Grade Assignment Submissions

The annotation tools in Brightspace’s Assignments allows graders to make notes, highlight, strikethrough text, and assign a mark all without having to download the submitted document.

Find to the Assignment to be graded

Locate the assignment on the Assignments page and click the drop-down arrow to view all options [1]. Select View Submissions.

New, unread submissions will also be listed under the New Submissions column [2].

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Clicking on the drop-down arrow beside the assignment name reveals the option to View Submissions.

Submissions page

The Submissions page list all students by “Users” or by Submissions, along with any attached files, timestamps, and links to Turnitin reports. Most of these elements will provide for further information, but clicking the Go To Evaluation button or the student’s name will provide the grading area proper.

Brightspace has online interactive grading options, including text markup and inline comments, but it is still possible to download all submitted files for external review.

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The Submissions page with key features highlighted. Files can be downloaded directly or viewed in Brightspace.

1. Publish All Feedback will release all grades to students at the same time. This can be used if individual assessment was not immediately published through use of the grading screen’s Save Draft button.

2. Email Users Without Submissions will quickly generate a draft of an email to only those students who have not yet submitted to the Assignment.

3. Add Feedback Files provides a method by which an instructor can upload feedback in bulk. This process is complicated and is explained below.

4. Show Search options provides several useful search filters to identify statuses such as students with or without submissions and those with or without feedback. The View By: dropdown also allows the list to be filtered by Sections or Groups.

5. Go to Evaluation is a link to the grading screen, which can display uploaded documents in full, any associated Rubrics, and the feedback and grade entry areas.

6. Turnitin Similarity provides the total match percentage for any files that were scanned by Turnitin upon submission. The numbers link to the full reports and should always be examined in detail.

View student submissions and assign grades

From the Submissions page, click a student name or the Go to Evaluation button. The evaluation page shows all submitted files and the same timestamp and Turnitin information as the previous screen.

1. Click the submission file to view the file online or select Download all files to review offline.

   1. On the document viewer page you can review the student submission. With the annotation tool you can add contextual feedback directly on the online submission file. (See Assignment Annotation Tool for details.)

2. Enter grade in the Overall Grade field.

   1. If using a rubric click on the level of achievement for each criterion. (Learn more about grading with rubrics - to be added).

   2. Optional - (but recommended) Add specific feedback in the Overall Feedback section.

3. Save Draft to save work in progress or to wait to release all graded submissions at once (recommended practice). Otherwise if you are ready to release the grade and feedback to the student, select Publish.

4. Use the navigator tool to review the next student’s submission folder.

After assigning a grade to all submissions return to the Assignment submissions page by selecting the Back to Submissions button.

Advanced Options

Add Feedback Files (Optional)

Instructors can also use the Add Feedback Files option to upload and share feedback zip files to students.

Here’s some documentation on how to create Zip Files: Zip and unzip files and folders on Mac - Apple Support (CA) & Zip and unzip files - Microsoft Support

Publish all feedback

Once all students have been graded, then select Publish all feedback to share assignment grades with each student and to transfer the grade to the Grades tool for course mark calculations. The confirmation page will reiterate the need to review the grades and submissions, select Yes if you are ready to publish the grades. Please note that you can still retract grades to edit them further once they have been published to the students.