Instructor Support for Educational Systems

How do I assess an assignment offline?

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In this article it will be discussed how an assignment can be assessed offline, by downloading it and uploading it to Brightspace once assessed. 

Table of Contents

Downloading and assessing assignments

You can download assignments from students to assess them while you are offline. After you have assessed these assignments offline, you can update the changes made onto Brightspace. Then you can assign a score and publish the assessment and feedback for your students to see.

  • Navigate to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Assignments
  • Click on the assignment you want to assess.
  1. Filter the assignments by student (User) or group (Groups). This way you can easily download all assignments from the students in a specific group (this is useful if there are multiple teachers in the course that assess assignments; now you can assess one or multiple groups per teacher). Click ApplyIf you have chosen Groups you now have to select the group of which you want to see the assignments.
    Click Show Search Options for more filter options.
  2. Select Users with submissions in the drop-down menu if you only want to see the students who have handed in their assignment.
  3. Select the submissions you want to assess offline. Select all assignments at once by clicking the box in the upper left column.
  4. Click Download. A new window will appear.

You can only download the submissions of students that are displayed on the current page of your screen. At the bottom right hand side you can adjust the maximum amount of displayed students to 200. This means that you can download the assignments of maximum 200 students at once.

  • Click on the file name to download the zip-file onto your computer. The download will appear at the bottom of this window.
  • Click Close to close the window.

As the instructor you are responsible for any (personal) data you save from your course. Make sure to comply to the GDPR. 

  • Open the zip-file. You will see a separate folder for each student. You can now open the submissions and assess them in the desired program.
  • Save your feedback in this folder (do not change the file's name of location).

Students can hand in their assignments in different file types, such as a Word file or a PDF-file. If you want your files to be of a specific type, you have to let your students know beforehand (for example a Word file, so that you can use the correction function in Word when providing feedback). 

Uploading an assessment per student

You can upload the files to Brightspace for each student separately, or all at once. If you upload them all at once, the assessed submissions will appear as an attachment to the already submitted assignments in Brightspace.

  • Navigate to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Assignments
  • Click on the assignment of which you have assessed the submissions.
  • Click on the submission of which you want to add the offline feedback file.
  1. Enter the score the student has acquired.
  2. Scroll down until you see the cloud button to upload a file and add the offline feedback.

When you have attached a grade item to the assignment, Brightspace will automatically add the grade (score) to the grade book when the feedback is published. The feedback will also appear in the grade book, but the attachments can only be viewed or downloaded through the assignment submission.

  • Click on My Computer.
  1. Click Upload and search on your computer for the file you want to upload.
  2. Click Add. The feedback is now added.
  • Click Publish to release the feedback so that the student can see it.
  • Click Save Draft you do not want the student to see the feedback yet.

Bulk upload

You can also upload all assessments at once. The assessments will then show as an attachment for the assignment concerned.

  • Navigate to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
  • Click on Assignments
  • Click on the assignment of which you have assessed the content.
  • Click on Add Feedback Files.
  • Click Upload and search for the zip-file with the assessed assignments. Note that this is the same zip-folder with assignments that needed assessment that you downloaded at the beginning.
  • Select Overwrite Duplicate Files if you want to replace identical files.
  • Click Add. At the bottom of the screen you will see a notification when the files have been added. You will also see how many files have been added. Note that this can take a while, based on the number and size of the files.

Click on an assignment to view the attachment and publish it if needed, which makes it visible for the student.

Sometimes Brightspace will not be able to recognize the files you upload and therefore it cannot link it to a student. You will then be asked if you want to match the files to the students manually.

Video: How to grade an Assignment Offline

This video is made by Brightspace supplier D2L. Some screens might have a different look and feel to the Universiteit Leiden Brightspace environment.

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