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How strict should you be? A guide to assignment due dates.

Be consistent in your approach to deadline flexibility, whether you never accept late work or are always willing to make an exception..

Colleges typically require instructors to include a calendar of assignment due dates in every course syllabus. But most syllabi also include a disclaimer that assignment deadlines are subject to change.  

So, how flexible should deadlines really be in a college course? 

Be Flexible, or be Rigid, but Always be Consistent 

Be consistent in your approach to deadline flexibility, whether you never accept late work or are always willing to make an exception. Nothing irritates strong students more than their instructor announcing, “Since so many of you asked for more time on the assignment that was due today, I’m extending its deadline to next week.”  

Syllabi should always include a clearly stated policy about the circumstances under which late work might be accepted, if at all.  

But should this policy be applied equally to low-stakes and high-stakes assignments? 

Low-Stakes Assessments  

If a course has many low-stakes assessments, like quizzes or homework problems, those assignments are usually due on the same day each week.  

For example, if class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, there might a reading quiz due every Monday, to ensure that students are prepared for the week’s in-class discussions, and a homework problem due every Friday, to verify understanding of the week’s concepts. 

Here are three solid approaches to deadline flexibility for low-stakes assessments: 

1. Not flexible: Late work is never accepted  

If a student misses a deadline, they receive zero points on that assignment. 

This approach works best in courses that have many low-stakes assignments, such as reading quizzes on every textbook chapter, where missing one or two deadlines will not jeopardize a student’s understanding of the core concepts nor greatly impact their final letter grade. 

2. Somewhat flexible: Late work is accepted, at a penalty  

If a student misses a deadline, they can submit the assignment late, but their score will be penalized a specified amount (e.g. -5 points). 

This approach works best in courses where content acquisition is scaffolded such that missing one assignment will negatively impact a student’s understanding of core concepts and successful completion of future assignments. In this case, students who miss deadlines should be permitted to complete the missed assignments, but with a small scoring penalty to encourage on-time submissions in future weeks. 

3. Very flexible: Late work is made up, with instructor permission 

If a student misses a deadline, they must contact the instructor and arrange an alternate way to complete the assignment (e.g. by taking a make-up quiz during the instructor’s office hours). 

This approach works best in courses where low-stakes assessments are considered part of a student’s participation grade. In this case, missing a deadline is like missing a class meeting. Students should be encouraged to initiate contact with the instructor to arrange a way to verify their understanding of the missed assignment’s concepts.  

High-Stakes Assessments  

Every course has one or more high-stakes assessments, such as exams or research papers. These assessments are weighted more heavily (worth more of the overall course grade) than lower-stakes assessments because these are higher-level demonstrations of students’ proficiency in the course outcomes. Failure to successfully complete high-stakes assessments generally leads to failure of the entire course. 

What kind of flexibility is appropriate then for key, high-stakes course assessments? 

1. Not flexible: Deadlines do not change, under any circumstances  

If a student misses a deadline, they receive zero points on that assessment. 

This is the most common approach to deadlines for high-stakes assessments. It is rare for a college instructor to permit students to make up a missed midterm or final exam because students making up an exam would receive the unfair advantage of more time to prepare for the exam. Also, many final exams are scheduled for the very end of term, when there is no time remaining for make-up testing before instructors must report course grades to the college. 

2. Somewhat flexible: Deadlines are extended, at a penalty 

If a student misses a deadline, they can submit the assessment late, but their score will be penalized a specified amount (e.g. one letter grade per day). 

This approach is more common for midterm assessments, or for courses with single high-stakes assessments, such as a research paper that students work on throughout the term. If students who miss the deadline for a high-stakes assessment can still submit their work, but their score is heavily penalized, the course grades will accurately reflect the students’ term-long proficiency in the course outcomes. For example, a student who earned “A” scores all term but submitted their final paper one day late could still finish the course with a “B” grade. 

Remember, flexibility around assignments should be geared towards what makes sense in your course and for your students. While there are a lot of possible variations in regards to policy, the most critical element is to be clear and upfront with your students early in the term. This will help avoid confusion and complaints – and help you keep your sanity at the end of the term when students come looking for extra chances to make up missed work! 

Anna Johnson is an award-winning instructor at Mt Hood Community College in Oregon where she has worn many hats since 2005. Joining the faculty as an instruction librarian, Anna then spent 10 years as a career-technical instructor, preparing students for living-wage jobs as administrative assistants and front-end web developers, and now leads the college’s Business transfer degree program. Anna enjoys using problem-based learning and flipped classroom methodologies to prepare students for future workplace challenges. When she's not teaching, Anna is an avid cook, formidable fantasy football player, National Park enthusiast, and volunteer usher and tour guide for Portland's performing arts center. Anna has supported other instructors in their use of SIMnet as an MHE Digital Faculty Consultant since 2015.

Documentation

• Using Assignment
• Assignment settings
• Assignment FAQ

This page explores the different types of assignment, how students submit assignments and how teachers can grade them.

• 1 What are the options for submitting work in Moodle?
• 2.1 You want students to type shorter or longer responses directly online
• 2.2 You want students to submit work you can download in a specified program
• 2.3 You want students to submit files at different times for a project
• 2.4 You want students to write a response to a video/sound file/image
• 2.5 You want students to answer a series of questions on a video/sound file/image
• 2.6 You want to grade work students have done offline
• 2.7 You want to view, comment on and send back students' assignments
• 2.8 You want students to send you a comment or note along with their uploaded work
• 2.9 You want to allow students to redraft and decide when to submit the work
• 2.10 You want students to keep an ongoing journal or do an iterative assignment
• 2.11 You want students to submit work in groups
• 2.12 You want to grade students' work anonymously
• 2.13 You want to read and grade student assignments offline
• 2.14 You want to hide students' grades until a time of your choosing.
• 2.15 You want to set a timed assignment
• 2.16 You want to moderate other colleagues' marking or allocate certain teachers to certain students
• 3.1 File submission
• 3.2 Access controlled links
• 3.3 Online text
• 3.4 Submission comments
• 4.1 Filtering submissions
• 4.2 Allocating submissions to markers
• 4.3 Submission status
• 4.4 Overriding assignment deadlines
• 4.5 Granting extensions
• 4.6 Quick grading
• 4.7.1 Annotating submissions
• 4.8.1 Notifying as you mark
• 4.8.2 Keeping grades hidden until a release date
• 4.8.3 Examples of Marking workflow
• 4.9.1 Before you start, enable the multiple file upload settings
• 4.9.2 Downloading student submissions
• 4.9.3 Download the Grading Worksheet to record grades
• 4.9.4 Grade and annotate (if applicable) the submitted work
• 4.9.5 Upload the completed grading worksheet
• 4.9.6 Upload feedback files (if applicable)
• 4.10 Give the same feedback file to multiple students
• 5 Keeping records (archiving, exporting, backing up)
• 6 Tips and Tricks
• 7.1 Examples from School demo site

What are the options for submitting work in Moodle?

The standard ways students can submit assignments are:

• File submissions (students submit a file for assessment)
• Online text (students can type their responses directly in Moodle)
• Audio or video (via the recording button in the Atto editor )
• It is also possible to use the assignment for grading an "offline assignment", ie, one where work is done outside of Moodle. This is done by simply unchecking the above three options.
• If you're not sure which assignment type best suits your needs, look at the section below #Which type of assignment submission suits you best?

Which type of assignment submission suits you best?

You want students to type shorter or longer responses directly online.

Set Online text to Yes. This works well for younger children who will only manage a sentence or two and works just as well for higher education students who write more.

• Advantage - quick for the student to get started; no need to use a word-processing program and upload the file. The text is saved on a regular basis so it will be preserved if the student loses the page for some reason.
• Disadvantage: if the word count is expected to be large, setting Online text to No and File submission to Yes might be a better option.

You want students to submit work you can download in a specified program

Set File submission to Yes, set the number of files you will allow using the Maximum number of uploaded files setting and the file sizes by using the Maximum submission size setting.

• Advantage - better than students emailing work as the whole class's work is collated in one space on your course. Markers can provide comments directly on the student work.
• Advantage - with "Attempts reopened" enabled, teachers can see the progression through various drafts of a student's work.
• Disadvantage - assignments must downloaded to be viewed (but they can be downloaded in bulk ) and the teacher needs the appropriate program to open them.

You want students to submit files at different times for a project

Set File submission to Yes, and use Maximum number of uploaded files to set the maximum number of separate files they can upload

• Advantage - all project files are in one assignment area for grading so they get a single grade.
• Disadvantage - all project files are in one assignment area for grading - so they can only have a single grade!

You want students to write a response to a video/sound file/image

Set up an assignment allowing online text submission and get students to use the Moodle media icon to add video/sound/image files.

You want students to answer a series of questions on a video/sound file/image

Investigate the Quiz module. Assignments are really just for a single question.

You want to grade work students have done offline

Uncheck the submission types when setting up the assignment. Students won't be required to do anything but you can use the assignment to grade them for work done outside of Moodle.

You want to view, comment on and send back students' assignments

Set up an assignment allowing file submissions .

• Advantage: useful for teachers who like using the "comment" options in word-processing programs for example. If you have Ghostscript enabled on your server and the students upload PDF files, you can annotate them inline. See the section Annotating PDF files below.
• Disadvantage: if students upload other file types, you have to download them, comment and then re-upload them.

You want students to send you a comment or note along with their uploaded work

If comments are enabled site-wide , students will be able to add submission comments; if comments are disabled site-wide, students will not be given the option to add submission comments.

You want to allow students to redraft and decide when to submit the work

In the settings set Require students click submit button to Yes. Students can then control when their draft work is submitted to the teacher.

You want students to keep an ongoing journal or do an iterative assignment

In the settings set Require students click submit button to No. Students can continue to make changes to their assignment and at no point do they 'submit'. If the work will be graded at some point it is recommended that either Prevent late submissions is set to Yes to ensure that no changes can be made after the due date, or all submissions are locked when grading commences to ensure that the work is not altered during grading.

• Advantage: the work remains in one place and is constantly improved, graded (if needed) and improved again.
• Disadvantage: there is no record/history of previous attempts (such as with the Wiki ). The online text assignment does not replicate the display of a journal or blog where each new entry is additional to the previous ones.

You want students to submit work in groups

In the settings, set "Students submit in groups" to Yes. If you just do this, then once one student has submitted, the assignment will be flagged as submitted even if the others haven't contributed. If you want to ensure everyone has an input, set "Require students click submit button" to Yes and then change "Require all group members to submit" to Yes. The assignment will only be classed as submitted when each member has contributed, and once one student has submitted, the remaining members's names will be displayed for the group to see who still needs to add their input.

You want to grade students' work anonymously

In the settings, choose 'Anonymous submissions'. When students submit assignments, their names will be replaced by randomly-generated participant numbers so you will not know who is who. Note that this is not totally anonymous because you can reveal their identities in the assignment settings and you can work out identities from the logs - so this might not be suitable if your establishment has very precise privacy requirements.

You want to read and grade student assignments offline

In the settings, choose "Offline grading worksheet". When students have submitted, click "View/grade all submissions" and you can download their assignments from the link "Download all submissions" and download the grading sheet from the link "Download grading worksheet". You can then edit grades and re-upload the grading worksheet. You can also upload multiple feedback files in a zip from this drop down menu. See Assignment settings for an explanation of how to use the "upload multiple feedback files as zip" feature.

You want to hide students' grades until a time of your choosing.

Use 'marking workflow' as explained in Assignment settings .

You want to set a timed assignment

Ask your administrator to enable the time limit feature from Site administration > Plugins > Assignment settings > Enable timed assignments and you will then have the option from the Availability section.

You want to moderate other colleagues' marking or allocate certain teachers to certain students

Use 'marking allocation' as explained in Assignment settings .

How do students submit their assignments?

The first page students will see when they click on the assignment activity link from the course page will display the assignment name, description and the submission status. The first time a student views the assignment it will look like this:

The submission status section includes:

Submission status

• Grading status
• Time remaining
• Last modified
• Submission details

As they progress through the assignment the Submission status and Grading status will update and the Last modified date will appear.

If the student uploaded a file which the teacher has annotated, this will be made available in the feedback section. The student can search through the document and filter specific comments.

Submission statuses include:

• Nothing submitted for this assignment
• Draft (not submitted)
• Submitted for grading

Grading statuses include:

File submission

To submit a file submission, students complete the following steps:

• Click the ‘Add submission’ button to bring up the file upload page.
• Upload the relevant file into the submission. They are able to ‘drag and drop’ the file into the submission box.
• Click ‘Save Changes’.

There should now be a Last modified date and the file(s) uploaded will also be displayed. Depending on how the assignment is setup the status will either read ‘Submitted for grading’ - in which case no further action is need, or ‘Draft (not submitted)’.

• If changes are required, click ‘Edit submission’.
• Once ready to submit, click ‘Submit assignment’.

Note that once the assignment is 'submitted’ no further changes are allowed.

Note: Depending on how the assignment is setup students may see both a file submission page and an online text editor.

If file submissions and online text are enabled, and a word limit is set for the online text, it is possible for a student to end up with a submission status of 'No attempt' together with saved file submissions. This occurs when a student submits files, enters online text, clicks 'Save changes' then obtains a message informing them that the text exceeds the word limit. If they then click Cancel, the submission status is shown as 'No attempt' together with saved file submissions.

Access controlled links

If the administrator has enabled this feature for either the Google Drive repository or the OneDrive repository then students can upload a file as an 'access controlled link' from either of these repositories. The file is then copied to the site account and the student is no longer able to edit it.The student retains the original file in their own Google Drive or OneDrive. The teacher is given permission to edit the file for grading purposes, and the student is sent a copy of the edited file.

Online text

To submit online text, students complete the following steps:

• Click the ‘Add submission’ button to bring up the online text editor page.
• Type the relevant text into the text editor , or paste from a previously written file.

There should now be a Last modified date and the first 100 characters entered will also be displayed. Depending on how the assignment is setup the status will either read ‘Submitted for grading’ - in which case no further action is need, or ‘Draft (not submitted)’.

• If changes are required, click on ‘Edit my submission’.

Submission comments

If enabled by the administrator, there may be a section where students can leave submission comments.

How do teachers grade assignments?

When students have submitted their assignments, they can be accessed by clicking on the assignment activity. This will bring up the Grading Summary page.

The Grading Summary page displays a summary of the assignment, including; number of participants, number of drafts, number of submitted assignments, due date and time remaining.

Clicking 'Grade' will take you to the first student in the list so you can start grading individually. If you wish to grade several assignments, clicking Save and Show next will take you to the next submission.

Clicking 'View all submissions' will take you to the grading table where you see all students.

The Grading Table contains columns of information about the student, the status of their submission, a link to grade their submission, a link to each submission and feedback comments and files (if enabled).

Filtering submissions

A dropdown menu accessed from the 'Options' section allows you to filter submissions so you can for example quickly see which students have not submitted yet.

You can also filter submissions which have had extensions granted.

Allocating submissions to markers

If you need to divide submissions between more than one person, you can apply groups to the assignment and let markers know which group(s) to mark. Note that because group membership is not itself anonymised, this may make anonymised submissions that bit less anonymous, though as long as the groups aren't very small this should be acceptable.

An alternative is to use marking allocation - this allows anyone with a teacher role to allocate one marker to each submission. This works particularly well if marking is allocated by subject specialism.

If you will be assigning grades to student work, you may want to take note of the submission status before you begin the marking process. If you have required students click the Submit button, you may find that some submissions are still marked as Draft (not submitted), meaning the student has either uploaded a file(s) or entered some text, but has not clicked ‘Submit assignment’.

If it's after the due date and you are about to commencing marking that you use ‘Prevent submission changes’ to stop students from making changes to their assignment. You can do this one by one by using the icon in the Edit column.

Or you can select two or more students by putting a tick in the select column and going to 'Lock submissions’ from the With selected menu under the grading table.

Likewise you can also revert a student's submission to draft if they have uploaded the incorrect file. Instead of selecting ‘Prevent submission changes’ select ‘Revert the submission to draft’, or place ticks against selected students and choose 'Revert the submission to draft status' from the With selected menu under the grading table.

If the submission setting 'Attempts reopened' is set to 'Automatically until pass' and a submission is graded below the grade to pass, then then submission is automatically unlocked when the grade is saved. Similarly, if the submission setting 'Attempts reopened' is set to Manually, and a teacher selects 'Allow another attempt, then the submission is automatically unlocked.

Overriding assignment deadlines

A teacher can override a deadline for an individual or group from the Assignment navigation > More link Boost theme or Assignment administration other themes.)

When adding overrides for a group, it is possible to have one group override trump another. This is achieved by moving the override up/down on the group overrides page:

In this situation, a student in both groups (e.g. Frodo Baggins) will have the override from "The Council of Elrond" applied. By pressing the arrow icons on the right, the override for "The Fellowship" can be moved to the top of the list, and will have higher precedence.

Note also that if there exists a user override for a student, it will always take precedence over any group overrides.

Granting extensions

If an assignment has a deadline, a teacher can grant individual or group assignment extensions by selecting the Edit link next to a particular student or group.

• To grant an extension, open the assignment
• Click on "View all submissions"
• Locate the student who is to be allowed to submit after the "Cut-off date"To

• Click on "Save changes".

Quick grading

Quick grading allows you to enter numeric grades directly into the grading table, bypassing the more detailed grading interface. Please note:

• if you want to give feedback, you need to use the more detailed Grade interface.
• Quick grading is incompatible with advanced grading e.g. Rubrics, and is not recommended when there are multiple markers.
• Submission comments are a two-way private conversation between a student and staff and are visible to students immediately i.e. markers use the grading interface to give feedback, not the submission comments.

To access the Quick Grading interface, from the Grading Summary page click 'View all submissions'; the Grading Table displays. Scroll to bottom of the page to configure Options, and check the box for 'Quick grading'. While you're down there, you can also set the number of assignments to display per page, filter the assignments e.g. to see who has not submitted, unmarked assignments, etc.

When you are ready to Quick Grade:

• You can enter grades directly into the grading table.
• Scroll to the bottom of the grading table and click 'Save all quick grading changes'
• A confirmation displays.

Grading individual submissions

If you have enabled File Feedback in the Assignment settings and wish to upload either the marked student assignment, a completed text based feedback document or audio feedback, click on the green tick in the Grade column (or use the icon in the Edit column and select Grade).

This brings you to the Student Grading Page where you can give grades, feedback comments and feedback files (if enabled in the Assignment settings ). You can use drag and drop to upload feedback files.

Annotating submissions

If the student has uploaded a PDF, docx or odt file, or if you set 'Comment inline' for an online text submission, then their submission will be displayed on the grading screen, allowing you to annotate it (requires Ghostscript for PDF and unoconv for docx and odt files), using a variety of tools, stamps (if uploaded by the admin) and comments which may be saved to a comments bank. When the annotations are complete, clicking to save the changes will result in it being displayed to the student as part of their feedback.

'Rotate' icons let you change the orientation of an uploaded document if the student submitted it in landscape mode for example.

Comments may be added and then saved in a quick list for future use (1) Click the paper/magnifying glass icon to the right of the page selector to filter comments you have already added to the work (2) :

• In the Search comments pop-up window, enter the term you would like to search for in the Filter comments... box.
• Clicking on the comment will take you to the part of the paper where that comment has been added.

Note: To ensure that comments display to students as the marker intends, do instruct students to download the annotated PDF rather than just previewing it. Preview sometimes displays comments in a way which obscures the original text.

The review panel and / or the grading panel may be collapsed by clicking the icons at the bottom right of the screen.

Controlling when to notify students of graded work

Notifying as you mark.

If you need to notify individual students, one by one, as you mark, the Notify students checkbox is available when grading individual submissions. Choose Yes to notify the student immediately or No to grade without notifying the student. Assuming you are not hiding grades in the ways outlined below, then Moodle will send a notification.

Note: How students receive Moodle notifications depends on your local default settings, and any changes students have made to those.

Keeping grades hidden until a release date

Assessors often decide to hide grades and feedback until marking is complete and finalised, and then release them all at once. There are two alternatives for this.

• Hide the item in the Grader Report . This is convenient if there are few markers and you have decided a provision date for releasing the marks and feedback.
• Or enable Use marking workflow in the Assignment's settings. This way is best where there are many markers, and/or you don't have a provisional date to release marks and feedback.

Examples of Marking workflow

One marker, Marker, wants to release all grades at the same time

• Marker enables "Use marking workflow"
• Marker marks each submission and transitions the grading to "Marking completed" as each submission is graded.
• Marker then uses the batch operations to transition all grades to "Released" at the same time.

Multiple markers,

Offline marking - downloading and uploading multiple grades and feedback files

If you don't have an internet connection or prefer to grade outside Moodle, you can do so (including with anonymous submissions). These easy stages explained below:

• Download the submissions
• Download the spreadsheet (grading worksheet) to record grades.
• Grade and annotate (if applicable) the submitted work.
• Upload the completed grading worksheet.
• Upload the annotated submissions (if applicable).

Note:You cannot upload marks and feedback to Moodle if you have enabled Rubrics or Marking Guides.

Before you start, enable the multiple file upload settings

Go to the settings of that assignment. For Feedback types, ensure that the Moodle Assignment settings, Feedback comments, Feedback files, and Offline grading worksheet are ticked.

Downloading student submissions

You can download a zip file containing all of the assignment submissions by selecting ‘Download all submissions’ from the 'Grading actions' menu at the top of the grading table, or in the settings menu.

File submissions will be downloaded in the format uploaded by the student. Online text submissions will be downloaded as html files. Each file in the zip will be named with the student first and last name followed by a unique identifier (not the user ID number).

If each submission is more than a single file, then submissions may be downloaded in folders by ticking the option 'Download submissions in folders' (below the grading table). Each submission is put in a separate folder, with the folder structure kept for any subfolders, and files are not renamed. Each folder will be named with the student first and last name followed by a unique identifier (not the user ID number).

You can also download selected assignment submissions (rather than all of them) by selecting the ones you want and then choosing 'With selected....Download selected submissions'.

Download the Grading Worksheet to record grades

• Next, to download the spreadsheet in which you'll enter the grades and brief comments, return to the Moodle Assignment page and from its Grading action drop-down menu choose Download grading worksheet and save that file (keep its csv file format).

Note: Helpfully that downloaded worksheet will contain any existing grades and summary comments which have already been given for that assignment i.e. if marking has already started. However, to see pre-existing comments fully you may need to set your spreadsheet to 'wrap text' within cells.

Grade and annotate (if applicable) the submitted work

After downloading the submissions and the grading worksheet:

• Open a downloaded assignment file to assess it.
• Open the csv file in a spreadsheet editor e.g. Excel.
• For that student's record (if anonymous, a number corresponding to the submission file name will display), enter grades in the Grade column and summary comments in the Feedback comments column for each student.
• Leave the other data untouched unless you know exactly what you're doing.
• Repeat as needed.
• Save the csv file.

Note: Take care to enter data in the correct column of the spreadsheet.

If you are annotating the submissions to return to students as feedback:

• Open a downloaded submission.
• Carry out your annotations.
• Save it in its original place i.e. the folder corresponding to that student.

If you have separate feedback files to upload to students:

• Save these within that student's folder.
• You can give students multiple feedback files in this way e.g. annotations on their work along with a separate pro forma.

Note: Don't change the name or location of the folder - Moodle needs this information to allocate the files correctly.

Compress (zip) all the feedback files:

• Windows: Right click one of the selected files and Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.
• Mac: Right Click (or Ctrl+click) one of the selected files and click Compress.
• They are now ready for upload (see below).

Upload the completed grading worksheet

When you are ready to upload grades and summary feedback:

• Click on the assignment name on the Moodle course homepage to access the summary page and click View/grade all submissions .
• From the Grading action drop-down menu choose Upload grading worksheet .
• Click Choose a file... and upload the grading worksheet to Moodle, or drag the csv file to the arrow and wait for the file name to appear in the box.
• There is a checkbox to overwrite records that have been modified more recently in Moodle than in the spreadsheet - only check this if you want to spreadsheet to overwrite all Moodle records, including ones made more recently than the spreadsheet.
• Click Upload grading worksheet ; a Confirmation box displays the students grades and feedback that will be imported - check this carefully.
• If you are ready to proceed, click Confirm ; a summary of updates displays.
• Click Continue .

Upload feedback files (if applicable)

• From the Grading action drop-down menu choose Upload multiple feedback files in a zip .
• Click Choose a file... and upload the zipped assignments file to Moodle, or drag the compressed/zipped file to the arrow and wait for the file name to appear in the box.
• Click Import feedback file(s) .
• The Confirmation box will list all the feedback files and student names that will be imported.
• Click Confirm ; the next screen summarises the changes.
• Click Continue .
• From the page containing the Grading Table, you can check your feedback files by enabling Quick grading (see Options at the bottom of that page) and scrolling horizontally, if needed.

For an assignment with no file submissions, see the discussion upload feedback files without student file submissions for details of what to do.

Give the same feedback file to multiple students

If you have high level feedback you want to give to an entire cohort, it is generally a good idea to give this feedback in the context of the assignment, rather than e.g. separately via a Forum. Moodle allows you to select some or all students and attach a single, common feedback file to their assignment feedback. This common feedback will appear to each student along with any other individual feedback files you have prepared for each.

• Prepare the single file of feedback.
• Click on the link to the Assignment; its summary page displays.
• Click View all submissions ; the assignment's Grading Table displays.
• Use the checkboxes to select all or some students to receive the feedback (you may first prefer to configure the Grading Table to show as many students as possible on a single page).
• Underneath the Grading Table click the With selected... menu, choose Send feedback files , then click Go ; a page displays a list of selected students above a file upload area.
• Upload the file of feedback you prepapred, or drag it to the arrow and wait for the file name to appear in the box.
• Click Send feedback files ; the Grading Table displays again.
• Check your file is in place by scrolling horizontally to the Feedback files column.

Keeping records (archiving, exporting, backing up)

When students unenrol from a Moodle area, their records become invisible through the Gradebook interface. In order to have the information to hand, departments or course teaching teams may need systems in place to keep their own records for the data retention period required in their particular context. There are two separate procedures for exporting student submissions and marks.

To export marks (with or without feedback):

• Go to your course administration block and click Grades.
• From the Grader Report Settings block, select Export; a menu displays.
• From the menu, if you need easy viewing and running calculations you probably want to select one of the spreadsheet formats; a page of export settings loads
• Use the Visible Groups pulldown menu to limit the export to specific groups, as required
• In Options, you indicate whether feedback comments are included
• In Grade Items To Be Included lists you can, if required, omit particular Activities from the report
• When you've finished with the settings, click on Submit; a preview of your export displays
• Click on Download to export to the format you chose, and save the file.

To download the original student submissions:

• In your course area, click the link to the Assignment whose submissions you want to download.
• Click on the link to View/Grade all submissions; the Grading Table will load.
• Click the link to 'Download all submissions' and save the file.

Tips and Tricks

• Want to use an Assignment activity again in another Moodle site? Use the backup and restore options.
• Want to use an Assignment activity in another course you teach? Use the Import function in the course administration block.
• Moodle will sometimes appear not to be uploading a resubmitted assignment - you seem to be downloading the original assignment. This is a cache issue, in short, go to "Tools > Clear Recent History" in Firefox or "Tools > Delete Browsing History > Delete Temporary Files" in Windows Explorer. The newer file will then appear.

Examples from School demo site

• Teacher view of a PDF assignment which can be annotated inline. Log in with username 'teacher' and password 'moodle'
• Teacher view of allocated markers and marking workflow status. Log in with username 'teacher' and password 'moodle'
• Student view of an assignment. Log in with username 'student' and password 'moodle'. Scroll down to see the rubric and feedback.
• Student view of a student submission statement Log in with username 'student' and password 'moodle'
• Student view of group assignment grading screen Log in with username 'student' and password 'moodle'
• Teacher view of a group assignment grading screen Log in with username 'teacher' and password 'moodle'.
• Teacher view of Anonymous submissions grading screen Log in with username 'teacher' and password 'moodle'
• One approach to group project grading blog post by Gavin Henrick
• Advantages of using Assignment upload over emailing a document forum discussion

• Help Center
• Assignments
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service
• Submit feedback
• Students: Submit assignments

Start, revise & submit assignments

To start your assignment, you first need to link your Google Account to Assignments. You can then open your assignment and, when you are finished, submit it for grading. If you edit your work before the due date, you can resubmit your assignment.

You can attach any file type from Google Drive or your hard drive to your assignment, including:

• Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
• Microsoft ®️ Word ®️ , Excel ®️ , or PowerPoint ®️
• Image files
• Video files (WEBM, MPEG4, 3GPP, MOV, AVI, MPEG-PS, WMV, FLV, OGG)

Assignments automatically converts Microsoft Office ®️ files to Google Docs, then saves the files to the Assignments folder in your Google Drive.

Complete an assignment

Link your google account to assignments for the course.

The first time you use Google Assignments in a course, you link the Google Account you want to use with that course with your LMS account. 

Linking your Google Account to Assignments allows it to:

• Access your Google Drive to attach files to your assignments.
• Archive copies of your submissions.
• Create an Assignments folder in your Drive that organizes files by course and assignment.

To link your account:

• Go to your LMS.
• Open the assignment.
• Sign in with your Google Account.
• If it's your first time using Assignments for the course, link your Google Account to the course.  

Attach files to an assignment

Important: If your assignment is set up to grade with your LMS’s grader tool, there’s a 10 MB size limit per file.

You can attach up to 20 files to your assignment. 

• To upload a new file, click Create and select a file type.

Turn in an assignment

• When you turn in an assignment, a copy is saved to your Google Drive in the Assignments folder.
• Ownership of your original file transfers to your instructor when it is graded and you can't edit your file.
• You regain ownership of your file when your instructor returns your work.
• You will never lose ownership of your files.
• Work that has been submitted to the instructor is not unsubmitted.
• The instructor sees a time stamp of the most recent submission.

After your instructor grades and returns your work, you regain ownership of your file. 

Note : If you resubmit files, the instructor sees a time stamp of the most recent submission.

Unsubmit an assignment

Important:  This only applies to assignments graded with Google Assignments.

If your assignment has a due date, you can unsubmit your work before the due date. Be sure to resubmit your work before the due date, so it’s not marked late. After the due date, you can’t unsubmit your work. 

If your assignment doesn’t have a due date, you can unsubmit your work at any time. Be sure to check with your instructor for specific requirements.

• Open your assignment.

Need more help?

Try these next steps:.

• Release of the New Quiz Evaluation Experience
• The New Planned Configuration Variable for Advanced Assessments
• Transforming Creator+ Practices to Data-Enabled Practice Activities
• D2L Lumi for Creator+ Practice Generation Overview
• D2L Lumi Pro for Brightspace Idea Generation for Discussions Overview
• D2L Lumi Pro for Brightspace Idea Generation for Assignments Overview
• D2L Lumi Pro for Brightspace Quiz Question Generation Overview
• Introducing New Brightspace Generative AI Capabilities
• Intent to EOL the 'Final Grade Audit Log' page
• D2L Lumi for Creator+ Quick Start

New Assignments Date Feature - Updated Date Availability, Visibility, And Access Options

Introduction.

In late summer 2021, we released a new feature in Discussions to consolidate availability dates and started on a journey of consistency with Brightspace dates, behavior of activity visibility, and access around dates and calendar event control. We’re at the next phase of that journey.

This blog post details the exciting changes available to you in the December release. You’ll have the option to enable a new feature in Assignments that lets faculty have greater control over the behavior of availability dates for their students.

With the new availability date settings, teachers will be able to:

• Stop late submissions
• Let students view assignment information and submissions after it ends
• Schedule when an assignment becomes visible
• Prevent students from attempting an assignment while still viewing details
• Post the start and end of an assignment to the Calendar

Highlights of Upcoming Key Changes

After enabling the new feature, users can expect the following to happen:

New options for availability dates that allow for flexibility in visibility and access

• This will apply to the Assignments edit page, Classic Content , Lessons , and Manage Dates . When an assignment is set up with availability dates, the instructor will be able to choose whether learners can see and access assignments outside of those availability dates. The new options will be Hidden , Visible with access restricted , and Visible with submission restricted .

An option to display availability dates in Calendar .

• The new option will apply to both Availability Start Date and Availability End Date . Tools where an assignment could be modified will no longer decide which calendar event should be added.
• Note : when the feature is enabled, additional Calendar events for Availability Start and Availability End dates may appear.

Default date properties can be set for the course.

• Instructors will have the option to change the default date settings for new assignments and new discussions in their course from a new Availability Date Defaults page under Course Admin . An admin will also be able to set defaults for their organization via config variables.
• On the instructor and student assignment list pages, all dates (due, start, end) will appear below the name of the assignment to be consistent with all activity list pages in Brightspace.
• The Due Date column within the table will be removed since Due Date is moving to below the assignment name.

New Properties of Availability Dates for Assignments

The availability dates for Assignments will have new properties as described below. These new properties align and behave the same way as the same properties available to Discussions topics and forums.

The Availability Start and End Dates will each have a set of three options. You will be able to select one option for each date. By choosing an option, you are deciding whether learners can see the assignment and access it. The options are:

Visible with access-restricted (before start/after end)

• The assignment will be visible to learners before the Start Date or after the End Date , but they cannot click or open it.
• This behavior is consistent with how Classic Content , Assignments , and User Progress treat assignments outside of availability dates currently.
• With this setting, learners can see the name, dates, and restrictions. Learners cannot see the assignment description or attachments.

Visible with submission-restricted (before start/after end)

• The assignment will be visible to learners before the Start Date or after the End Date and they can click or open it, but they cannot submit or mark it as complete.
• With this setting, learners can see all details about the assignment including description, attachments, and rubrics, but they cannot upload files, enter comments, or mark the assignment as complete (for observed in person/on paper submission).

Hidden (before start/after end)

• The assignment is hidden to learners until the start date is reached or after the end date passes.
• Learners will not see the assignment anywhere across Brightspace, including corresponding Calendar events and Notifications.

The new availability date settings will let teachers setup assignments to achieve a few different workflows for students:

• To stop late submissions, set an end date that is submission-restricted. Learners will be able to see the assignment information after the end date, but will not be able to submit.
• To let learners access their submissions after the assignment has ended, set an end date that is submission-restricted.
• To prevent learners from attempting an assignment but still allow them to view details like instructions and attachments, set a start date that is submission-restricted.
• To schedule the visibility of an assignment you want students to see at a specific time, set a start date that is hidden to completely hide it from students; or set a start date that is access-restricted to let students see the name and dates of the assignment but no other details.
• To show the start and end of an assignment in the Calendar, include start and end availability dates on the assignment and select Add availability dates to Calendar .

Permissions Affecting Visibility and Access

Due to the limited set of permissions for the Assignments tool, any role with the permission See and Manage Assignment Submission Folders will be able to see and access any assignment outside of availability dates that is hidden, access-restricted, or submission-restricted.  

Calendar Events and “Display in Calendar” for Assignment Dates

Calendar events are created for assignments based on rules defined within Assignments. Currently, Assignments does not support a ‘Display in Calendar’ option; and there is only ever one calendar event even if three dates (due, start, end) are set on the assignment.

The current rules for when dates are added to Calendar:

• If Due is set (and regardless of Start and/or End being set), show a Due event in Calendar
• If Due is not set and End is set, show an Availability Ends event in Calendar
• If Start is the only date set, show an Availability Starts event in Calendar

The new rules for when dates are added to Calendar are as follows:

• If Due Date is set, show a Due event in Calendar

When Display in Calendar is selected:

• If Start date is set, show an Availability Starts event in the Calendar
• If End date is set, show an Availability Ends event in the Calendar

When the new dates feature is enabled , learners may see additional Calendar events:

Editing Assignment Dates in the Assignments Tool

The following illustrates the changes to the Availability Dates and Conditions panel of an assignment before and after the new dates feature is enabled.

Figure: Availability Dates & Conditions in the Assignments editing page before the new dates feature.

Users can now adjust whether Calendar events for the availability dates are created from Assignments. A Due Date Calendar event is always created. Previously, Assignments would create a single Calendar event depending on which of the three dates were set.

Figure: Availability: Start Date window in the Assignments editing page showing availability settings.

Editing Assignment Dates in Classic Content

Like in the Assignments tool, users can edit the availability date settings from within Classic Content.

When clicking a date, a link becomes available to launch a dialog where the start and end availability date settings can be updated.

Note : Users can now adjust whether Calendar events for the availability dates are created from Classic Content. A Due Date Calendar event is always created. Previously, Content would create a single Calendar event depending on which of the three dates were set.

Figure: Assignment Start Date in Content under the Activity Details tab.

Figure: Availability: Start Date window in Content .

Assignment List Page Updates

From the instructor and learner Assignment lists, the following changes happen when the new date feature is enabled:

• The dates for an assignment will appear below its name. The update means all dates will be shown and the layout will be consistent with the Discussions and Quizzes list pages. Previously, only Due Date or End Date would be displayed.
• The Due Date column located at the far right of the table will be removed. With the addition of dates below the name, the Due Date column, which sometimes showed the End Date as the Due Date, would be redundant.

Figure: Manage Assignments page displaying the Due Date column.

Figure: Manage Assignments  page without the  Due Date  column. The start and end dates are now visible below the assignment name and the availability date description appears as a tool tip when hovering over the availability date.

Configuring Default Date Properties

Course defaults.

Instructors can choose the default settings for availability dates for any new assignment or discussion. The settings are available on the Availability Date Defaults page, which can be found under Course Admin .

Important : Making a change on this page will not affect the availability dates of any previously-created assignment or discussion, but it will affect the date properties of special access dates.

Figure: The Availability Dates Defaults page displaying the different options for Start and End Dates for Assignments and Discussions.

Org-level Setup for Availability Date Settings

Admins have the option to set the availability date setting for any new assignment created at their institution by updating the following configuration variables:

• d2l.Tools.Dropbox.StartDateDefaultType
• d2l.Tools.Dropbox.EndDateDefaultType

Admins can choose to set an org-wide override, setting up a cascading org unit type, or leave the defaults as is, which allows the instructor in each course to set up their own defaults as noted above.

Assignment Special Access

The special access screens for Assignments remains unchanged when the new dates feature is enabled.

However, special access dates inherit the date properties as follows:

• When the parent assignment has an availability date set, its date property is inherited by the corresponding special access date. For example, if the assignment is hidden before a start date, then the special access start date is also treated as hidden.
• When the parent assignment does not have an availability date, the special access date inherits its date property from the course default. For example, if the assignment does not have an end date, then a special access end date is set for a learner. This also occurs if the course default for assignment end dates is submission-restricted, making the special access end date be treated as submission-restricted.

Note : Whenever the availability date settings are changed from the Availability Date Defaults page, those changes will immediately impact the date properties of special access dates.

Summary of Changes to All Tools

The following is a summary of changes to various locations in Brightspace when the new dates feature is enabled for Assignments.

Assignments

• The Due Date column is being removed from the Assignments list for both instructors and students.
• Due Date and Availability Dates will appear below the assignment name; and the availability date settings will be displayed in the tooltip when hovering over the availability dates.
• When editing an assignment, new date properties can be set for the assignment availability dates.
• Instructors can choose whether availability dates appear in Calendar with a new ' display in calendar ' option.

Classic Content

• When editing an assignment either in the Table of Contents or in the Activity Details tab, new date properties and ' display in calendar ' can be set for availability dates.

New Content Experience

• Assignments that are submission-restricted will be shown in the New Content Experience and the New Learner Experience . However, access-restricted assignments will continue to be hidden as they are hidden currently. When editing an assignment, new date properties and ' display in calendar ' can be set for availability dates.

Manage Dates

• The Bulk Edit dialog shows the new availability date settings, but applied changes affect only assignments and discussions. Manage Dates currently lacks the sophistication required to dynamically show the new date properties based on selected items.
• Users will not receive notifications (email, instant messages alerts) for assignments that are hidden or access-restricted.

User Progress

• In the assignment summary and details sections, assignments will be hidden only if explicitly set as hidden outside of availability dates; otherwise, they will be visible (non-accessible for access-restricted, clickable for submission-restricted), and included in submission counts.

Class Progress

• Assignments that are explicitly marked as hidden outside of availability dates will be excluded from statistics.

Assignment and Content APIs

• New elements for availability date settings will appear in a new version of the Assignment APIs .
• The Content APIs already support the new date properties via similar work released in 2021 for Discussions. When the new assignment dates feature is enabled, these elements for data properties will be populated with the corresponding assignment data.
• In addition to the changes mentioned in a previous section, editing a calendar event for an assignment will not provide the option to update the new availability date settings. These changes will need to be made through Assignments , New Content Experience , or Classic Content .

Course Copy

The availability date settings associated with assignments are copied as part of the process.

• Note : Course Copy does not copy the configuration variable setting that enables/disables the new dates feature. The new feature will either need to be enabled manually in the destination course via the Availability Date Defaults page in Course Admin ; or the new feature can be turned on for the entire org.

Import/Export

• Due to the additional properties of the availability dates, the XML format of the Brightspace course package will be updated. The import tool will recognize old and new formats for assignments.
• When the new dates feature is enabled, the export tool will export assignments in the new format.
• <availability_start>
•   <availability_date>2021-05-04T16:07:00</availability_date>
•   <availability_type>0</availability_type>
• </availability_start>
• <availability_end>
•   <availability_date>2021-05- 6T16:07:00</availability_date>
• </availability_end>

The following will be the map for  Availability Types :

• 0 = access-restricted
• 1 = submission-restricted
• Notifications : Learners will receive notifications for visible assignments (access- and submission-restricted).
• Work-to-do : Assignments marked as hidden before/after availability dates will not appear.
• Course Content : Future/past dated items that are set to hidden do not appear. Items that are set to access-restricted continue to show the Pulse app error.
• Activity Details Page : Learners can get to the Pulse activity details page for assignments that are access-restricted and submission-restricted. In the update, descriptions will be hidden for access-restricted assignments.

Content Browser Widget and Work-to-do Widget

• Assignments marked as hidden before start/after end will not be displayed. Access-restricted assignments will be visible but not clickable. Submission-restricted assignments will be visible and clickable.

Course Builder

• No changes to Course Builder. Users wanting to update the new availability date settings will need to use Assignments , Classic Content , or New Content Experience .
• Two new columns will be added to the Assignment Summary and Assignment Special Access data sets. The new columns will be for the start and end date availability date settings.

• Student Access Services
• Guidelines for Reasonable Extension of Assignment Deadline

Guidelines for Reasonable Extension of Assignment Deadline; all decisions regarding reasonable extension of assignment deadlines will be reviewed and determined on an assignment by assignment /case by case basis

Policy Statement

Students at Hofstra University are expected tmeet deadlines for assignments and tests. However, some students may have a disability that impacts their ability tdso, including conditions that are episodic, variable in symptoms, and requiring treatment or hospitalization.

Hofstra University recognizes that an extension of assignment deadlines may be a reasonable accommodation in these situations. This accommodation is intended for short-term assignments, not long-term projects listed on syllabi.

It does not address time management issues unrelated ta student's disability. Students must manage their time effectively and meet assignment deadlines as expected. However, if a disability prevents timely completion of assignments, the accommodation allows flexibility. Extension duration depends on disability severity and impact on assignment completion time. Documentation from a licensed professional is required, and extensions must not compromise course integrity.

Student Procedure:

• Students must complete and submit a Request for Reasonable Accommodations form and provide documentation of a disability from a qualified professional, as defined in the ADA Guidelines for Documentation, tStudent Access Services (SAS) office
• Each request is reviewed in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and a determination is made tverify that the disability may cause the student tmiss classes that exceed the specified attendance policy.
• Students approved for assignment extensions by Hofstra University's Student Access Services (SAS) must present the Letter of Accommodation (LOA) ttheir instructor and discuss the approved adjustments.
• Student must provide timely notification tthe professor with SAS copied on it, in each instance that the accommodation is being requested for use. Assignment deadlines must be coordinated with both the instructor and SAS according tthe approved accommodation and cannot be submitted at any time.
• Under normal circumstances, assignments cannot be turned in after the semester concludes and grades are posted (whichever comes first).
• Accommodation requests can be made at any time during the semester but are not retroactive. Missed assignments before the instructor receives the LOA may be handled based on the course's assignment policy, at the instructor's discretion.

SAS Responsibilities

• Review student petitions for extended assignment time.
• Assess disability impact, educational needs, and submitted documentation
• Consider course requirements and student accommodations.
• Determine if extensions alter course fundamentals.

Faculty Responsibilities

• Acknowledge LOA-listed accommodations.
• Consider assignment relevance, timing, and syllabus adherence.
• Participate in SAS discussions on extension appropriateness.

Additional Factors

• Evaluate assignment necessity, syllabus deadlines, participation requirements, and sequential learning impact.
• Consider alternative assignment submission methods and exam policies.
• Assignment's purpose and timing relative texams or class discussions.
• Course syllabus deadlines and participation requirements.
• Interaction expectations among students (e.g., in-class, group work, online platforms).
• Sequential learning nature and continuity of course material.
• Availability of alternative class sections for catching up.
• Policies for makeup exams, quizzes, and late submissions.
• Use of Canvas or other online platforms for assignments.

For further assistance, please contact Student Access Services.

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Knowing that most students submit assignments right around the deadline, is it advisable not to set deadline that is very late at night?

Like many on this site, I use a Moodle-type online Content Management System to give assignments to my students, and receive the finished work for grading. This is in a traditional context where the students are physically present in the classroom, and the online part is seen as a simple tool to be used in addition to the classic paper-based route. Students' first class for the day usually begins at 8 a.m.

For the last few years, I put the deadline for assignment acceptance at midnight, with plenty of time (2-3 weeks) to do the work, so each student can handle his/her workload as they wish. These are young adults aged 18-25, and are in theory very much responsible for their acts. Observation gives us actual hand-in times with approximately the following distribution:

• 1-2 days before deadline: 5%
• 3-24 hours before: 10%
• 1-2 hours: 10%
• less than 1 hour: 65%
• emails in distress after the deadline has expired saying they have encountered a computer glitch or some other excuse: 10%

Which I guess is about par for the course. :-(

So it is clear that while in theory these students are responsible young adults, in practice they tend to plan ahead in a less than stellar way. The impression that is perceived is that the online nature of the submission system makes students take slightly more liberties with deadlines than when assignments had to be handed in, in a face-to-face situation - although it is clear that even then there will always be a certain percentage of people with difficulties respecting deadlines.

OK, here is the question: without getting into considerations on whether students should plan better (and possible ways in which I and other teachers could help them do so), would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep (moral considerations welcome) and actually attending class at the beginning of the next day? Do I get to patent this Great Idea?

No, that last bit was a joke. ;-)

Reactions from people who are not actually teachers, but have experienced this context as a student are also welcome.

I have ended up accepting the answer by Superbest below, basically because I liked his discussion of alternative possibilities. This is a bit subjective, since many other answers are also of very high quality IMHO - and I would certainly encourage the reader to peruse all the answers given here, and the varying points of view expressed (also in comments). Much appreciated.

• online-learning

• 28 I had to take a take-home exam when I was 25. There was no Internet (this was almost 40 years ago). I had to run 3 miles (about 5 km) trying to meet the 8 a.m. deadline. Yes, I was a responsible adult (I swear). No matter what your schedule is, your observed distribution would look about the same. So, I would suggest move the deadline to 8 p.m. so the students would have plenty of time to get on social media or play games after they submit their assignments.;-) –  Nobody Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 8:27
• 19 Considering the concept of deadlines itself, I really like the idea described elsewhere on this site (or on Math Educators) a while ago to slowly worsen the grade of late submissions until they automatically fail. So you can still get a decent grade for submitting 10 minutes late but not for submitting 48 hours late (depending on the total length of the assignment, of course). Also, I think that computer glitches are today’s “the dog ate my homework” and should not be a valid excuse. –  Wrzlprmft ♦ Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 12:41
• 71 One trivial advantage of 10pm over midnight - no danger of someone getting confused over which day is meant! –  Andrew is gone Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:05
• 50 As a student, I am usually part of that 65% who turn their hw in last minute, but it's not because it took that long, it's just that I am usually paranoid about handing in something earlier than I have to and then realizing that I made a mistake or could have done better. So, I tend to turn assignments in last minute, although I finished them much earlier. –  dramzy Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 17:19
• 22 As a somewhat recent student, one reason why I often submitted close to the midnight deadline was that evenings and late nights were often when I had the time to work. If a deadline were set to be earlier in the day when I had classes and activities to attend, then I would be much more likely to submit the night before with plenty of time to spare. Then again, that might mean I would just stay up until 3 instead of 12 :) –  David K Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:46

18 Answers 18

While I admire your concern for the students, I feel that ultimately your endeavor is quixotic.

To be sure, I see nothing wrong with making your deadline be at 10 pm. It won't change anything, so you might as well. But I wouldn't expect it to have any notable effect, and I would be wary of the slippery slope that leads to you blaming yourself for the students' errors.

The reason I am so pessimistic is that I don't think procrastination and irregular sleep are caused by deadline timing (unless the work demanded is truly overwhelming, but in college it never is ). They are caused by poor personal discipline and bad habits acquired over many years leading up to the present. Regardless of what you do, the procrastinators will still invent ways to procrastinate, because the problem is rooted in their own behavior, not yours. You therefore cannot solve the problem by changing your behavior.

For instance, if you have the deadline at 10 pm, the procrastinator will drop everything that evening to work on your assignment and submit it around 10. Then he will still stay up doing the things he just postponed for the sake of your assignment. Because, recall, this person is not selectively procrastinating on your course only - they have also other courses that have deadlines. Even if all courses had the same early deadline policy, the students would still have their own errands with self-imposed deadlines at later times that they stay up for.

By the same logic that makes you consider 10 pm, we can explore other alternatives:

• 5 pm is a fair time, since it would presumably encourage students to concentrate their last ditch effort in the typical working day. However, there will also be students who have classes right up to the deadline that day, and if they procrastinate (as some certainly shall) they will now skip class to do the assignment, which is arguably worse than staying up!
• Noon is another time that sounds like a good idea. Being too early, you might expect that it will make students feel they have no choice but to start working on it early since the morning isn't nearly enough time, and if they can't finish it the night before they can safely go to bed, get some sleep, and finish in the morning. But realistically, the procrastinators who stay up late and hand it in at midnight now will just start working at 1 am and stay up all night to finish it.
• 9 am can be argued for as a realistic time - it's not like you will start grading at midnight, so there isn't really a point in requiring the assignment by midnight - instead of having the students rush their submission to a deadline just so it could sit in your mailbox for several hours, you could tell them to that you will start grading at 9 am and they should have it done by then. This makes the deadline less arbitrary, since there is now a clear logic to being required to meet it (ie. you will be delayed if they don't do their part). But of course you will again have the same problem of students staying up all night because they procrastinated.

For what it's worth, I think the midnight deadline came about as codification of an unspoken tradition. Often deadlines are given as days, without time - with this, there is always much controversy about what exactly counts as meeting an August 6 deadline: Does it have to be done at the beginning of Aug 6? Does it have to be before the instructor leaves the office? Does it have to be before the end of the day, ie. before you go to sleep? Well, what if you never go to sleep, can you squeeze out a few more hours and still "meet your Aug 6 deadline" by submitting at 3:14 am on [technically] Aug 7?

Even though informally "today" means "until I go to sleep", the convention is that the date changes at midnight, which is also reinforced by how computer clocks show the date. Hence, I think the midnight deadline came about as an extension of this - it's just a date delimiter.

As for the students, since you are concerned about how late they go to sleep, surely you will agree that planning ahead and not leaving everything to the last minute is an important skill to be learned as part of tertiary education. This, then, the students must learn on their own, you cannot help them by tinkering with deadlines, since indeed the deadline is not what is preventing their learning. In fact, one could argue that you should maximize the negative reinforcement, and set the deadline at the worst possible time - say 6 am: The more misery you inflict on the procrastinators, the better they will appreciate how important it is to learn discipline, and the sooner they will take steps to unlearn their bad habits.

Granted, I'm not seriously suggesting you do the above, since it seems like it could go horribly wrong. Realistically, I could instead suggest the following:

• Set your deadline at some reasonable, early time such as noon.
• Secretly (ie. do not tell this part to the students) have the "real deadline" (for instance, the one you lose points for missing) be quite a bit later, say 5 pm.
• In class, say that it is very important they not miss the deadline even by a minute (don't say why), and they should come talk to you if they feel they won't make it.
• When they inevitably come asking for more time, be liberal with the extensions, but not before making them explain why they were late and lecturing them on the importance of planning ahead. When giving the extension, explain that they absolutely cannot miss the extended deadline, because then you would not be able to meet your own deadline for grading (whether true or not).
• If anyone misses the noon deadline (but not the 5 pm deadline), confront them about it to discourage submitting late without asking for an extension (which allows bypassing the social discomfort of asking for more time).

With this, you might create something like a low stakes environment (you don't lose massive points just for being a few minutes late) while still creating a fair amount of social pressure to increase the likelihood of a lightbulb appearing and the student thinking, "Hey, Dr. Ward is very nice and reasonable about deadlines and everything, but maybe it's worth for me to try to stop leaving everything to the last minute?". Furthermore, if you force them into an explicit discussion about their procrastination, they have an opportunity to ask you for advice on how to plan their work.

But all of this requires quite a bit of effort from you (much more than just replacing "midnight" with "10 pm" on your syllabus). So if you are not willing to commit the energy, there isn't really much that can be achieved with quick fixes.

• 3 Basically, you are recommending a holistic approach to the way I use the online platform, am I not correct? ;-) Fair enough. Since I cannot handle the complete discussion in one step, I will be concentrating separately on each aspect. But you are very right to comment on the fact it is a complete process with many aspects to it. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 20:02
• 44 "...unless the work demanded is truly overwhelming, but in college it never is..." I feel the need to say that this is largely a matter of opinion. What is a piece of cake to one person could very well overwhelm another person. Just because you never got/get overwhelmed by college doesn't mean that nobody does. However, I realize this does not invalidate your answer, nor does it even invalidate the first part of the sentence saying that lack of sleep is probably not tied to the timing of deadlines. –  PrinceTyke Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 12:20
• 6 Imagine a single parent with a full-time job who is also going to school full-time. It is certainly possible that they could get overwhelmed at some point. I like your answer other than that part. –  Benjamin Hubbard Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 14:39
• 5 +1 to @PrinceTyke, -1 to this answer. Overwhelming is a relative term. Also, you're way too pessimistic about people's reasons for their habits and generally the whole thing. –  user541686 Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 21:00
• 3 "and not leaving everything to the last minute is an important skill to be learned as part of tertiary education" -- I learned this is an incredibly effective way of getting s*** done in college. One semester Sundays 8pm - 4am was one problem set, Thursdays 6pm - 6am was another, A's in both courses. Now I go to work and generally do work doing the day so not at night, so it's moot. And as far not procrastinating on things like going to the DMV, getting bloodwork done, paying rent on time, etc., those have nothing to do with things I learned in college. –  user18072 Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 22:19

First of all, I think the distribution that you're seeing is not very unusual, and indeed looks very similar to the distribution of times that I see coming from mature scientists submitting conference papers and grants.

It is simply that people, including your students, tend to overcommit themselves and to underestimate the difficulty of work. When that is combined with tasks on which there is a flexible amount of effort that can be invested (e.g., quality of work on an assignment), it is generally the case that "this work is done" is an ill-defined notion, and instead it gets triaged at some point of time shortly before the assignment. Better and more prepared students (or whoever) simply climb farther up in quality before triaging.

Given that, I generally advocate for a policy of "tight deadlines, lots of mercy." That means setting the deadline slightly before when you really want the assignment turned in, and then being very liberal about accepting requests for extension up until your secret "real deadline."

Addressing your specific question about timing, I think that if you want your students to get more sleep, moving the deadline up a couple of hours is a totally reasonable tactic: given the phenomena at work, it is unlikely to affect the distribution or quality of the assignments you receive. Depending on how your automated system works, you may also be able to explicitly support an official deadline of 10pm, with the de facto ability to leave the submission system open longer to receive the main tranche of "just a little bit late" assignments.

• 3 Yes, this strategy is indeed possible with our (Moodle-based) system. The only point that hinders me in applying it is the fact that students will rapidly become aware of the rules actually being applied. It is worth some thought, though - and the analysis is well appreciated. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 12:12
• 81 I think this is unfair to students who take deadlines seriously. If they had problems with a homework, they would turn in what they had shortly before the stated deadline. They lose the points they could have gained if they had known the real deadline, and taken a few more hours. –  Patricia Shanahan Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 13:29
• 28 A good policy they had at my university was staggered penalties. IIRC you'd lose 1 point out of 22 for missing the deadline, no excuses, then another point for each additional 24 hours. So those who overcommit learn a valuable life lesson without their work being completely wasted, and those who plan ahead are rewarded. And if, like me, you discover a catestrophic error 24 hours before deadline, you make a tradeoff between submitting fixed work a day late at -1 point and incorrect work on time at -?? points –  user56reinstatemonica8 Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:17
• 21 Set the official deadline to 22:00 and let the system accept submissions until 22:30 - this will not really be unfair to diligent students, because 30min will not likely decide between life&dead - but many students will be happy akin wow... already 21:59 and the internet is slow as hell.... 22:03 uploading - yeah I got lucky it sill worked! –  Falco Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:48
• 15 @O.R.Mapper you can easily add this as a benefit rather than penalty - if your submission is more than 3 days before the deadline you get 3 extra points for free. Because with an overall assignemtn time of 3 weeks, most students start to work on the problem 1-2 days before deadline... so either you start early to get the bonus, or you are already one of the late ones and don't complain if someone was 20minutes slower... –  Falco Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:51

I would consider a deadline at around 10p.m. very wise and student-friendly. I remember staying up late night as long as the submission system allows to post a new version and polishing the hell out of my assignment, although it probably made little difference.

As a lecturer I have always readily given small extensions to people who asked at least a little (about a day) in advance before the deadline, because I think that this fosters good habits in life: it is OK to fail sometimes, but you should handle the failure responsibly and warn people depending on you in advance.

I like the "tight deadlines, lots of mercy" policy mentioned in another answer (which I think is one of the good solutions). If you are worried that students will learn and exploit this policy, you can have a deadline that is openly less strict: for example subtracting 10 points from the evaluation of the assignment for every hour of delay or letting the students to submit until the next lecture, but for half the points. I experienced this a few times as a student and it was motivational yet forgiving to small lapses.

• 1 Nice solution. I have applied at times a variant, which is to waive the penalty the first time - but not on successive occasions. As you say, I was aiming for the motivational aspect. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 12:35
• 2 +1 for the second paragraph; this advice is especially useful in professional life. If you have a team of people waiting for 'your piece', then letting them know in advance that you won't have it ready until a day after the deadline is nothing but helpful. At that point, they can work on something else that doesn't need your piece. This applies to group projects especially (university or professional). –  Chris Cirefice Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 15:27

I'd like to add my two cents as a current student with three years of college behind me. In my experience, I've always preferred having a deadline of midnight to a deadline of 10pm because during the school year, I'm often up until midnight regardless, and sometimes my workload requires me to prioritize my assignments in such a way that many things get submitted in the eleventh hour, so to speak. Furthermore, I tend to do much of my work in the late evening, as that's when I personally am able to focus on assignments the best. This experience comes from three years from a Computer Science undergrad, so take it with whatever that information brings. I think the deadline will mean different things to different students regardless of when it actually is, and I think students will still end up submitting just before the deadline is due, but I personally prefer midnight to 10pm.

• 3 Agreed; also as a Computer Science undergrad, our CS labs are usually just about empty between 8 PM and midnight. I don't like to work from home because there are too many distractions, and an empty CS lab at night is the perfect working environment (for me). Those are the only assignments that I put off (which is a bad idea because coding is prone to a million errors for simple mistakes), but for me it makes the most sense to do that. Midnight for me is a good deadline time. –  Chris Cirefice Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 15:29
• 1 I completely agree with the sentiment that an empty (I'll settle for simply sparsely-populated, provided I have some headphones) CS lab at night is the perfect working environment. Putting off programming assignments is awful, but I think the vast majority of CS students do so. I know I do. –  PrinceTyke Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 15:36
• @ChrisCirefice, I have fond memories of allnighters in the computer lab to which I had a key as a graduate student, as regular labs were closed and the machines weren't hopelessly overloaded at night. But there was no staff on hand to unwedge your account (happened regularly as a result of some stupid command combinations). That was time to go home ;-) –  vonbrand Commented Aug 26, 2015 at 20:37

As a PhD candidate who has taught (as in was the primary lecturer, not just a TA) and recently taken classes I have a different opinion than to move assignments to an early time, e.g. 10PM. My solution for a programming intensive class that I taught was to make the assignments always due at 5AM on Saturday. I picked Saturday specifically because if they wanted to stay up late it would not affect attending class that day. My reasoning behind the 5AM time was that the time you make assignments due can actually relate to your late policy.

By making assignments due at 5AM on Saturday I could be very strict about late assignments. My late policy was simple: it's late, it's a zero grade, no exceptions . I had a script that would grab all the assignments at 5:02AM (okay so they got a 2 minute window) and that was the only thing I would look at. If they submitted at 5:04AM it was never graded. If a student would come back and complain that they just missed the deadline my response was simple:

Look you had all night to work on the assignment and you obviously had to stay up extremely late which means you didn't budget your time well or you thought it would be so simple you could do it in a night. Both of those assumptions were wrong. I hope for the next assignment you do not make the same mistake.

Finally, I had a draconian late policy (which might be a bit off topic to the question but is relevant to my answer) for a very simple reason. As a TA who has had to grade countless number of homework assignments, you spend probably about 25% to 50% of your time dealing with the 5% of the assignments that were late, either because you have to schedule a demo on a different day than the rest, or you have to go back to problems to see how you previously took points of for a (semi-)wrong answer, etc. This is a huge unnecessary drain on human resources and can greatly affect research progress. Now this usually doesn't matter if the assignment is just 5 minutes late but by having a strict late policy I avoided all the: "it was only a day late can I get partial credit", arguments and those assignments do add an unnecessary burden on grader/TA.

And as for how this policy works in practice. Per semester, I usually have only one student submit one assignment that is just barely late, say submitted after 5AM and before 5:30AM. The rest get a very clear picture.

I should add that this policy did result in piazza , which we used for class communication, exploding the night the assignment was due but I made it very clear to the students that after 9PM I was not answering any piazza or email questions. If they wanted to use piazza to ask each other questions that was fine but I did not participate.

• 1 Yours seems like yet another good justification for moving the deadline into the middle of a night. The only slight disadvantage that I could see with having it on a Saturday night is that (probably (?)) you aren't going to grade the assignments on Sunday, anyway, and some students may specifically plan to use their weekend, including Sundays, for working on assignments. On the other hand, it might of course help them arrive at a work-on-Saturday-get-a-free-Sunday schedule to some extent. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:51
• 5 @O.R.Mapper actually it was due on Saturday 5AM specifically so I could use the weekend to grade and have the grades given back by Monday, when the class would meet. This reaffirmed the "its done don't talk to be about an extension" mindset. You could push it back 24 hours so it was due on Sunday at 5AM, same idea basically. –  missimer Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:55
• Oh, and one remark on your text: I take it "piazza" is the name of your online submission system, but it suddenly appears somewhat out of nowhere in your last paragraph. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:18
• 2 @ALANWARD actually the assignments were somewhat large, 3-4 weeks, but I did automate some of the grading as it was a programming class. I would argue that it would work if it took longer to grade as that was not a key thing in my experience just a nice bonus, but I can't say with any level of certainty. If the assignments took longer to grade, perhaps students would argue for the assignment to be extended to include the weekend. –  missimer Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 20:01
• 1 5am on Saturday morning seems an excellent time. Nobody can claim with a straight face that they intended to work until five minutes before the deadline and were a bit too late if the deadline is at 5am in the morning. –  gnasher729 Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 8:26

Without getting into considerations on whether students should plan better [...] would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep.

Most likely, yes, students on average would get more sleep. I was TAing a class last term (a computer science class for 4th-year undergraduate students in college), the weekly assignment deadline was 10 AM on Sunday. Here is the typical submission time cumulative distribution we would get:

As we discussed with the professor when to set the deadline, we simply based our decision on when the assignments would be graded, and left students freedom to organize their schedule. While some need to sleep early, others prefer to work at night.

• 4 Please, is the graph cumulative? Does it show number of submissions submitted until time t or number of submissions submitted around time t ? –  yo' Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 7:56
• 1 @yo' cumulative –  Franck Dernoncourt Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 15:44

I suggest the opposite course of action by moving the deadline further into the night. Set it at a time where no-one voluntarily would want to hand in their work. In my opinion, that is the best incentive to have them reconsider their personal scheduling.

As for the online system, you write:

The impression that is perceived is that the online nature of the submission system makes students take slightly more liberties with deadlines than when assignments had to be handed in, in a face-to-face situation

I suspect this is coupled to how the online system is generally presented, as I have made the opposite experience. We generally communicate a very strict "hand in via the system, or do not hand in at all" policy. That is, e-mails will generally not be accepted as an alternative to submission via the system (as long as the system is not actually having internal technical issues). As opposed to e-mails, where there is always a certain leeway for asking for exceptional treatment along the lines of "the e-mail sent at 09:59 was routed in a way so it only arrived at 10:01", when the online system is announced to close down at 10, it will automatically close down at 10 (ideally, while displaying the server time in its web-based interface). This way, non-uniform acceptance of delayed submissions between different instructors for one class is avoided.

although it is clear that even then there will always be a certain percentage of people with difficulties respecting deadlines

Indeed, unfortunately, that is unavoidable - but as being able to stick to deadlines is one of the factors expected of a professional, these people simply will not get their degree in the end.

would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep (moral considerations welcome) and actually attending class at the beginning of the next day?

I would somewhat doubt it. A pattern that I seem to perceive in people around me, both students and non-students, is that either they work until late at night and are very exhausted from that, or they work slightly shorter, are not totally exhausted ... and instead stay up doing whatever they like doing until they are equally exhausted. Maybe yours is not even the only deadline in the same evening, and changing your deadline only changes the order in which the tasks will be treated. I simply do not see a strong connection between your submission deadline and the time they actually go to bed.

EDIT: Reading Ángel's answer made me aware that it cannot be taken for granted in an online submission system that students can replace their submission once they have uploaded something. I consider such a feature essential. I am fully in favour of encouraging students to plan thoroughly and be on time, but if a satisfactory submission that solves the declared task has been made well within the deadline, I see no point in disallowing the respective student from replacing it with an updated version that is even a bit more tidy or well-explained.

• Interesting take on the problem. You make an assessment of the email system that corresponds very well to what we have observed here: it is just does not precise enough (as regards timing) to use it for submissions. However, as regards enforcing a very strict system, unfortunately some excuses will inevitably be receivable ("my father just died" has happened to me - and it was actually true :-( ). So, we are back to the dilemma of where do we draw the line between receivable and non-receivable reasons. Hmmm... some flexibility seems unavoidable. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:08
• @ALANWARD: Well, it may be a question of how obvious the path to stating the excuses are. E-mail is a means of communication, and accordingly, students may readily use it not only to submit their homework, but also to communicate why it is arriving late. A web-based submission form that does not allow for any "message", on the other hand, may not to the same extent signal readiness to accept any additional information, and it is primarily only students that actually have compelling reasons for excuses that will, in addition to the submission, send a message some other way. With that said, ... –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:11
• ... in cases like the one you alluded to we usually do not extend the submission deadline, but rather tell the respective people to wait until the end of the semester. Should they be missing points compared to the score required for "passing" the course, we can work something out then (e.g. a brief oral exam, or an extra task, ...). That minimizes the administrative hassle and does not imply any penalty for the student. (Of course, it works only if the overall course result is binary, or discrete enough for a missing submission not to have any effect.) –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:14
• @O.R.Mapper, passing is not sufficient for most students in the US. Grades are basically numerical scores in the end, so good students have the right to try to maximize them. I agree that we can accommodate true emergencies, but it often has to be in a way equivalent to them having handed in on time. –  Bill Barth Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 15:57
• @BillBarth: In such a case, a more immediate solution is probably adviseable indeed. In my place, the system mostly works by each course coming with assignments during the semester from which a score can be accumulated, and only if a minimum score is reached from those assignments (thus making this a binary choice), the student is allowed to take the exam on the course, which will then result in a grade (a numerical score) that will form a part of the final degree grade (also a numerical score). Hence, there are some places where binary decisions sometimes appear, as a preliminary step. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:07

Remember: it's not your duty to clean your students noses and make sure they submit everything on time or weeks before the deadline. If you want to be merciful you can apply increasing penalties or you can set a hard cutoff if you're not feeling merciful. You'll probably get less pleading emails and headaches if you apply a sliding scale of penalties but it's up to you and you shouldn't feel you have to.

You have no duty to hand everyone a pass. Don't feel bad if some people screw themselves over by not submitting on time.

I encountered lots of variation as a student and have few strong feelings about it though I always somewhat preferred late-night deadlines because I worked better in the evening.

As long as the deadlines don't change: the only time a deadline ever pissed me off was when the professor kept changing it. 3 weeks, no 2 weeks, no 4 weeks, no 1 week etc.

• 2 You have no duty to hand everyone a pass. He is being paid to teach them. So you could say it is his duty to have as many pass as possible. Every failed student is a failed teacher, to some degree. –  Jonathon Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 17:37
• 3 @JonathonWisnoski no, if he was teaching 4 year olds that might be true but at collage the students are adults. He's being paid to provide an opportunity to learn and an opportunity for the person to prove they've learned. If people don't take one or the other opportunity when provided with a fair chance that is 100% on them. Universities also provide a third service to the rest of society: They certify that their graduates were competent enough to pass a university course. If they pass someone too inept to hand in assignments they've failed utterly in that last duty. –  Murphy Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 19:16

I have dealt with this issue in setting closing times for Webwork assignments, which is a kind of online Content Management System specific to mathematics.

After having tried out various times, I have converged on 7pm. Why?

Originally I had it due at 5pm. There is something about 5pm that is hard to complain about: in the US it is widely regarded as the end of the work day. It is the latest in the day you could set a meeting or an appointment without apologizing or confirming in advance that it is okay. There is a wide cultural feeling that people should be working until 5pm, at which point they want to go home.

Well, I said hard to complain about. The complaints I got were that people were submitting their solutions at 4:59:47 and not getting accepted by the system. Such complaints are very hard to verify (especially if you don't try) and pretty annoying. So what I said was, "You should think of the assignment as being due at 5pm and work accordingly. The extra two hours is a grace period that will nullify any technical difficulties."

Two other benefits of having roughly this due time:

1) If students want to ask questions before it's due (or rather, until 5pm), those questions will come during my normal work day. I might get a chance to answer them, and I certainly will not resent them. It can be annoying to get an email at 11:47pm for an assignment which is due at midnight with the implication that if you do not reply in time you are impeding their learning.

2) I post the solutions after a two hour delay. This time frame makes it more feasible to push back the due date a few hours before the deadline if that really seems like a good idea. If the due time were, say, 3 am, this would not be as convenient.

• 6 As a current student and full time worker I think 5 pm is way too early for a due date, this would force me to have to finish the assignment the night before because I work all day. I think midnight is much more flexible and fair to night owls like me –  reggaeguitar Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 15:41
• 7 @reggaeguitar: Yes, part of the point of this due time is to discourage students from waiting until the last day. There is no problem in finishing the assignment the night before. The number of late nights that you have to do the assignment is the same. –  Pete L. Clark Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 15:55
• 2 Also, I should clarify that this policy was for a course taught in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia. Students who work all day could not attend such courses, since they are only scheduled during the 8am-5pm work day. –  Pete L. Clark Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:00
• 3 I've been a procrastinator my whole life and never run into problems because of it; I wait until the last day for literally all of my assignments. In my opinion the teacher's job is to teach, not to "discourage students from waiting until the last day". –  reggaeguitar Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:09
• 10 @reggaeguitar: Many instructors believe that encouraging students to spend more time rather than less engaging the material is one of the most important parts of the teaching process. If you stay in academia long enough, you will unavoidably receive assignments that it is literally impossible to complete in a single day, e.g. a PhD dissertation. Even as an undergraduate, if you never receive assignments that require more than one day of work, you are probably missing out on some important learning experiences. Consider whether you are taking courses that really challenge you. –  Pete L. Clark Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:17

The system is flexible precisely for allowing that. For those 65% students sending in-the-hour, you can't know if they did it at 23:00 or if they had the assignment ready in their hard disk for a week, but didn't hand in until then.

I agree they are probably doing the work at 23:00, but a big point to take into account shall be their other duties . If yours was their only commitment, the graphic would probably change, but other subjects will be placing their own tasks, they may be practising sports, etc.

The main reason for delaying a task was having many other assignments due earlier. I should also note that if you open a task before it has been fully explained, it will actually deter from trying to complete it early, since you transmit the idea that "it can't be done yet".

I would keep the late hour, or perhaps even move it later (the 5 AM proposal is a good idea).

(Hint: Never place a deadline at day X at 00:00 but to day X-1 at 23:59, there's a big UI factor there)

Another option I initally liked was to place it at 7:59 the next day (just before the begin of the next day), but it has the drawback that you may delay the "final submit" when you wake up, and fail for a "computer error". OTOH, you may allow that way that they can hand it in manually to you the next day (or if your class is at 11:00, the deadline could be at 10:59, thus you can start the class asking for phisical submission of anyone that otherwise failed).

Another point to ids that you should allow, if supported by your platform, multiple "draft" uploads. Make clear that you won't be viewing them (until the deadline passes). Thus, you can submit the almost-ready work, and if there's a catastrophic failure after it gets the final revision, the draft would be considered final (you may eg. miss some spell-checking fixes).

A problem I identified is that as you are only allowed to submit once, you delay for the final version, even if it's almost ready, and then problems kick-in like "it takes too long to upload", "you included too many graphics in png, and the generated file is now over the size limit" (and you end up rushing to change all of them to jpeg). Limits which are not always clearly stated (eg. an email filesize limit, the webmail taking forever for accepting an upload...).

I would also accept that they commit a hash of their work in case they have some upload problem (although your students need to be a bit computer-savvy for that). [They provide before the deadline a hash of the file they are going to turn in, so there's no way they can provide a different file later, even if the upload fails at that point in time]

If you want to encourage early submission, I would provide bonus points for submitting early. Sending an automatic reminder to people who hasn't submitted yet may also improve the submission times (the right timing is very important here, though. The due date shouldn't be far away, and the email should be received at an , you are unlikely to remember at home -or in the weekend!- the email reminder received on Monday morning).

PS: There are cases where the students program meeting during a break previous to the class for doing the task, so I don't think it is right to consider that they take "more liberties with [online] deadlines than when they are handed in in a face-to-face situation".

• I somewhat disagree with your examples for other duties. While it is true there are also other courses with assignments as a part of the studies, at least at my place, university rules generally make it very clear that studying a major is a full-time job that must be granted the first priority in the student's life. Part-time jobs, if any, and hobbies such as practising sports have to be scheduled in a way so as to not conflict with the university courses. At least in such a setting, only another university assignment can serve as a valid excuse. Good point about the option to submit ... –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:43
• ... several versions of an assignment, though. In my answer , I had taken that option for granted, but I will add a remark that such a feature is essential and should always be there. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:44
• 2 @O.R.Mapper, I was not talking about additionally having a job, but different subjects, all of them setting tasks and fighting for the student time. At least in my experience, teachers tend to be completely unaware of each other assignments, and there's not even one with a whole view of the students duties (even for a "classic" students with the expected subjects). –  Ángel Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:28
• @O.R.Mapper And I mentioned sports as a reason for scheduling the assignments late at night. So, with the original midnight deadline, you could plan ahead and probably prefer to practise X at 7pm, after all university courses, and do the assignment later at night, instead of doing the assignment early and playing football at 1am ;) –  Ángel Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:32
• Interestingly enough, I can take your comments to heart since I have recently passed another Master's at an online university. This last semester I had four subjects. Most assignments were due on precisely the same day, and the others within a three-day window. So, I agree teachers do not (and perhaps cannot) reliably take into account other subjects' calendars. This is perhaps an area where online systems should allow us to better synchronize, but the underlying problem is complex when handling a large number of subjects and an even larger number of students. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:57

I think midnight is reasonable. I've been known to set certain cut off times with the same thing in mind. My students had to have their online workbooks done by 2:00 am when I started realizing some of them were working on them all night long the night before the test (traditionally due by the start of the test). Because our department policy was 50% late credit for those assignments, I would tell them to just stop at 2:00 and get sleep and take the test fully rested, and finish up their (now late) work the next day.

Back in the day, I'd tend to turn in papers at the last minute, but only because I wanted to have the maximum amount of "rest time" between writing it and doing a final check for those typos you can only find after removing yoursef a bit, so I'd caution against saying they're rushing the writing bit just because they turn it in at the last minute.

The only way you can address people trying to rush to finish an assignment is to have periodic due dates for particular elements of the paper. Not knowing your subject, you could do something like this (not necessarily in sequential days, of course):

• Day 1: general topic defined
• Day 2: preliminary bibliography
• Day 3: 25% ish written
• Day 4: 75% ish written
• Day 5: Completed copy

The first four days could just be checks (rather than graded) so as to not add to your workload.

• OK, basically you are giving the student a bit of extra guidance as to how to manage their time doing the final assignment. This is certainly actually quite helpful and necessary for some students, but perhaps a tad complicated since you now need to think about late submissions for each element of the paper. What happens if the general topic is still in a state of limbo on the day the bibliography is due? Can the students submit the two together? Must they? Decisions, decisions... ;-) –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:46
• 2 Do not do this except for very long assignments, and do not do this unless you plan on giving the students feedback on each submission they can use to improve the next (and final) product. Don't assume you can manage your student's time better than they can themselves. They have a lot more information about how they work and their schedule than you ever can. I worked full time to pay the mortgage and feed the kids when I was in school. Any attempts at help like this generally resulted in more late (or sleepless) nights as it forced me to work on the instructor's schedule rather than my own. –  Mr.Mindor Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 22:36
• @Mr.Mindor if a student has a personal situation and communicates it with me in advance, I'm generally willing make reasonable exceptions to policy for them. But when I've tested distributed due dates versus the single one, student evals (and, honestly, quality of work) pushed me towards preferring distributed dates for work. If due dates posted well in advance, a working student can get things done likewise well in advance or make any other adjustments they need. –  user0721090601 Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 23:09

I don't think you should be choosing between 10pm and midnight at all; deadlines should not be in the middle of the night, or the small hours of the morning, or at the weekends or... any time outside a standard working day.

Students are not just at university to get grades; they are also preparing for the rest of their lives in employment and society at large. Also, on the whole, university is not a hobby, it is a full-time job. The messages I'm hearing from your question (and some of the answers) is that it is reasonable to expect to not complete your work until the middle of the night, that it is reasonable to expect others to continue working long after they should have gone home, and that expectations should be adjusted to fit your personal preferences. The last of these will not be true when they start being paid. The other two I personally think are negatively affecting our society. I've become aware of a battle quietly raging over whether it is acceptable to not work overnight, at the weekend and while on holiday.

• Indeed, some active professionals seem be "on duty" 24h/24 and not to have much time for rest and private life at all. I agree this is somewhat not fair. However, I would also like to point out that a student's timetable will typically show some 20+ hours of class, which is not a full work day. If students choose to program their personal study and homework within the 9-to-5 span, fair play to them - they are showing self-discipline which will probably end up in good results. But if they prefer working at night ... I guess I agree with many that is not my business. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 7:26
• Sorry, no, this is not how it works at many places. University is worse than the true company quite often in that they put really varying workload on the students. Sometimes you get loads of free time, and sometimes you work hard and you can't get around it. Ignoring this as a teacher is plain wrong. Many people simply do work late nights and for students, this is more than usual. It is also given by the fact that at their age, they easily get used to such lifestyle etc. -- this is also not true in industry. –  yo' Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 7:54
• None of that has anything to do with setting a deadline at a sensible time of day rather than in the night time. You can do your work in the night if you want, but you have to do it the night BEFORE the deadline. arguing that the workload varies for students is not relevant to moving a deadline by a few hours, if they're getting at least a week to do the work. –  Jessica B Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 18:38
• And the reason many academics work all night and weekend is it's the only time they can get on with their jobs without students pestering them about the assignments. –  Jessica B Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 18:39
• 2 Young people are typically on a later schedule than older adults, which is one reason they shouldn't be coerced into a 9-5 schedule. –  user18072 Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 22:28

Personally, from my experience as a student, I think midnight is a good deadline. Many students have jobs and other obligations and a midnight deadline gives them time to come home from work, have dinner and unwind and then spend a few hours double checking the assignment before they hand it in.

Moving the deadline to 10pm may not give enough time to students who work.

• 2 well, they have got enough time ... the day before ... and the day before that ... and ... –  yo' Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 7:54
• Almost all comments here from students state that they like to proofread or double check before handing in. I was not referring to actually doing the assignment but just a double check. –  confused Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 17:02

I recommend that you set the deadline to the time that makes the most sense for you. Arbitrarily setting it earlier or later has no effect on student's time management skills.

As an example, I used to set online homework deadlines to be one hour before the class in which we would go over them started. That way, students wouldn't be trying to work on them until the last minute and would be able to get to class on time. That wasn't out of concern for the students - it was for me. I didn't want to deal with "I was doing the homework" as an excuse, or even a temptation, for being late.

Likewise, setting the deadline earlier would have no benefit to me, and would be arbitrary. I don't know what is going on in my students lives, and giving them the maximum possible time to finish the assignment gives them the freedom to manage their time as they see fit.

The only time I deviated from these rules are when I wanted to make sure that multiple classes had the same amount of time to finish an assignment. In that case, it was still for my convenience, since I wanted to use the homework as an evaluation tool and keeping the length of time to work on it consistent helped with that.

If you think about it, the "real world" works this way too - deadlines are not typically set for the convenience or out of concern for the person doing the work. They are there because someone else (the person determining the deadline) needs the work done by a certain time, or something bad will happen.

That said, it is hard to imagine a situation where "at midnight" is a deadline that makes sense for either you or the students.

• This. If you plan to start grading them at 4pm on tuesday, then that is the deadline. –  RemcoGerlich Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 9:48

Having implemented a 10 pm deadline, I think it works fine. I have two comments to make:

• There is no "neutral" answer here. By selecting an hour you are necessarily nudging students in one direction. We cannot get away with this . I suggest you nudge them towards more sleep, also because of point 2.
• I would be very annoyed if another professor puts a deadline that nudges students to have a short night before my class. Students might skip my lecture or be tired at it for working close to the deadline. As such, I think it is a good practice, for solidarity with other courses, to set an earlier rather than later deadline.

Got interested at the point "Moodle-type" (system); If possible, I would recommend keeping midnight and removing the "hard" deadline, i.e. people can still submit after the deadline, but will be highlighted (at least that's how it works in Moodle) and disable the assignment some time later (e.g. the next day), but state that submissions after the deadline will not be accepted. Why?

• 5min off doesn't matter: you can overlook anyone who has a slow connection / forgot to check the clock on their "final sprint" / or whatever
• If someone submits way too late, you can either outright ignore the submission or reduce their points by some value / percentage (e.g. 10% per day)
• Midnight is feasible for some nights-but-not-overnights-action, so people "learn" there is a deadline, but still can act a litlle short-term-ish

There will be people deliberately abusing this, but in the end, they (could) end up with 0 points.

Seen & used this approach in a few courses (both as student and teacher) and had little to no problems with it.

Clarification Note: I also rarely started grading 1 or 2 days after the deadline, if you cannot afford such a time-frame, such a "tolerant" approach might not be suitable.

Submission time may or may not have anything to do with when a student STARTS the assignment, so even the students turning it in at the last minute may not be under pressure.

As long as you give reasonable deadlines and clearly post them to avoid "gotcha" situations, any deadline you give is certainly fair.

Personally, I usually base deadlines on my needs, but make every effort to give the students the most time I can without creating a burdensome situation for myself or my TAs. For example, if I'd like the TAs to be grading over the weekend, I'll usually make the due date late Friday PM. This way, the TAs have time to assemble their weekend work, and if there are students (actually, teams in my case) that need to be tracked down because there was a problem with the submission, there's still time to do it without impacting the work flow.

• 2 A different issue is whether it is reasonable to expect TAs to grade over the weekend. –  J W Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 17:16

You could also consider setting two deadlines: one deadline for an initial submission, and a second deadline for the final submission. More students might submit the final version shortly after the second deadline, since they would have received a reward: I already completed that much of it .

• 3 You then need to clearly define what counts as an initial submission. Is a header file enough for a programming exercise? What if it doesn't compile? And if you do so, then you essentially turned the assignment into two assignments with separate deadlines. –  liori Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 23:20

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Step-By-Step Guide: The Best Way to Submit Assignments

Submitting assignments can be a nerve-wracking experience for many students. Whether you’re a high school, college, or graduate student, ensuring your work is properly submitted is crucial for academic success . In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through the best practices and step-by-step instructions for submitting your assignments, from understanding the requirements to sending the perfect email to your instructor.

Table of Contents

Understanding Assignment Submission Guidelines

Before you even begin working on an assignment, it’s essential to thoroughly review the homework submission tips and guidelines provided by your instructor. Pay close attention to the following details:

1. Submission Format

Your instructor may have specific requirements for the format of your assignment, such as:

• File type (e.g., PDF, Word document, spreadsheet)
• Naming conventions for your file
• Page layout (e.g., margins, font size, spacing)
• Inclusion of a cover page or title page

2. Submission Method

There are several common ways to submit assignments, including:

• Uploading to a learning management system (LMS) like Canvas or Blackboard
• Emailing the assignment directly to your instructor
• Submitting a physical copy in person or through the campus mail

3. Deadlines and Due Dates

Pay close attention to the due date and time for your assignment. Many instructors have strict policies regarding late submissions, so it’s crucial to plan accordingly.

4. Additional Requirements

Some assignments may have additional requirements, such as:

• Peer review or collaboration with classmates
• Submission of an outline or draft before the final version
• Presentation or oral component to accompany the written work

Step-by-Step Guide to Submitting Assignments

1. complete the assignment.

Before you can submit your work, you’ll need to ensure that it’s completed to the best of your ability. Follow these tips for producing a high-quality assignment:

• Understand the prompt: Carefully read and interpret the assignment instructions to ensure you’re addressing all the required elements.
• Conduct thorough research: Use reliable sources to gather information and support your arguments or findings.
• Organize your thoughts: Create an outline or structure to help you organize your ideas in a clear and logical manner.
• Write and revise: Compose your assignment, then take the time to review and edit your work to improve clarity, coherence, and overall quality.
• Proofread: Check for any spelling, grammar, or formatting errors before submitting your assignment.

2. Prepare the Assignment for Submission

Once your assignment is complete, you’ll need to prepare it for submission. Follow these steps:

2.1. Format the Assignment

Ensure that your assignment meets the formatting requirements set by your instructor. This may include:

• Proper margins, font size, and line spacing
• Correct citation style (e.g., APA , MLA , Chicago )
• Appropriate file naming conventions

2.2. Save the Assignment

Save your assignment in the required file format, such as a PDF or Microsoft Word document. If you’re submitting multiple files, make sure to label them clearly and consistently.

3. Submit the Assignment

The method of submission will depend on the instructions provided by your instructor. Here are the most common ways to submit an assignment:

3.1. Upload to a Learning Management System (LMS)

Many schools and universities use learning management systems like Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle to facilitate assignment submissions. Follow these steps:

• Log in to your LMS account and navigate to the appropriate course.
• Locate the assignment you need to submit and click on the “Submit Assignment” or similar button.
• Follow the on-screen instructions to upload your file(s).
• Review the submission to ensure it was successful.

3.2. Email the Assignment to Your Instructor

If your instructor has requested that you email your assignment, follow these guidelines:

• Compose a clear, professional email with a subject line that includes the course name, assignment title, and your name (e.g., “ENGL 101 – Final Essay Submission – [Your Name]”).
• Attach your assignment file(s) to the email.
• Include a brief message in the body of the email, such as “Dear Professor [Name], please find my [assignment name] attached. Let me know if you have any questions or need anything else from me.”
• Double-check that the attachment(s) have been included before sending the email.

3.3. Submit a Physical Copy

In some cases, your instructor may require you to submit a physical copy of your assignment. Here’s how to handle this:

• Ensure that your assignment is printed and properly formatted according to the instructions.
• Place the assignment in a clean, unmarked folder or envelope.
• Clearly label the outside of the folder/envelope with your name, the course name, and the assignment title.
• Submit the physical copy to your instructor’s office or the designated drop-off location by the due date and time.

4. Confirm Successful Submission

After submitting your assignment, it’s crucial to confirm that it was received successfully. Depending on the submission method, you can do this in the following ways:

4.1. LMS Submission

Most LMS platforms will provide a confirmation page or email once your assignment has been successfully uploaded. Review the submission details to ensure the file(s) were received.

4.2. Email Submission

If you emailed your assignment, wait for a reply from your instructor confirming receipt. If you don’t receive a response within a reasonable timeframe, follow up with a polite email inquiring about the status of your submission.

4.3. Physical Submission

For physical submissions, you may want to request a receipt or acknowledgment from the instructor or department, or make a copy of the assignment before submitting the original.

Tips for Successful Assignment Submission

1. submit early.

Don’t wait until the last minute to submit your assignment. Aim to have it completed and submitted at least a day before the due date to allow for any unexpected delays or technical issues.

2. Double-Check the Submission

Before finalizing your assignment submission, carefully review the following:

• Ensure you’ve included all required files or components.
• Verify that the file(s) are properly formatted and named.
• Confirm that you’ve followed all the instructions for the submission method.

3. Keep a Copy

Always keep a backup copy of your assignment, either in digital or physical form. This will come in handy if there are any issues with the submission or if your instructor requests revisions.

4. Communicate with Your Instructor

If you encounter any problems or have questions about the submission process, don’t hesitate to reach out to your instructor. Many instructors are willing to provide guidance and support to help ensure a successful submission.

5. Follow Up on Late Submissions

If you’re submitting your assignment late, be proactive in communicating with your instructor. Provide a clear explanation for the delay and inquire about any potential penalties or alternative arrangements.

Writing the Perfect Email to Your Instructor for Assignment Submission

If your instructor has requested that you submit your assignment via email, it’s important to craft a professional and polite message. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Subject Line

The subject line should be clear and concise, indicating the course, assignment title, and your name. For example: “ENGL 101 – Final Essay Submission – [Your Name]”

Address your instructor using their appropriate title (e.g., “Dear Professor Smith,” “Hello Dr. Jones,” “Hi Ms. Garcia”).

Body of the Email

In the body of the email, include the following information:

• A brief introduction : “I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to submit my [assignment name] for your [course name] class.”
• A statement confirming the attachment: “Please find the assignment attached to this email.”
• A polite closing: “Thank you for your time and consideration. Please let me know if you have any questions or need anything else from me.”

End your email with a professional signature that includes your full name, contact information (phone number and/or email), and any other relevant details (e.g., student ID number).

Double-check that you have attached the correct file(s) before sending the email.

By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your assignment submission email is clear, professional, and sets a positive tone for your interaction with your instructor.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Technical issues.

If you encounter any technical problems during the submission process, such as file upload errors or email delivery issues, don’t panic. Here’s what you can do:

• Try a different method: If one submission method isn’t working, see if you can use an alternative option (e.g., email instead of LMS upload).
• Reach out to IT support: Contact your school’s IT or helpdesk team for assistance in resolving any technical problems.
• Document the issue: Keep a record of the error messages, screenshots, or any other relevant information in case you need to provide it to your instructor.

Missed Deadlines

If you’re unable to submit your assignment by the due date, take the following steps:

• Communicate with your instructor: Inform your instructor about the situation as soon as possible and request an extension.
• Explain the reason: Provide a clear and honest explanation for the delay, avoiding excuses and taking responsibility.
• Propose a solution: Suggest a reasonable new deadline and commit to submitting the assignment by that date.
• Follow up: If your instructor grants an extension, make sure to submit the assignment by the new due date.

Academic Integrity Concerns

If you’re unsure about the appropriate way to cite sources or are worried about the potential for plagiarism , consider the following:

• Review citation guidelines: Familiarize yourself with the citation style (e.g., APA, MLA) required by your instructor and ensure you’re properly attributing all borrowed ideas and information.
• Use plagiarism-checking tools: Many schools provide access to plagiarism detection software, which can help you identify any unintentional plagiarism in your work.
• Consult with your instructor: If you have any lingering questions or concerns about academic integrity, don’t hesitate to reach out to your instructor for guidance.

By addressing these common challenges proactively, you can ensure a smooth and successful assignment submission process.

Submitting assignments can be a daunting task, but with the right strategies and preparation, you can approach it with confidence. Remember to thoroughly understand the submission guidelines, follow the step-by-step process, and communicate effectively with your instructor. By mastering the art of assignment submission, you’ll set yourself up for academic success and demonstrate your commitment to your studies.

If you have any additional questions or need further assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to your instructor, academic advisor, or campus resources. They’re here to support you throughout your educational journey.

Good luck with your upcoming assignments!

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Submit Assignments

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Where do I find my assignments?

Your instructor can add assignments to different areas of your course. You might access assignments from a link on the course menu called "Assignments." Or, your instructor might incorporate assignments into each week's content. Ask your instructor if you have questions about how your course is organized.

Your instructor can also create group assignments and provide access to them in the same areas as regular assignments. Group assignments may also appear in the My Groups panel after the course menu.

More on accessing and submitting group assignments

Your instructor may make some assignments available after a certain date or after you complete a certain task. For example, you might have to mark a lecture as reviewed before you may access an assignment. Contact your instructor if you don't see an assignment you think you should.

If you submit after the due date, your submission is marked LATE and penalties may apply.

The digital dropbox has been replaced by the assignments tool in Blackboard Learn. If your instructor has asked you to submit something to the digital dropbox, ask for other instructions.

Watch a video about assignments

The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube , navigate to More actions , and select Open transcript .


Video: Assignments Overview shows you where to find and submit assignments.

Submit an assignment

When you finish your assignment, you must select Submit . If you don't, your instructor won't receive your completed assignment.

If your instructor hasn't allowed multiple attempts, you may submit your assignment only once. Before you select Submit , be sure that you have attached any required files.

• Open the assignment. On the Upload Assignment page, review the instructions, due date, points possible, and download any files provided by your instructor. If your instructor has added a rubric for grading, you can view it.
• Select Create Submission to enter your submission. You can use the options in the editor to format the text. You have creative control over how your content appears and the flexibility to change the order and appearance.
• Select Upload Files to upload a file from your device, content collection (if you have access), or a cloud service such as OneDrive® or Google Drive™.
• Optionally, enter comments about your submission.

Select Submit . The Review Submission History page appears with information about your submitted assignment and a success message with a confirmation number. Copy and save this number as proof of your submission. For assignments with multiple attempts, you receive a different number for each submission. If your institution has enabled email notifications for submission receipts, you'll also receive an email with your confirmation number and details each time you submit coursework.

You won't be able to drag files to upload, view confirmation numbers, or receive email submission receipts if your institution uses an older version of Blackboard Learn.

More on submitting your assignment with JAWS ®

Choose file download location

In most browsers, you can select where the files that you open in courses are downloaded. For example, in Chrome, go to Settings > Advanced > Downloads . You can select the location for file downloads and choose if you want the browser to ask each time. In Safari, you have the same capabilities. Navigate to Preferences > General > File download location . You can perform an internet search to learn about file download choices in other browsers.

Save an assignment as a draft and submit later

On the Upload Assignment page, select Save Draft to save your work and continue later. Your text and files are saved on the page. When you return, you can resume working.

• Return to your assignment and select the assignment title.
• On the Review Submission History page, select Continue .
• On the Upload Assignment page, make your changes.
• Select Submit . The Review Submission History page appears with information about your submitted assignment.

When you finish your assignment, you must select Submit . If you don't, your instructor won't receive your work.

Resubmit an assignment

Your instructor may allow you to submit an assignment more than once for a variety of reasons. For example, your instructor may provide comments on your first draft so that you can try to improve your work.

You may realize you made an error after you've submitted your assignment. However, you may not be allowed to resubmit the assignment . Contact your instructor to ask for the opportunity to resubmit the assignment.

If you may make another attempt, select the assignment link in your course. Start New appears on the Review Submission History page.

Anonymously graded assignments

On the Upload Assignment page, you're informed if your assignment is set to be graded anonymously.

Your instructor won't see your name during grading. Your instructor may choose to grade anonymously to eliminate bias.

You shouldn't include any identifying information with your submission. Don't add your name to files you upload or use your name in any text you add.

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