Assignment Tools

Welcome to the Avenue to Learn Assignment Tools workshop. This is a blended workshop - meaning that before you attend the in-person session, you will have viewed the resources on this page, tried some of these tasks in a course shell and then attended our face-to-face working session where you will put what you've learned into practice. We strongly encourage you to bring materials that you might use for your course to the session, that way you will be able to use that time for developing your actual course. If you do not have all your materials prepared, that's fine, bring what you can to the session. The outcomes for this course are:

• You will be able to configure the Assignments tool to accept files for marking, including the optional use of Turnitin, a plagiarism detection service.
• You will be able to connect an Assignment folder to a Grade Item to automate marking.
• You will be able to grade submissions and provide feedback to students using the Assignments tool.

The Assignments tool within your course on Avenue to Learn will allow you to accept digital files of most types, and provide an interface that you can assess those submitted assignments.

This video below introduces the Assignments tool:

To be able to receive assignments digitally, you will have to configure an Assignments folder. To do this in Avenue, follow these steps:

1. In your course, under Assessments, select Assignments.

2. Click the blue New Folder button.

3. Give the folder a name - this name will be seen by students.

4. (OPTIONAL) Elect to use Turnitin, a plagiarism detection service, or not. If you do chose to use Turnitin, please see the information below in the Turnitin section.

5. Select whether this Assignment is to be used to collect individual or group assignments. To use the group assignment functionality, you should have groups enabled and configured using the Groups tool in Avenue. If you do use the Assignment to collect a group assignment, feedback and grades provided to the student will be distributed to all the listed group members in the group tool. Also, all group members will be able to access the submitted file or files.

6. (OPTIONAL) If you have previously configured the Grades for the course, you can connect this specfic Assignment to a Grade Item. The connection is a one-way connection, where grades entered in the Assignment will also appear in Grades, however grades entered in Grades do not appear in the Assignment.

7. At the bottom of the screen, you will see controls for managing what is submitted in the Assignment.

You may have to click a link labelled “Show Submission Options” to configure these settings.

The top two options are for how many files can a person submit to this Assignment, either one, or many. Most people leave it at unlimited as if an error is made in uploading an incorrect file, it means less work for a TA or instructor to allow the student to resubmit.

The bottom three options are for what you want the system to do with additional or duplicate files.

8. Before you Save, you'll want to set the dates and times that this Assignment will accept submissions. To do this, scroll to the top and click the Restrictions tab.

9. Notice that when you switch tabs, the system saves your work. Assignments have Start, Due and End Dates. Start and End dates are the dates that the Assignment will start and stop accepting submissions. Due Date is a non-binding date that flags submission that are submitted to the Assignment after the Due Date. There is no functionality currently that will deduct marks for late submissions, however, with setting a Due Date, students will get a notification (if they've turned on that feature) two days prior to the due date as a reminder.

10. Scroll down to the Save and Close button to save your work and return to your course homepage.

Here is a video to show you those steps:

For questions or concerns, Avenue support is available from Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM at (905) 525-9140 ext. 23757 or email support.avenue@cll.mcmaster.ca.