Evaluating an Individual or Group Assignment

Watch how to Grade an Assignment (Individual or Group)

This article provides instructors with step-by-step instructions explaining how to evaluate both an individual or group-based assignment in Brightspace.

When you are ready to assess an assignment that has been linked to a grade item, we recommend evaluating students’ submissions using the Assignment tool. This tip is especially useful when you’d like to automatically award the same grade to all group members -which can only be accomplished by grading the group’s submission directly in the Assignment tool.  If you want to give one or more group members a different grade, you will need to alter the grades within the gradebook.

Note:

Assessing Using Assignments

To assess assignments through the assignment tool:

1.From the navbar in your course, click on Activities and select Assignments from the drop down menu.

2.Click on the assignment you wish to grade (you’ll be brought directly to the View Submissions page).

3. In the table with student or group names, you will see the submitted assignments in addition to the date they were submitted, and for group submissions, who in the group submitted the assignment.

4. Click Evaluate (or click on Draft Saved/Published if you wish to edit a grade that was previously saved/published).

5.On the grading screen, either select the name of the student’s submission from the User Submissions’ drop down menu, or click on the name of the file under ‘Submission 1’.

6. Enter a grade in the box provided. 

NOTE: 

If grading group assignments, all students in the same group will receive the same grade.

7. Provide written feedback in the text box.

8. You can also upload different types of feedback files, or record audio/video feedback for your students.

9.  Either click the Publish button to immediately publish grades (this will send grades to the gradebook and notify students/group members that their assignment has been evaluated) or click the Save Draft button (which allows you to review the grades prior to publishing).

10. Navigate to the next student/group’s submission.

Giving Different Grades to Students in a Group

If you wish to enter different grades for students in a group, you should still enter the group’s grade in the Assignment tool (which will initially award the same grade to all students in the group).  Then, you need to manually alter grades for specific group members in the gradebook: 

1. In the navbar, click on Grades.

2. Click on the chevron to the right of the name of the grade item associated with the group assignment; select Enter Grades from the drop down menu.

3. On the Enter Grades page, enter a new grade for the students whose group grade you wish to alter; repeat this step for all students whose group grade should differ from the rest of the group.

4. Click the blue Save and Close button and confirm your choice in the pop-up window that appears.

NOTE:

Students whose group grade has been altered in the gradebook will now see two different grades:  one in the gradebook (the altered grade) and the original group-based grade in the assignment.  In this case, students need to know that the grade in the gradebook is the final/accurate grade, not the group-based grade displayed in the assignment.

Watch how to Grade an Assignment (Individual or Group)