Assignment types are a way of grouping assessments. It makes it easier for you and your students to organize assignments in the class. For example, if you want to keep track of student attendance, you could create an assignment type for “Attendance” and then create an assignment for each class time. Or, create an assignment type for "Journals" and then all the journals assignments could be in that category.
Assignment types give you the flexibility to allow autonomy within the type of assignment. For example, if you have 8 journal prompts, but students only need to complete 6 of the prompts, you can put in parameters to specify that the top 6 submissions count or that there is a cap on the score a student can receive in that assignment category. Or, scores for assignment types can be capped at a certain number (i.e.: students can get up to 100 points in an assignment type)
Thinking about categories of assignments allows you to explore how you want to build in choice into student assessment. In GradeCraft, You must create an assignment type before creating any assignments.
To create an assignment type
- Click "Assignments" under "Coursework" from the left-hand menu. Expand the "Coursework" folder if needed
- Click the “Add a New Assignment Type” button.
The Assignment Type screen has a few important options:
- Name: This will display for students, so make it meaningful - Whether it is "Participation" or "Stretch Goals" it is the first piece of information a student sees.
- Maximum Points: This option allows you to set the maximum points a student can earn from this category of assignments. No matter how many assignments a student completes, they cannot earn more than the maximum. This is useful when you want to encourage students not to do all the assignments
- Attendance: Select this option if you're using this category to count towards your attendance grade for the course. This will make the assignments in this category visible on the "attendance" page, accessed from the link in the left-hand navigation bar, under the "coursework" header.
- Description: This area allows you to give some guidance to your students about the collection of assignments as a whole. Students will see the Description on both the general assignment dashboard as well as in the assignment itself.
When you finish, hit "Create Assignment type" at the bottom.
Once you have your first Assignment Type set up, you are ready to create assignments!
To edit an assignment type
To edit an assignment type, you may:
- Click "Assignments" under "Coursework" from the left-hand menu. Expand the "Coursework" folder if needed
- Expand the assignment type you want to edit
- Hit "Edit" right above the first assignment in the assignment type
- Refer to the guide in the previous section if needed to edit
- Hit "Update Assignment type" to finish
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