Assignments on Schoology

Creating an Assignment

To create an assignment, use the Add Materials button at the top of your Course Materials page. You can also access the Add Materials button from within a folder.

1. Click Add Materials.
2. Select Add Assignment. 
3. Fill out the Create Assignment form.
   
   • Enter a Description. Here, you can enter directions your students will need to complete the assignment
   • Set a Due Date to place the assignment in the Course Calendar and Upcoming area. This will also enable Overdue notifications if a student fails to submit the assignment by the due date.
   • Select a Grading Category from the dropdown. If you do not select a grading category, it will default to Ungraded, and will not appear in your gradebook.
   • Select a Scale or Rubric from the dropdown menu. To learn more about grading scales and rubrics, see our article on Setting Up Your Gradebook. 
     
4. Options
   Use Options to turn on/off the following features:
   • Use Individually Assign to only display the assignment to a specific member of the course or a grading group.
   • Align Learning Objectives to add a custom learning objective, common core, or state standard. 
     Enterprise users: Once you have aligned your material with learning objectives, use the Mastery tool to track your students’ progress
   • Lock prevents students from making submissions. You may want to lock the assignment after the due date has passed.
   • Enable Submissions: Click the dropbox icon to provide an area for students to submit work. You can opt to disable submissions if the assignment does not require something in return from the student – for example, reading homework.  
   • Published to student: opt to show or hide the assignment from the student view.
   • Grade Statistics displays the statistics for the assignments to students, which is located in an icon above assignment submissions.
   • Enable Comments: This allows students to comment on the assignment. 
   • Copy to Courses: Copy the assignment with the current settings and options to another course.
5. Click Create to complete.

Assignment

Once you click Create, the description and any additional files or links will appear on the assignment, along with the Submissions and comment tools. From this screen, you can manage assignment submissions, grade students, and participate in the comments area.

Assignment Submissions

When a student makes a submission to an assignment, you will receive a notification at the top of Schoology:

The Submissions feature is located in the right column of the Assignment. You can also access it by clicking the Assignment listed in the Calendar. Use this area to manage student-submitted files.

Submitted files are organized by On Time and Late,based on the assignment’s Due Date. You can download or view each individual file, or you can download all assignments in a bulk .zip file.

Note: The Download All option has a limit of 500MB. If the cumulative size of all submissions to the assignment exceeds this limit, each submission can be downloaded individually from the document viewer.

Grading Assignments

Document Viewer

The Document Viewer enables you to view and/or annotate student assignment submissions directly through your Schoology account. To use the Document Viewer, click a submission.

In the Document Viewer, you can:

• Comment and discuss in the right column.
• View the date and time submitted for each submission.
• Upload a file to the comment/discussion feed.
• Highlight selected text. 
• Comment in the document.
• Strikeout selected text.
• Draw on the document.
• Grade the assignment.
• Download the file and save it on your computer.
• Return the annotated/graded assignment to the student just by clicking Save Changes.
  
  

Note: The Schoology Doc Viewer supports the following file types: .doc, .docx, .html, .odt, .pdf, .rtf, .text, .ppt, .pptx, .swf, .xls, .xlsx, .mp3, .mp4, .mov, .wav, .wmv, and many more. The submission viewer does notconvert Apple Pages, Numbers or Keynote files, but you may download these submissions onto your computer. You cannot annotate all file types (media files, for example) using the Annotation tool bar.

Returning Assignments

The Submissions Viewer feature enables you to “return” assignments to students by clicking the Save Changesbutton in the bottom-right corner of a document. If you use a third-party annotation program, you can upload your revised document to the comments/discussion area to the right of the student’s submission.

If you plan to have students submit multiple revisions of the same assignment, you can leave comments in the right column, where you will see a history of submissions and comments.

You can delete any comments posted by you or the student. Simply hover the cursor to the far right of the comment and click X, then click Submit to confirm.

You can enter a grade directly on a submission in the upper-right corner of the document viewer.

When you click the Grade field, you can enter a grade based on the grading scale or rubric you selected while creating the assignment, along with a comment. The comment entered here will appear in the gradebook. It will also display in the student’s Grades area of the course if you check Show to Student. After entering a grade and a comment (optional), click Submit to save.