Managing an Exercise Assignment

An Exercise Assignment is slightly more complex than an ordinary assignment. It involves four steps or phases. These are

1. Set up Exercise The assessment of the work produced in the exercise is made easier if it is broken into a number of assessment ELEMENTS. This makes the grading of an assignment less arbitary and gives the students a framework on which to make assessments. The teacher has the role of setting up the assessment elements thus making a grading sheet. (See that page for more details.)

   With the assessment elements set up the teacher must submit a Word Document or HTML file which describes the exercise or task to be done by the students. This file is shown to the students in the second phase of the exercise.

   Teachers can, if they wish, prepare a set of similar exercies, again as Word Documents or HTML files, and upload those into the Exercise. Note that these exercises must be quite similar as the same Assessment Form is used for all of these variants. The submission of a multiple set of exercises by the teacher is optional and for certain assignments may not be appropriate.

2. Allow Students Assessments and Submissions The assignment is now opened to the students. If the teacher has set up multiple exercises then the students see different exercises, otherwise all the students see the same exercise.

   Before the students can submit their work they must complete the assessment form. Once they have completed the assessment they are shown the upload form. The students can revise their work in the light of their self assessment. The teacher sees student's (self) assessment and an assessment form to grade the student's submission. This is a "dual assessment form". At the end of this form the teacher can either ask the student to re-submit the work or not.

   If the student chooses to re-submit, the teacher can re-assess the work. The same option, re-submit or not, allows the teacher to control this cycle of re-submission and assessment. If students are allowed to put in multiple pieces of work into the Exercise, the teacher should decide whether the final grades are based on the student's maximum grade or their average grade over the set of submissions. This option can be changed at any time during the Exercise by updating the Exercise, it's effect is seen immediately in the Grade page.

3. Stop Student Assessments and Submissions After the deadline has passed, the teacher moves the Exercise to this phase to stop further assessments and submissions. The teacher should complete the grading any outstanding assessments and submissions before moving the Exercise to its final phase.

4. Show Overall Grades and League Table In this final phase of the Exercise the students can see their "final" grades. In all phases of the Exercise (except the first phase), grades are available to the students, they are, however, only "partial" grades as they are calculated on the fly from the assessments available at the time.

   The students (and the teacher) are also shown a "League Table" of the student submissions. These are listed in order of grade, the top submission is first. Here the grade given to the submission is teacher's grade. If a student submitted more than one piece of work only their best piece of work is shown in this table.

The student's grade is a weighted combination of the teacher's grading of their (initial) assessment and the teacher's grading of their work. The two weighting factors are initally set to unity. They can changed (on the Administration page) at any time during the exercise and the grades shown both the students and the teacher always reflect the current weighting factors.

At any phase of the assignment the teacher can open the "Administration" page. This shows the current values of the two weighting factors and allows the teacher to change them. It lists the students' assessments (of their own work) and the submissions of the students. The teacher can use this page to assess and re-assess submissions, grade and re-grade assessments, delete submissions and assessments, and generally watch the progress of the assignment.