Assignments – How to Create a Group Assignment

1. Click on “Activities” > “Assignments”

2. Click the “New Folder” button.

3. Give your Assignment a name, instructions, (optionally record audio or video instructions), and due date (appears in course calendar if assignment is visible and informs instructor of late submissions in the assignment area). Then upload any attachments, and add any links, if applicable.

4. To add a “grade out of”, click “ungraded” as below.

5. Enter a grade.

6. Click “in grade book” to choose the applicable option. Note: If you enter a grade in the “grade out of” box without clicking “in grade book”, the assignment tool creates a grade item in the grade book with the same name as the assignment.

7. If you want to link the assignment to a grade item in your grade book, choose “edit or link to existing”. If you select “create and link to a new grade item”, the assignment tool will create a grade item with the same name as your assignment. Click “OK” to accept it. If you do not want to do this, see the next step.

8. If you have created a different grade item, click “link to existing grade item”, select the applicable grade item, and click “OK”.

9. Click Availability Dates & Conditions to set assignment start and end dates* (these are the dates when the assignment can be accessed), release conditions and special access.

*Note: The start date does not appear in the course calendar. If the due date and end date are both set, only the due date appears in the calendar. If there is no due date, the end date appears in the calendar. Further, an assignment must be visible for an end date to appear.)

10. Under the heading Submission & Completion, click the “Group assignment” radio button and then select the group category that you have already created. Note: All groups in the category you select become associated with the assignment.

11. Now add any Submission & Completion options as applicable. We do not recommend using the Notification Email.

12. Under the Evaluation and Feedback section, add a rubric* and/or learning objectives, if applicable. Optionally, enable anonymous marking and Turnitin.

*Note: Although a rubric “grade out of” number will scale to the “grade out of” number for the assignment, which in turn will scale to the “grade out of” number for the grade item (in the grade book), best practice is to make the “grade out of” number the same for the rubric, assignment, and grade item to avoid questions arising from students trying to interpret their score. Further, it does not matter if the number is odd/even.

13. By default, a new assignment is hidden. Enable visibility so your assignment appears in the assignment and content areas, if applicable.

14. Click “Save & Close” to finish.

If successful, the below icon will appear next to your assignment. This icon indicates that this assignment is attached to a group.

Tip 1: Bulk edit assignment settings

1. Click “Activities”, “Assignments” on the navbar.
2. Checkmark the assignment to edit or click the checkbox below “bulk edit” to select all assignments.

3. The assignment name, category (if there is more than one), start and end dates, and due date can be changed. Note: None of these changes alter the grade item in the grade book. The original grade item remains associated to the assignment regardless of any changes to it.

Tip 2: Bulk download submissions and add feedback

1. Click “Activities”, “Assignments” from the navbar.
2. Click the assignment.
3. Select all groups or students.
4. Click the “download” icon.
5. Download the zip file.
6. Unzip the file.
7. Edit the submissions to add feedback. Note: Do not change the names of the submission files.
8. Zip all submissions into one file. The Zip folder name does not have to be the original name.
9. Click the “add feedback files” button (above the “download” button you clicked earlier). Locate and open the file. Then click the “add” button. Wait for D2L to process the file.
10. If you have not already done so, add a grade and/or overall feedback (if applicable) by clicking any submission from the applicable group. Then click “publish”.

Note: Bulk feedback is feedback within the group submission file(s). Do not create a new file with your feedback. Just edit the submission file(s) to add your feedback. You have the option of also adding “overall feedback” in the assignment properties (step 10).

Tip 3: Use the “text submission” type when students are submitting a few lines of text as an assignment.

After selecting “text submission” in the first menu, select “all submissions are kept” in the second menu.

The text submission option could be used for a short journal entry and/or peer evaluation since it displays the text from multiple students on a single page.

Tip 4: Change the grade of a poor performing student in the grades tool (aka grade book).

In group assignments, everyone gets the same grade. The steps below explain, however, how to change the grade manually for individual students.

1. Go to the “grades” tool.
2. Switch to “spreadsheet view”.
3. Locate the student and the applicable assignment column.
4. Change the grade in the grade box for the assignment.
5. Click the “save” button in the lower left corner.