Teacher Documentation (K12)

Evaluate assignments using the Assignments tool

The Evaluate Submission page enables you to evaluate and leave feedback on assignment submissions. It contains two main sections: The Submissions List panel and the Evaluation panel. Use the Evaluation panel to grade and provide comments on submissions. On paper submissions and observed in person assignments display only the Evaluation panel, as no submissions are made in Brightspace.

This is the lightbulb icon used for tips.

Tip: For more information about evaluating and adding feedback to assignments using a screen reader or keyboard-only navigation, refer to How assistive technology interacts with the inline grading experience.

Evaluate assignment submissions

You can either publish feedback immediately or save your feedback as a draft and release it later. This enables you to revise and review evaluations and publish your feedback to multiple users at the same time. You have the option to retract published feedback to provide an update to past evaluations, ensuring students access your most recent feedback.

Assignment submissions have status indicators to note the state of the evaluation.

A chart showing a matrix for the various status indicators in assignment evaluations

Figure: Status indicators change based on the type of assessment and the status of evaluations.

This is the paper note and pencil icon used for notes.

Note: You cannot publish or save your draft if the Overall Feedback field exceeds 300,000 characters. If the Overall Feedback field exceeds the character limit or if the Grade field contains an invalid grade, attempting to save or publish causes a dialog to appear with the tooltip "There is one or more errors in the information entered appears".

Check an evaluation status

When there are multiple evaluators assigned, you can check assignment status and additional information with hover text.

To check an evaluation status

Navigate to the Assignments tool.
Open an assignment which status you want to check.
In the Users tab, hover the status of the assignment to find more information.
Figure: Hover your cursor over an assignment in the Users tab to view additional information.

Refer to Advanced Assessment for Assignments in test, development, and staging environments of Brightspace for more information.

Make one shared evaluation ready for review

As an evaluator, you can reduce communication errors during the evaluation of co-marking and delegation assignments when publishers and evaluators are not the same person. When you have completed your evaluation, set the evaluation to Ready for Review to inform the publisher that the evaluation is ready and can move on to the next phase.

To use one shared evaluation and ready for review

Navigate to the Assignments tool.
Click Create an assignment and in Evaluation & Feedback > Coordinate Multiple Evaluators select One shared evaluation.
Click Save and Close.

Figure: Select One shared evaluation and click Save and Close.
When the assignment is submitted, on the Assignments page, click on your assignment.
On the Submissions page, click the assignment.
Click Ready for Review.

Figure: Click Ready for Review.

A dialog appears stating that the Evaluation is ready for review, and the button at the bottom changes to Update.

Figure: You can click the Update button on Submission Review page to update your evaluation.

Once you, as an evaluator, click Ready for Review, the evaluation is ready for reviewing and publishing. Publishers have access to the Publish button.

Refer to Advanced Assessment for Assignments in test, development, and staging environments of Brightspace for more information.

Video: Assign Evaluators and Publishers in Assignments

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Download and evaluate assignment submission files

If you download user submissions and leave feedback within the files, you can upload them back to the appropriate assignment so they appear as attachments to each user's submission evaluation. To ensure successful feedback upload and distribution back to students, do not rename the downloaded files' names after you enter feedback and save changes.

To evaluate and add feedback to downloaded submissions

Navigate to Assignments.
Click the Actions drop-down menu and then click View Submissions.

Figure: Click View Submissions from the Actions drop-down menu.
On the Submissions page, do one of the following:

Figure: Use the Submissions tab to view assignment submissions.

If you want to return feedback on multiple submissions at once or evaluate and grade submissions offline:

Select Select all rows and then click Download. This creates a .zip file.

Click Download.

Note: Each user submission folder has a numeric ID prefixed to the folder name. This ID is key when you are uploading the evaluated submission files and it should not be changed. Example downloaded file name with the numeric ID: 30230-29 - John Doe - May 29, 2020 122 PM.

Open each assignment, evaluate the assignment, add your feedback, and then save the file.

Once you have evaluated and added feedback to all submission files and saved them, highlight all the updated folders and create a .zip folder.

Tip: If you have any student names with characters that cannot be used in a compressed folder, such as Ø, rename that folder and reattempt to create a .zip folder. Do not change the ID prefixed to the name of the folder.

On the Submissions page, click Add Feedback Files. Select your compressed .zip file and then click Add.
Note: Students can review feedback files in the assignment or in the Grades tool.

To publish feedback to selected students select these students and click Publish Feedback.
To publish feedback to all students, click Publish All Feedback.
If the Publish All Feedback button is grayed out, you have no draft feedback to publish. If you have Anonymous Marking enabled, you must click Save Draft and save your feedback for each anonymous user, then click Publish All Feedback on the assignment page to submit feedback to the anonymous users.
If you have any rubrics attached to student submissions and if these student submissions have not been evaluated on all rubric criteria, a Confirmation dialog box appears indicating the same. Click Continue Grading or Publish Anyway, as applicable.
If you want to evaluate an individual user, click on their name, or the Evaluate link for their submission.
Tip: The Evaluate link appears when you have the Give Feedback permission turned on for your role.
To evaluate using learning outcomes, select the desired level of achievement below the outcome.
When you leave feedback in Turnitin, the feedback icon on the assignment submission page, in the Turnitin Online Grading column.
If you added an Online Grading score, the score displays on the submissions page, in the Turnitin Online Grading column.

Add assignment submissions to Brightspace Portfolio

You can add assignment submissions to Brightspace Portfolio. When you add an assignment submission to Portfolio, all submission versions, feedback, and grades are added to Portfolio.

You can then review the submission as evidence in Brightspace Portfolio and share that evidence with Parents and Guardians.

Once you add a student's submission to Portfolio as evidence, it is treated as a record of work as assignment evidence independent of the Assignments tool. Assignment submissions added to Portfolio as evidence remain in the student's Portfolio after the course has ends.

This is the bullhorn icon used for warnings.

Important: You must ensure that your administrator has correctly set up Brightspace Portfolio for your instance of Brightspace before starting this process. As part of this setup, your administrator must assign you appropriate role permissions to enable you to add assignment submissions to Portfolio from the Assignments tool. You must also ensure that students have permission to view the assignment being added to Portfolio. Refer to Set up Portfolio for more details.

To add an assignment submission to Portfolio

Navigate to the Assignments tool and click on an assignment.
From the Submissions page of that assignment, click Users.
Locate a user that has completed an assignment submission.
Click +Add to Portfolio.

Figure: Click +Add to Portfolio next to a student's assignment submission.
From the Add this Assignment to Portfolio? dialog, click Add.

The selected student's assignment submission is added to their portfolio as evidence. This evidence remains in the student's Portfolio after the course has ended.

Important: Assignment submissions that are added to Portfolio do not automatically update when you add grades or feedback to the assignment submission from the Assignments tool. If you want updated grades or feedback to be included with a submission added to Portfolio, you must add the submission to Portfolio again to update. The newer version of the submission is added as a new and separate piece of Portfolio evidence and does not replace the original submission.

Evaluate video submissions

You can give grades and feedback for video files that students attach and submit as part of an assignment.

To evaluate video submissions

Navigate to Assignments.
Click the Actions drop-down menu beside your desired assignment and then select View Submissions.
Click the Submissions tab.
Select the video submission and click Download. Save the .zip file and review.
To grade and add feedback to the submission, click the video submission's file name.

Figure: Click the video submission's file name to open that submission for feedback and grading.
Tip: You can also provide feedback by attaching a separate file to a submission. On the Submissions page, click Add Feedback Files. Select your compressed .zip file and then click Add.
Enter your Overall Grade and Overall Feedback.

Figure: Enter a grade and feedback for the video submission.
Click Publish.

If your assignment is associated with a grade item in your Grade Book, the Overall Grade you entered is automatically added to your grade book. To review and edit the Overall Grade of all evaluations applied to that grade item, click the Assignment attached icon next to the Overall Grade field to open your grade book. For more information about grade items, refer to Create and delete grade categories and items.

Note: You cannot publish or save your draft if the Overall Feedback field exceeds 300,000 characters. If the Overall Feedback field exceeds the character limit or if the Grade field contains an invalid grade, a dialog pops up and the tooltip "There is one or more errors in the information entered appears" when you try to save or publish.

The Assignment attached icon.

Figure: Click the Assignment attached icon to review all submissions and grades for the grade item you are evaluating.

Video: Grade submissions in Assignments

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About the Assignment Evaluation Experience

The evaluation experience brings consistency to evaluating in Brightspace.

An example of the Instructor view when evaluating assignments in the consistent evaluation experience.

Figure: You can evaluate assignments using an evaluation experience consistent with other views in Brightspace.

The assignment evaluation experience includes the following features:

The user context bar includes a menu to choose a student, and another menu to choose a submission. On the user submission list, files are grouped by submission without repeating comments to make it easier to distinguish between submissions. On group assignments, the user context bar includes a drop-down action menu with links to view all group members, email the group, and instant message the group.
The evaluation pane divider can be dragged to suit a user’s preferences and screen size. Rubrics are located at the top of the evaluation panel. To add a rubric, use Edit Assignment.
A context (ellipsis) menu appears with the following options:
- Edit Assignment: Opens the Assignment page in a new tab (requires the See and Manage Assignment Submission Folders permission).
- Preview Assignment: Opens the Assignment Preview page in a new tab, allowing evaluators to reference the instructions for the assignment.
- Special Access Dates: Opens the Edit Assignment screen as a pop-up (requires the Set Special Access on Assignment Submission Folders permission).
The overall grade remains as an icon that indicates if that grade is tied to the grade book. Existing outcomes and competency web components are also visible.
You can provide feedback for the submission by either entering it manually into Overall Feedback or by uploading an attachment.
When you open a new window to evaluate text-only rubrics, the Overall Score displays for each rubric, and you can override the level if necessary.
Figure: Use the Overall Score slider in mobile and the assignment evaluation experience views to view and override the score level.

Evaluate using annotations

If you have built-in annotations turned on, you can mark up submissions using highlighting, free hand drawing, shapes, and associated commenting directly from the Evaluate Submission page of a submitted assignment.

Note: Text annotations have a character limit of 1,048,576 characters.

To access and evaluate with annotations

Navigate to Assignments.
Click an assignment to open it in that assignment’s Submissions page.
Click Submissions.
Click a submission to open and evaluate it.
On the top navigation bar, locate the following annotation icons:
- Drawing: Adjust color, fill color, opacity, thickness, and blend mode. Draw in the assignment submission.
- Note: Select a note color and icon shape and add that to your assignment submission.
- Text: Adjust text color, fill color, opacity, and font style. Type text into the assignment submission.
- Line: Adjust line color, fill color, opacity, thickness, and line style.
- Undo: Remove the last annotation added.
- Redo: Apply the last removed annotation.
  
  Figure: Locate annotation icons on the top navigation bar. Click each icon to access style options before you use the annotation tool.
You can download the original submission file or the annotated PDF file by clicking Download in the annotations viewer.

Figure: Click either Download Original or Download Annotations from the Download drop-down menu.

Tip: The keyboard shortcuts for PCs are Ctrl+z for undo and Ctrl+Shift+z for redo. For MAC OS, the shortcuts are Command+z for undo and Command+Shift+z for redo.

Once you publish the annotation feedback, students can view their submission with the annotations visible, providing additional context.

Supported file types for annotating submissions

The following file type submissions are supported when evaluating with annotations in the Assignments tool:

.doc
.docx
.rtf
.odt
.ppt
.pps
.pptx
.ppsx
.odp
.xls
.xlsx
.txt
.jpg
.jpeg
.png
.tif
.tiff
.gif (once converted to PDF, only the first frame of the .gif displays)
.pdf

Video: Grading submissions in Assignments

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