Moodle Assignment feedback guide

This guide will walk you through how to bulk download assignments and provide feedback via track changes on Word document and / or adding feedback to a coversheet. This option is useful providing feedback to large groups of students.

This option can be used when the Anonymous submissions setting has been enabled for the assignment. The student names on the downloaded assignments and in the Grading worksheet and are replaced by a Participant ID. you will have to take care to ensure you are adding the Grade for the correct student to to Grading worksheet by double checking the participant IDs between the downloaded assignment name and the Identifier column in the Grading worksheet.

You can review the screencast or follow the text directions below. The screencast is organised into chapters, so if you want to review part of the process you can use the hamburger menu on the left-hand side of the screencast to navigate to the relevant part of the recording.

This guidance is for assignments not using anonymous marking. Refer to the anonymous marking guidance for further information on how to effectively manage marking for assignments with anonymous marking enabled.

This screencast demonstrates how to manage and mark Moodle assignments with offline grading and feedback in Moodle 4. 

You must hide the individual assignment grade item while you are marking to ensure that marks and feedback are released at the same time to all students. To do this:

1. Select Grades in the contextual navigation menu above the module name. The Grader report page opens
2. Open the drop-down menu on the left of the page and choose Gradebook setup.

3. Select the Edit link on the same row as the name of the grade item you are marking.
4. Select Hide.

1. Open the assignment from the module page. This opens the Grading summary page.
2. If you are responsible for marking a specific group of students, select the relevant group from the groups drop-down menu. This will ensure that you are marking the relevant work.

   

3. Select the View all submissions button to view the Submissions page.
4. If you cannot see all the submissions you expect, check to see whether a filter has been applied. Filters can follow you from one module to another, and if another user has added a filter, it may still be in place. Remove the filters to see all submissions.

• Alphabetic filter. Select All for both the First Name and Surname to clear

• Options. Open the Filter drop-down menu, select No filter to clear any existing filter.

1. Under the Options settings at the bottom of the Submissions page:
   • Check that Assignments per page is set to All.
   • Tick or untick the Download submissions in folders checkbox. By default, Moodle will create a separate folder for each student submission. If you want all student files to be downloaded into a single folder then you will need to remove the tick. 

2. Scroll up to the top of the Submissions page. Select the Download all submissions button on the top right of the page.
   • If you only want to download submissions for certain students.
     • Check the box to the left of relevant students.
     • Scroll to the With selected...drop-down menu (above the Options settings) and choose Download selected submissions.
3. A zip containing all of the student submissions will download to your computer. Each file is called "[Moodle identifier] assignsubmission_file_[file name]".
4. Save the zip file to your university device or OneDrive.

1. From the Grading action drop-down menu at the top of the Submissions page choose Download grading worksheet and save the Excel file to a convenient place on your university device or OneDrive. You may need to change the file extension to CSV (comma delimited). This will remove the file name. Give the file a meaningful title and save.

1. Unzip the submissions and save them to your computer.
2. Do not change any of the file names or you will not be able to later upload the files back on to Moodle.

1. Read the assignments and add your feedback using track changes in Word or enter feedback into the student's coursework coversheet.
2. Save changes.

1. Open the Grading worksheet from your computer.
2. Do not change or add any column names.
3. Input your grades into the Grade column.
4. You can also add some general feedback into the Feedback comments column if required.
5. Save and close the file ensuring it is an CSV format in order to upload back to Moodle.

If you are working on an anonymous submission, the student names are removed and are replaced by a Participant ID. This participant ID will also be included in the file name of the downloaded assignment. You will have to take care to ensure you are adding the Grade for the correct student to to Grading worksheet by double checking the participant IDs.

1. Select the assignment from the module homepage to access the summary page and select View/grade all submissions.
2. From the Grading action drop-down menu choose Upload grading worksheet.
3. Select Choose a file... and upload the grading worksheet to Moodle, or drag the csv file to the arrow and wait for the file name to appear in the box.
4. Select Upload grading worksheet.
5. The Confirmation box will list all the students’ grades that will be imported.
6. Select Confirm.
7. The next screen will summarise how many student grades have been updated.
8. Select Continue.

1. Select all the files within the folder (Ctrl+A within the folder), then zip them. On Windows: Right click one of the selected files and Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.
2. Select the relevant assignment from the Moodle module.
3. Select View / grade all submissions
4. From the Grading action drop-down menu choose Upload multiple feedback files in a zip.
5. Locate the folder containing the feedback files in Moodle, select Choose a file... and upload the zipped assignments file to Moodle.
6. Select Import feedback file(s).
7. The Confirmation box will list all the feedback files and student names that will be imported.
8. Select Confirm.
9. The next screen will summarise how many students have been given feedback, how many students with existing feedback files have had their feedback file updated and how many new feedback files were added.
10. Select Continue.

The most common issue that lecturers experience when uploaded a zip file of feedback to Moodle is that the file will not upload. This happens if you zip the folder which contains the feedback files. You must open the folder on your computer that contains the feedback files and select all the files and create a zip file. This creates a zip file within the assignment feedback folder.

1. Select Grades in the contextual navigation menu above the.
2. Select the Grader Report drop-down menu and choose Gradebook setup.
3. Select the Edit link on the same row as the name of the grade item you are marking.
4. Select Show.

This makes the grades and feedback visible and generates an email to students to alert them to their released grade and feedback.

When an assignment is set up with anonymous marking, you must unhide the grade item and reveal student identities in order to release grades and feedback.

1. Select Grades in the contextual navigation menu above the module name.
2. Select the Grader Report drop-down menu and choose Gradebook setup.
3. Select the Edit link on the same row as the name of the grade item you are marking.
4. Select Show.

   

5. Select the link to the assignment to open it.
6. Select View all submissions.
7. From the Grading action menu on the top left of the page, select Reveal student identities. This will populate the Grades into the Grader Report and generate an email to students that grades and feedback have been released. Do not reveal identities until the grading is ready to be revealed to students as this option cannot be re-enabled. You will see a warning about this and will be asked to confirm you want to proceed.

If the submission is a PDF, use Adobe Acrobat to annotate the PDF. Staff can access and install Adobe Acrobat via the Creative Cloud.