Create assignments in UB Learns to promote student interaction and learning progress in your class.
Assignments often make up a large portion of student interactions within a course. They can include active learning, group work, formative assessments, culminating projects and much more.
The Assignments tool in UB Learns offers robust features to customize instructions, submissions and assessment types. Tools that complement Assignments include Content, Rubrics and Grades. As always, ensure any embedded multimedia or attachments are accessible for all students.
For additional support beyond this page, visit Brightspace’s Create an assignment webpage.
On this page:
Preparing an Assignment
There are several considerations to make before creating an assignment. Although assignments can be edited later on, it will be more time efficient to plan ahead.
General Preparation
Before creating an assignment, it is helpful to have some information upfront such as the assignment name, description and point value. If your syllabus is finalized, you may also want to include the due date while creating the new assignment.
Adding a due date to an assignment will enable it to populate in the course schedule.
Advanced Preparation
Some more advanced assignment considerations you may want to think about while creating assignments include:
Rubrics: Consider how this assignment will be graded. If grading with a rubric, it is best to first create the rubric and then attach it to the assignment.
Grade Categories: You may want to create weighted categories within the Grades Tool before creating assignments. This will allow you to categorize assignments as they populate the grade book.
Assignment Category: This category is separate from the grade categories. It serves more as a grouping and organization system. For example, this can be used to categorize items such as homework, presentations or to provide more granular detail.
Release Conditions: You may choose to limit access to this assignment until after completing a prerequisite task such as a quiz or discussion post. Create the first task prior to creating the assignment.
Group Assignments: In order to assign collaborative assignments, the groups must already be created.
Special Access: Special access allows you to set different availability dates and times for specific users. For example, you could extend the deadline for users who require remedial help or who are submitting work beyond the original scope of the assignment. Learn more about Special Access.
Where to Build Assignments
You can begin creating a new assignment in two ways. Both will take you to the same page.
On the navbar, click Content. Navigate to a module, click Upload/Create and selectNew Assignment.
On the navbar, click Assessments and select Assignments.
Creating an Assignment
Use the Assignments tool to create and edit assignments, add rubrics, view student submissions and add grades and feedback.
On the navbar, click Assessments and select Assignments.
Click New Assignment.
Enter a name in the Assignment Title field.
Click in the Grade Out Of field to add the maximum point value of the assignment. This will add a grade item to Grtades. You can also leave the assignment ungraded.
Once you enter the maximum points, a drop-down menu will appear to the right of Grade Out Of. The menu contains additional options: Edit or Link to Existing (when you have already created a grade item in Grades), Not in Grade Book and Reset to Ungraded.
Add a Due Date if necessary.
Add Instructions if necessary
Upload files(cloud icon), add links, Record Audio or Record Video if necessary.
Click Availability Dates & Conditions in the right-hand column to set the following:
Start and end dates and how how the assignment appears to students before the start date and after the end date.
Release conditions.
Special access (allow the assignment to be available at different times for specific students) .
Click Submission & Completion in the right-hand column to set the following:
Type of assignment (individual or group).
Category the assignment will be placed under in Assignments. This is for organizational purposes only.
Submission type (file, text, on paper submission or observed in person).
Files allowed per submission (students can upload only one file or an unlimited files).
Allowable file extensions that can be uploaded.
Whether all submissions are kept or only the most recent. Note: if you select Only the most recent submission is kept, UB Learns will permanently deletes past submissions.
Add an email address to be notified when an assignment is submitted
Click Evaluation & Feedback in the right-hand column to set the following:
Add a rubric.
Enable the annotation tool when grading.
Anonymous marking of assignments.
Turnitin settings.
Click Save and Close.
Editing an Assignment
On the Assignments main page, you will see a list of all your existing assignments.
Locate the assignment you want to change and select the chevron icon [⌵] to the right of the assignment's name.
Here you can edit, copy or delete the assignment. You can also edit the assignment within a module. Please note that this functionality is limited.
Placing Assignments in Modules
Within the Content tool, locate the module in which you would like students to access the assignment.
After selecting this module, click Existing Activities, then select Assignments.
Select the assignment you would like to add, searching by name if necessary.
Then drag the assignment so that the order/placement within the module is correct.
Adding Restrictions and Rubrics to an Assignment
You may want to set additional conditions to an assignment, such as availability, release conditions, rubrics and/or special access.
Locate the Evaluation & Feedback category in the right-hand column and expand the section.
Select Add Rubric and choose an existing rubric or create a new rubric.
Click Save and Close.
Using a Rubric
First, select the submission you would like to assess. The rubric will populate on the righthand side of each submission under the Evaluation and Feedback header. Open the associated rubric and select the performance level for each of the criterion. Use the preassigned feedback or customize sections as desired. If the rubric uses points or percentages, the grade will calculate automatically, however, you can manually change category scores, total score and overall score. When finished with the rubric, select Close.
Grading an Assignment
There are several ways to grade in Brightspace. If grading submissions from a single assignment, locate it within the Assignments tool. If grading submissions from several assignments, you can use the Quick Eval tool.
If using the Quick Eval tool, all submissions that need grading will populate here including assignments, quizzes and discussions. Therefore, if you are looking to grade a specific assignment, it will likely be more efficient to do so from the assignment itself within the Assignments tool.
Annotating an Assignment
While grading students’ submissions, you can digitally insert notes, highlight text and write directly on the document to give meaningful feedback.