Assignment - planning questions

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Getting into the electronic mindset is about looking at the different phases of the assignment process. In setting up the assignment activity, the main questions and considerations are around:

Answers to these questions/considerations will determine what settings you apply in FLO and the processes you use.

Good practice guides and tip sheets

Good practice guides and tip sheets have been developed to support quality in both curriculum design and teaching practice. Good practice guides provide a pedagogical overview and tip sheets provide you with practical strategies and ideas for implementation. Links to assessment-related resources are provided below. 

Rubrics | Rubrics and marking guides in FLO

 


How will students submit their work?

  • What do you want your students to submit?
  • If submitting files, consider how many, maximum file size, and what file types you can accept.
  • Is this a group assessment with the group submitting a single piece of work or do you want the group to collaborate before submitting an individual piece of work?
    • Creating a group collaboration space is different from creating a group assessment (where a single piece of work is submitted for all group members).
    • If you set up a group assessment, it cannot be changed once a submission has been made.
    • If no group has been applied, the whole cohort will be deemed a group and the first submission will be visible to all students.
    • Do you want one group member to be able to submit for everyone or would you like one member to upload the file and all other members to confirm they accept that file as the submission?
    • Check you have the correct settings for your situation.

  • Will students be allowed to continue editing their submission?
    • If students need to submit a draft of their work, you may want them to continue working on their submission. In this instance, you can create an iterative assignment.
    • If you want to prevent students from making any further changes to their submission you can require them to click the submit button to finalise their assessment.
    • If students need to upload multiple files, they can leave their submission in draft mode until all required files are uploaded. They can then click the submit button to finalise their submission.



How do you intend to mark the work?


How will you return feedback and marks?

  • Will you be using an online rubric, an online marking guide, or feedback files?
  • Do you want to display letter grades rather than numerical marks?
    • There may be a course-wide decision regarding grades. It would be worth checking with your course or topic coordinator before releasing anything to students.
    • If you want to display letter grades to students, you still need to enter points for the assessment and change the display type within Gradebook.

  • If displaying letter grades to students:
    • you could mark in increments of 5 rather than increments of 1
    • avoid giving half marks. If the total is 0.5 below the next grade bracket the incorrect grade is displayed, for example, 64.5 is displayed as P rather than CR as the value is not rounded up.

  • Do you intend to moderate marks within your team before returning them to students?
  • How will you release marks/feedback to students?
    • In most instances, good practice is to release marks/feedback to all students at the same time. Make sure marks/feedback are hidden until you are ready to release them.
    • If students are completing the assessment at different times (eg placement) you may want to release marks/feedback as they become available. In this instance do not hide the grades from students and the marks/feedback will be accessible as soon as the marker enters them into FLO.



How will you provide support?

  • Do your students know how to use the FLO tool you have chosen for your assessment?
    • Link to FLO Student Support resources from assessment instructions, especially for video assessments.
    • Clearly explain how the tool will function for each assessment (eg what type of file is expected, how many files are expected, what is the required word count, etc).
    • Try to provide students with an opportunity to practice using the tool before their assessment. This could be in an earlier topic.

  • Will you discuss the assessment task and rubric/marking guide with your team before the assessment begins?
    • It is a good idea to ensure all members of your teaching team understand both the task and how it will be marked before the assessment is released to students.
    • This will ensure everyone provides the same information to students to eliminate any confusion.
    • It is good practice to produce a short video explaining the assessment task and rubric for both students and staff, especially if you have a large teaching team. Everyone hears the same instructions.

  • Does your teaching team know how to use the FLO tool you have chosen for your assessment?
    • If you have new staff members, are using different features within a tool (eg marking workflow), or are using a less common tool (eg Self and peer assessment) make sure your team knows how to use the tool, both for marking and to answer students' questions.
    • If any of your team need assistance, you can refer them to relevant pages within these FLO Staff Support (FLOSS) pages or ask them to contact their local eLearning support team.


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