Evaluate and add feedback to assignments

To evaluate and add feedback to assignments

The Evaluate Submission page enables you to evaluate and leave feedback on user submissions. It contains two main sections: The Submissions List panel and the Evaluation panel. Use the Evaluation panel to grade and provide comments on submissions. On paper submissions and Observed in person assignments display only the Evaluation panel, as no submissions are made in Brightspace.

Note: For more information about evaluating and adding feedback to assignments using a screen reader or keyboard-only navigation, see How assistive technology interacts with the inline grading experience.

If you make evaluations directly on the Evaluate Submission page, you can publish feedback immediately or save your feedback as a draft and release it at a later time. This enables you to revise and review evaluations, and publish your feedback to multiple users at the same time. You have the option to retract published feedback if you want to provide an update to past evaluations but only want learners to access your most recent feedback.

If you use rubrics to assess submissions, the rubric opens in a pop-up window to enable easy grading, and the score transfers automatically to the Evaluation and Feedback sidebar. The overall score of the rubric transfers automatically to the Score field and appears in Grades if the assignment is associated with a grade item. The rubric feedback appears on the Feedback page to the learner.

To publish all draft feedback to learners at once, click Publish All Feedback on the assignment page. If you have Anonymous Marking enabled, you must click Save Draft and save your feedback for each anonymous user, then click Publish All Feedback on the assignment page to submit feedback to the anonymous users. Instructors cannot publish feedback from the Evaluate Submission page, and must do so from the assignment page.

If you have built in annotations turned on, you can mark up submissions using highlighting, free hand drawing, shapes, and associated commenting directly from the Evaluate Submission page. Use the icons in the document viewer toolbar to select between Pen, Note, Text, and Line. You can undo or redo any annotations using the undo/redo buttons located on the menu or using keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts for PCs are ctrl+z for undo and ctrl+shift+z for redo. For MAC OS, the shortcuts are command+z for undo and command+shift+z for redo.

Each tool has additional options to change color, font size, font, and many other customizable items. Once you publish the feedback, learners can view their submission with the annotations visible, providing additional context on their instructor's notes.

If you download user submissions and leave feedback within the files, you can upload them back to the appropriate assignment, so they appear as attachments to each user's submission evaluation. To ensure successful feedback upload and distribution back to learners, do not rename the downloaded files' names after you enter feedback and save changes.

1. On the navbar, click Assignments.
2. On the Assignments page, from the context menu of the assignment you want to evaluate, click View Submissions.
3. On the Submissions page, do one of the following:
   • If you want to return feedback on multiple submissions at once or evaluate and grade submissions offline:
     • Click the Select all rows checkbox, and then click Download. A .zip file is created.
     • Click Download.
     • Extract all the files to a local folder.
       Note: Each user submission folder has a numeric ID prefixed to the folder name. This ID is key when you are uploading the evaluated submission files and it should not be changed. Example downloaded file name with the numeric ID: 30230-29 - John Doe - May 29, 2020 122 PM
     • Open each assignment, evaluate the assignment, add your feedback, and then save the file.
       
     • Once you have evaluated and added feedback to all submission files and saved them, highlight all the updated folders and create a .zip folder.
       Note: If you have any learner names with characters that cannot be used in a compressed folder, such as Ø, rename that folder and reattempt to create a .zip folder. Do not change the ID prefixed to the name of the folder.
     • On the Submissions page, click Add Feedback Files. Select your compressed .zip file and then click Add.
     • To publish feedback to selected learners, select these learners, and click Publish Feedback.
     • To publish feedback to all learners, click Publish All Feedback.
       Note: If the Publish All Feedback button is grayed out, that indicates that you have no draft feedback to publish.
     • If you have any rubrics attached to learner submissions and if these learner submissions have not been evaluated on all rubric criteria, a Confirmation dialog box appears indicating the same.
     • Click Continue Grading or Publish Anyway, as applicable.
       
   • If you want to evaluate an individual user, click on their name, or the Evaluate link for their submission.
     Note: The Evaluate link appears when you have the Give Feedback permission turned on for your role. Refer to the Assignment permissions topic for more details.
     
   • To add evaluations using an attached rubric, on the Evaluate Submission page, in the Evaluation panel, click the rubric you want to use, or click Assess All Rubrics if more than one rubric is attached. Select the rubric you want to use from the Scoring Rubric dropdown list. The Score for the submission is populated automatically from the Scoring Rubric.
   • Add or edit the Score for the submission, and any additional Feedback, including text, audio, or video files.
   • To evaluate using learning outcomes, select the desired level of achievement below the outcome.
   • When you leave feedback in Turnitin, the feedback icon displays on the assignment submission page, in the Turnitin Online Grading column.

   • If you added a Online Grading score, the score displays on the submissions page, in the Turnitin Online Grading column.

For information about file types that are supported by the annotation tool in Assignments, see File types supported by Annotations