Moodle Assignment feedback guide

This guide will walk you through how to bulk download assignments and upload individual feedback files. It is very similar to the process of bulk download and track changes but you will provide feedback in separate documents instead of marking up the existing submissions. This option is useful providing feedback to large groups of students.

If you are familiar with the process of  bulk download and track changes, you need only consult the box on adding new feedback files.

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. Take care to ensure you are adding the Grade for the correct student to the Grading worksheet by double checking the participant IDs between the downloaded assignment name and the Identifier column in the Grading worksheet.

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.

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. The only exception is while using marking workflow coupled with anonymous marking and allow partial release of grades while marking anonymously.

To do this:

1. Select Grades in the contextual navigation menu above the module name. The Grader report page opens.
2. If you are grading a Moodle assignment, you can also open the Submissions page > More > View gradebook. 
3. Open the drop-down menu on the left of the page and choose Gradebook setup.

4. Select on the three dots menu on the same row as the name of the grade item you are marking.
5. 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 Submissions tab 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.
5. If Marker allocation is being used, open the Advanced menu above the submissions. From the Marker option, select your name and select the Apply button. The Submissions page will be filtered to show coursework that you are responsible for marking.

1. On the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, check that Show is set to All.
2. Return to the top of the screen. Select Download submissions in folders checkbox. By default, Moodle will create a separate folder for each student submission.
3. From Actions at the top of the submissions page, select the Download all submissions.

4. If you only want to download submissions for certain students.
   • Check the box to the left of relevant students.
   • From the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, select Download. A pop-up box will ask you to confirm that you want to download the selected submissions. Select Download.

4. A zip containing all the student submissions will download to your computer. Each file is called "[Moodle identifier] assignsubmission_file_[file name]".
5. Save the zip file to your university device or OneDrive.

1. From the Actions 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 and assess the assignments 
2. Record your feedback for each student in a new Word document with a unique file name.
3. When you have finished creating your feedback, upload the feedback file into the folder for that specific student.

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 Submissions
4. From the Actions drop-down menu choose Upload 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.
2. Select the Grader Report drop-down menu and choose Gradebook setup.
3. Navigate to the grade item. Hidden grade items will display a struckthrough eye icon.
4. Select the three dot menu on the same row as the name of the grade item you are marking.
5. Select Show.

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