Creating an Assignment

The Assignments tool enables students to submit assignments through iCollege making them easy to view, grade and track. The Assignments area also lets you attach rubrics to an assignment or you can use the built in Turnitin Feedback studio to easily add comments to student papers.  You can use the iCollege Assignment Tool to allow your students to submit papers, case studies, presentations, speeches, recordings, and videos.

The Assignment Tool allows students to submit (attach and upload) files such as Word, PowerPoint, and PDF.  It can also be used to allow students to embed video and audio files that they have created or uploaded to their Kaltura My Media account.   The Assignment Tool can include rubrics to help you assess student submissions.  As an alternative to the standard iCollege rubrics and assignment markup features, Turnitin, integrated with the Assignment Tool, offers plagiarism detection along with Grademark’s rubrics features.

To create an assignment:

1. From the navigation bar, click Assessments.
2. Select Assignments.
3. Click New Assignment.
4. In the New Assignment window, in the Name field give the assignment a name.
5. In the Grade Out Of field, click the field to add the maximum points the students can earn on the assignment.  If the assignment will not count as a grade, leave the Ungraded option selected.
6. Use the In Grade Book drop-down menu to choose if the grade should linked to an item in the grade book. You can select an existing grade item or create a new one. If you later decide that you do not want a grade associated with the assignment, choose the Reset to Ungraded option from the drop-down menu.
7. Enter the Due Date for the assignment.  Please note that students can still submit assignments after the due date, but they are automatically marked as late.
8. In the Instructions text box, enter any necessary instructions.  You can also add a video, create links to websites, and/or upload files and images.  If you wish to enhance your instructions with narration, use the Record Audio feature to record a message for the students.

Availability Dates & Condition

9. Use this section to select the dates when the assignment will become available to the students.  

• • The Start Date is when the assignment will become available to the students, and they can begin submitting their work.  Select a start date only if you want the assignment to become available for a date in the future. If you want the assignment available immediately, you do NOT have to select a Start Date.
  • The End Date is when the assignment is no longer available to the students, and they can not submit their work.  As a best practice, select an end date that is at least one minute later than the due date.  For example, if your due date is 11:59 pm, this means students can still submit until 11:59 pm.  However, if the end date is the same time as the due date, the students will no longer be able to submit at 11:59, which could cause some frustrations (although we don’t want them to wait until the last minute).  Setting the End Date is important if you do not want to allow submissions after the Due Date. 

Submission & Completion

10. Use this section to select options related to how the students will submit their assignments.

Evaluation & Feedback

11. Use this section to select options related to how you will provide feedback for the students.

• If appropriate, add or create a Rubric to assess the assignment. 
• Click Manage Turnitin to enable similarity checking (plagiarism detection) and online grading.

12. Use the toggle button at the bottom of the page to make the assignment visible to students.
13. Click Save and Close to save the assignment and close the New Assignment screen. 

View the following KB Article for more detail.

• Creating Assignments in iCollege
• Using Turnitin in iCollege

Watch the following tutorial to learn how to create an assignment.