click Add. The feedback is now added.
- Click Publish/Update to release the feedback so that the student can see it.
- Click Save Draft/Retract if you do do not want the student to see the feedback yet.
When you have attached a grade item to the assignment, Brightspace will automatically enter the grade (score) in the grade book when the feedback is published. The feedback will also appear in the grade book, but the attachments can only be viewed or downloaded through the assignment submission.
Bulk upload
You can also upload all assessments at once. The assessments will then show as an attachment for the assignment concerned.
- Navigate to Activities in the navbar of your course.
- Click on Assignments.
- Click on the assignment of which you have assessed the content.
- Click on Add Feedback Files.
- Click Upload and search for the Zip file with the assessed assignments. Note that this is the same Zip folder with assignments that needed assessment that you downloaded at the beginning.
- Select Overwrite Duplicate Files if you want to replace identical files.
- Click Add. At the bottom of the screen you will see a notification when the files have been added. You will also see how many files have been added. Note that this can take a while, based on the number and size of the files.
Click on an assignment to view the attachment and publish it if needed, which makes it visible for the student.
Sometimes Brightspace will not be able to recognize the files you upload and therefore will not be able to link it to a student. You will then be asked if you want to match the files to the students manually.
If you upload feedback it will automatically be set to Draft. Students cannot immediately see the attachments with feedback. You can publish the feedback separately for each student, or all at once.
Click Publish All to publish the feedback for all students.
If you have previously published feedback or an assessment for a student the status will be Published. The student can only see the new feedback, however, once you republish it (Update). You can do this with Publish All or in the assignment itself.