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Assignment Resubmission History Proposal

From MoodleDocs
Assignment Resubmission History
Project state Proposed
Tracker issue MDL-36804
Discussion https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=205060
Assignee {{{assignee}}}


Assignment Resubmission History

This is a proposal for an additional feature for the Assignment module to retain a history of the submission by a student to the assignment.

Goals and rationale

The main goals of this feature are to :

  • Provide a better history of the student interactions with an assignment.
  • Make it easier for students to upload files to an assignment (without having to delete their original files first)
  • Provide an audit trail for internal and external verification of marked work

Overview

This is a feature request from the community to retain the list of submissions by a student instead of overwriting the previous submission.


other thoughts:

Currently, when a student RESUBMITS an assignment, the original submission, grade and feedback are all lost. This inhibits the ability of both the teacher and student to LEARN FROM and BUILD ON previous efforts and feedback.

Is the student’s understanding of the assignment getting better or worse? How can the teacher tell without seeing the student’s progression over time?

Example 1: An assignment has tasks A, B and C. The student submits A and B but not C, which the student does not understand. Teacher feedback informs student to resubmit since she “forgot” task C. Again, the student resubmits parts A and B, but not C. Since a RESUBMISSION looks just like a FIRST SUBMISSION, this could happen many times without the teacher realizing that the student has repeatedly skipped task C (especially if the teacher has many students/classes).

Example 2: An assignment asks students to write a clear and concise paragraph that expresses an opinion about a controversial issue. A student submits a paragraph that contains some good but obvious arguments as well as a few other points that are original but undeveloped. The teacher’s feedback challenges the student to explore her original thoughts. The student’s resubmission expands on the obvious arguments but completely omits the more original ideas. When the teacher sees the resubmission, all traces of the original ideas (as well as the feedback) are gone. The teacher, who has over 100 students, does not recall that this student had expressed some unique but unexplored views. A grade is given but an opportunity for real learning/teaching is lost.

New settings

  • "Submission history" Yes|No - If enabled, each student submission to the assignment will be recorded at submission time and a teacher will be able to see each submission by an individual student.



other thoughts:

- When a student is required to RESUBMIT an assignment, all previous submission (including the grade, feedback, timestamp, and any other relevant info.) should be shown in a chronological order.

- Similarly, when a teacher is marking/grading an assignment, all previous submission (including the grade, feedback, timestamp, and any other relevant info.) should be shown in a chronological order.

- On a separate note, since the assignment module contains a “grade-to-pass’ feature that allows teachers to specify an acceptable grade, there should be a corresponding setting that allows for resubmission IF the grade-to-pass is not met.

Interface changes

A new entry will be put in the drop down menu on the grading table for each submission to view the submission history for that student. This will go to a new page in the assignment that displays the student details, as well of a list of the submissions by that student. For each submission it will contain the time and date, any files, online text or custom submission data. (Question: Does it need grades/feedback?)

Although feedback for each historical submission can be collectively held in the Feedback comments text area (perhaps under headings "First attempt Feedback" or similar) or by file upload a better solution might be to archive feedback linked to each submission. This is more suited to evidence requirements in most organisations as feedback cannot then be altered. On the assumption that this would require a lot more work this should be dropped rather than holding up the main feature of allowing resubmissions properly. (Question answered?) -I'm not sure what you mean here. Can you explain? Are you suggestion we drop the feedback from the history? If so, I would suggest that we keep it since it is a crucial part of the process.


Other thoughts:

Something to consider: Implementing this feature may require that we rethink the “revert to draft” function that’s currently in place. The current “revert to draft” feature asks students to CHANGE / REPLACE their answer. If I understand this feature correctly, when a submission is reverted to draft, it is NOT graded – it is as if the student NEVER SUBMITTED it in the first place. The new feature that is being proposed here is more like a traditional “Request Resubmission” feature, where the submission is still graded but the student is allowed BUILD ON / LEARN FROM their previous attempts and resubmit for a new (hopefully better) grade. Whether we continue to use term “revert to draft” or adopt “request resubmission”, the goal here is to move from the current method of “undo” to one of “redo”.

Interface suggestion:

- Controlling the resubmission option: Bring back the "allow resubmission" option in the Assignment settings and add a "conditional resubmission" (based on "grade-to-pass") setting, like this: http://screencast.com/t/172nIJmiWLS. To make the conditional resubmission option easier to manage, the grade-to-pass value (which is buried in the gradebook) should also be added to the Assignment settings, like this: http://screencast.com/t/a9zUxjDP2w. In effect, if a student is able to resubmit an assignment, she would see a "Resubmit this Assignment" button. Clicking on this button would "revert the assignment to draft" but also save the past submission (along with grade, teacher feedback, etc.)

- For students - Showing current and past submission: Keep a running list of all submissions at the bottom of the assignment, like this: http://screencast.com/t/tROSTGirFqf (alternatively, you could have a "Show past submissions" button").

- For teachers - Showing current and past submission: Same idea as the student view, except that it would show up in the marking interface. Also, for quick identification, the "submission status" could show the submission number (attempt), like this: http://screencast.com/t/sU1d7qC4gU.

Use Cases

A teacher wants to give feedback and let a student upload a new file submission to the assignment

  • Create an assignment with file submissions enabled, "Submission history" enabled and "Require students click submit" disabled
  • Wait until a student uploads a file submision
  • Grade the submission and give some feedback
  • Revert the submission to draft to allow the student to upload a new file
  • The student should see a readonly version of their original submission plus any feedback from the teacher
  • They should now be able to upload a new file without being able to delete their first submission



Other thoughts:

  • Example 1: A teacher creates an assignment with a conditional resubmission, which means that students are allowed to resubmit until they get a passing mark.

To do this, the teacher sets these two additional options within the assignment settings page:

Allow resubmissions: Yes, if grade-to-pass is not met

Grade to Pass: X

  • Example 2: A teacher want to create an assignment that allows for an unlimited number of submissions regardless of the grade. To do this, the teacher sets this option:

Allow resubmissions: Yes, always

  • Example 3: A teacher does not want to allow any resubmissions. To to this, the teacher would set this option:

Allow resubmissions: No

User Interface

Some screenshot mockups will help the community visualise this feature.