Moodle Help Guide

Once you've accepted an assignment, you need to view the individual submissions and grade them. You can download them all with just a few clicks and grade on your computer, if that would be the best method for your process. Or, you could use Moodle's assignment grading interface. The grading interface has a panel where you can read submissions, and a panel where you can enter grades and feedback.

Did you know that you can use built-in recording tools to provide video and/or audio feedback on student assignments? This can not only be a time-saver, it can improve student understanding - your tone and/or body language will convey additional information to them as they seek to improve. When you are in the Feedback section you will click on the Insert drop down and then choose audio or video. 

Moodle gives you the ability to build rubrics, in the Assignment tool, that instructors can use to provide standardized grading. These may be useful to provide consistency in your own grading, to communicate your expectations to your students, or to provide consistency in grading among multiple graders.

When setting up a new Assignment or editing Assignment Settings, under Grade>Grading Method, choose "Rubric" as your grading method. 

Once you have saved changes, if Moodle does not prompt you to define a grading form, click on the Advanced Grading tab at the top of the Assignment.  You will have a choice to create a new one, or work from an existing template. Choose the one that is appropriate for your case.

When writing a new rubric, first give it a title that will indicate to you, later, which assignment or sort of assignment it is for. (Consider whether you may want to reuse the same rubric for multiple similar assignments.) In the table below the title and description, you will see places to click and edit Criteria and places to edit Levels. You may want to define all the criteria on which you'd like to grade the assignment first, and then go back and specify what qualities of the work will merit each level of points. 

Below the space for building the rubric, you'll see a number of checkboxes, all of them checked by default. Consider whether you want all of these options, and modify them as needed. In particular, you may want to keep "Allow users to preview rubric used in the module" checked, as it will let students know what you will be looking for when you grade.

Don't forget to click "Save rubric and make it ready" when you're finished setting up. You can also save it as a draft, but you will have to make it ready to grade, later, before you can grade with it. 

Before you begin:

1. Make sure you have an app that allows you to annotate PDF files installed on your device.
2. Create your Moodle assignment. In the settings, under "Feedback Types" make sure that "Feedback Files"  and "offline grading worksheet" is checked. Under "Submission Types, uncheck "Online Text".
3. Let your students know that they should convert their work to a PDF before submitting.
4. For the following instructions, use Moodle in a browser (like Safari, Chrome, or Firefox) on your iPad, NOT the Moodle App. These instructions will not work in the Moodle App.

Downloading:

1. When your students have submitted and you're ready to grade, open the assignment and click "View All Submissions".
2. Choose "Download All Submissions" to the right of the screen.
3. After you've downloaded the file, tap "Open in..." and choose "Save to Files". Choose a folder to save the file in; if you see a folder for the PDF annotation app you plan to use, you can choose that folder.
4. Go into your Files app. Navigate to the file you just saved from Moodle. It will be a .zip file, so you need to uncompress it before you can work with it. Depending on your system, you may be able to tap once to uncompress the file. Or you can press and hold on the .zip file, and choose "uncompress" from the menu.
5. Now you will see a normal folder that contains your students' files. Open the individual files in your PDF annotation app to make your notes.
6. When you have made notes on the file, make sure to save it without changing the file name. Moodle uses the file name to match the file back to the correct student.

Uploading:

1. In your Files app, you need to compress the folder with your students' work in it. Tap and hold on the folder, and choose "Compress" from the menu.
2. Return to Moodle. Find the "Grading Action" dropdown menu. From there, choose "Upload multiple feedback files in a zip"
3. Upload the compressed .zip file you just created.
4. Choose "Import Feedback File(s)".
5. You will see a list of the feedback files you are adding. Choose "Confirm", then "Continue".
6. Your students should now be able to see the corrected files under "Feedback" in their assignment.