If your instructor has allowed you and other students to submit as a group, you can (and should) add group members to your submission.

To add group members to an assignment submission:

• On your submission page, either select Group Members in the action bar (along the bottom of the screen) or select ‘View or Edit Group’ in the outline area of the submission (in the right hand panel).

• In the Group Members modal, enter a name to add other students, and then select Add.

Note: If you cannot see your group member(s) listed in Gradescope, please contact the Course Secretary to ask them to re-sync the Gradescope roster with Learn.

All teaching staff will need to interact with Learn Ultra, even if the course materials are hosted on Drupal. We have compiled links to instructions on the most common tasks you will need to perform in Learn below. If you do not see what you need below, please check out the following page, which has additional instructions and guidance materials on a range of other aspects of Learn Ultra: Using Learn as an Instructor.

Introduction to Learn Ultra: a series of short videos providing an overview of Ultra and how to navigate the site.

Adding and organising content:

• Types of Course Content – start here to get a definition of the terminology used for content types in Ultra
• Learning Modules and Folders
• Adding Documents
• Web and course links*
• Copying content in Learn Ultra
• Add a video to your course

*If you want to share a link with students to a file you have uploaded to the Content Collection for a course, you will need to adjust the permission settings in the Content Collection folder following these instructions from Blackboard.

Assessment and marking:

Please remember that the Course Secretary is now in charge of setting up most assignment submissions, so please contact the ITO about the creation of assignment submission boxes. Below we have provided links for guidance on accessing student submissions and how to give marks and feedback.

For Learn Assignments:

• Marks and Gradebook, Feedback, additional information on marking and the Gradebook
• Uploading marks (and feedback) to Learn Ultra
• Creating and managing tests

For Turnitin assignments:

• See the Marking, Feedback and Grading section here

For Gradescope assignments:

• See our blog post Marking an exam or homework assignment in Gradescope

Tools:

• Communicating with your students (incl. Announcements and how to email a Group in Learn)
• Managing Groups and Group Import and Export
• If you don’t use Piazza for your course, you can set up a discussion board in Learn. This can be linked to Groups, so that students can talk to their group members: Create and manage Discussions
• Adding tools to your Learn course (e.g. Zoom, CodeGrade, Noteable): Adding Tools via Content Market; for more on Zoom, see Adding a Zoom session to your Learn Ultra course

Note: All students, the Course Organiser, and Course Secretary will be automatically enrolled on the Learn course via a feed from EUCLID. All other teaching staff (i.e. additional lecturers and teaching support staff) will be enrolled via a feed from the School’s own databases; teaching support staff will only be enrolled in Learn once their contract is confirmed in PiP.

This blog post is intended to help course organisers decide which platform is most suitable for their needs with regards to coursework submission and marking. Learn Ultra – and its accompanying Gradebook – is quite a different beast to Learn Original, and so I thought it work highlighting the advantages and challenges of each approach. For simplicity sake, I have highlighted only those assignment types which are commonly used in the School of Informatics. If you have a requirement which sits outside of what is listed below (eg a graded blog) please get in touch with us and we can talk you through further options.

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra supports the following ways of assessing students online:

• Learn Assignment
• Learn Test
• Turnitin

Gradescope

• Homework assignment
• Online assignment
• Programming assignment
• Group assignment
• Exam (more about the history of using Gradescope for exam marking can be found here)

Scenario 1 – student submits one individual PDF for marking

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra can accept multiple files and file types. If one PDF is submitted, this should be displayed in the marking interface (although there have been multiple problems with how Learn handles PDFs in its own reader – particularly on a Mac – and so users are encouraged to download the PDF and open in their native application). A space is provided for the marker to enter grades and feedback. Delegated grading can be enabled for large courses where marking is distributed amongst a team of markers. In addition, parallel marking is now supported in Learn Ultra. This allows two markers to mark the same submission independently, with the course organiser acting as reconciler. Please note: parallel marking can only be enabled for individual submissions (ie *not* group assignments).

Gradescope

The Gradescope Homework assignment can only accept one PDF file upload. Marking can be distributed ‘horizontally’ – ie different markers marking different sections of the submission. Like all the Gradescope assignment types, anonymous marking is supported intuitively – and can be enabled and disabled as needs dictate. A marking scheme can be created in advance, encouraging consistency. Rubrics can be created in advance, or ‘on the fly’. One of the main advantages of Gradescope is the ability to change rubric values mid-way through marking, with marks previously assigned recalculated automatically.

Scenario 2 – group assignment

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra can support a group assignment. The workflow remains: the groups needs to be created, a group assignment is submitted, one member of the group submits on behalf of the group. This is marked and the marks / feedback are cascaded to each member of the group. Please note: parallel marking can *not* be enabled for a group assignment – nor can delegated grading. So this is best suited for courses with only one marker. Also, anonymity can not be enabled for group assignments.

Gradescope

Gradescope can now support group assignments. As with Learn Ultra, the marker(s) mark as normal, but the grades / feedback are cascaded to each member of the group. However, with Gradescope group assignments, the responsibility for creating the group falls to the student submitting the coursework. Unlike with Learn Ultra, anonymity can be enabled however double blind marking is also not supported.

Scenario 3 – programming assignment

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra can support a student uploading multiple files. These files can then be downloaded by the marker, with marking taking place offline. Marks and feedback can then be uploaded to the Gradebook via a CSV file upload.

Gradescope

Gradescope has a dedicated programming assignment type. Students can upload unlimited files, of any file type. Markers can build and use an autograder to automatically grade parts of the submission. Markers can also manually grade submissions. One of the main advantages of using Gradescope over Learn Ultra for programming assignments is you can perform a code similarity check within Gradescope.

* Please note: Gradescope Programming Assignments behave differently to Gradescope Homework assignments, in that the student can choose which submission they would like the marker to mark. Consider this when designing your assignment policy and communications.

Scenario 3 – multiple choice quiz

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra has an inbuilt test functionality. Since the move from Learn Original, many of the question types are no longer supported. LaTex is, in theory, supported in Learn tests. However, in practice, this has proved problematic across the College and we currently do not recommend this approach.

Gradescope

Gradescope’s online assignment type can be used for MCQ type tests / quizzes. It has several advantages over Learn Ultra test:

• a more intuitive interface for both question setter and student
• you can use LaTeX and Markdown to format the question text
• an in-built student preview (not available in Ultra tests).

Scenario 4 – marking by tutorial group

In the past, you may have appreciated the ability to mark by tutorial group in Turnitin. It is worth noting that Gradescope can now support this workflow. Please speak with a member of the ITO to help you set this up.

Summary

Gradescope provides a good user experience for all users and has become the default assessment platform for many courses across the School. We hope the above is useful, but please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you’d like to discuss specific requirements for your course.

If students are permitted extra time on timed pieces of coursework as part of their extended time adjustments, then you will need to set this up for any timed quizzes/tests on your course.

If you are a member of teaching staff, please ensure that you talk to the ITO about this before enabling it for any student on your course, as there are different types of extra time adjustments that a student may have and they will help clarify for your course how these need to be applied.

Below are links for how to add these extended time adjustments in the two commonly used coursework quiz/test platforms. For both Gradescope and Learn tests, you can set up an adjustment for a student that extends across a whole course and any timed assignments within that course or grant an adjustment just for one or more individual assignments.

Gradescope: Extending assignment release dates, due dates, and time limits

Learn: Accommodations and Exceptions in Blackboard Ultra (with thanks to Teeside University for writing much better instructions on this than Blackboard itself provides)

Note: Due to an ongoing bug in Learn Ultra, if you upload feedback to submission box in Learn, it will not be visible to students. If you want to upload feedback for an assignment that students submitted to via Learn, follow the instructions below to create a new “item” directly within the Gradebook itself, which (for some reason!) allows students to view the feedback you upload. Update: This bug appears to have been fixed, but let us know if you encounter any problems with the visibility of feedback for students.

1. Go to the Gradebook in the course Learn page.
2. Add a new Item to the Gradebook by hovering over where you want to add it in the list and clicking on the purple (+) when it appears and then select “Add Item”.

Then make the following adjustments when the item settings window opens:

• It will give the item the default name of “New Item and the current date”; change this to the actual assignment’s name to ensure that students can locate it easily.
• We recommend keeping this item hidden from student view for now.
• The due date doesn’t really matter for this, so you can leave it as the default of the current time.
• Set the marking as required (points, percentage, etc.) and, if points, the maximum number possible for this assignment.
• For “Mark category”, choose Assignment.
• Add a description if you want, but it’s not required.
• Press Save.

3. Download the Gradebook, selecting just the new item that you created. Make sure to tick the option to include Feedback (unless you just want to upload marks, in which case, leave it unticked). Choose to save it as an xlsx file and save it to your computer.

4. Open the file on your device.
5. Make sure that the header for Column G is the assignment you want to be uploading marks for (i.e. the item you just created in the Gradebook).
6. Input the marks in Column G.
7. Input the feedback in Column J, if you need to share this with students.

Note: Make sure you do not change the header of any of the columns or Learn may not be able to read the file properly when you upload the marks. If you need to copy and paste data from another spreadsheet, make sure that it aligns with the columns as laid out in the file you downloaded from Learn.

8. Save the file.
9. Return to the Gradebook in Learn and now select “Upload Gradebook”.

10. Choose “Upload Local File” and select the spreadsheet you have just saved. Once it has loaded, untick the option for “Select All” and just leave the assignment you want to upload marks for ticked. Click “Upload”.

11. Once Learn has uploaded the document, you will see how many students there are not marks for (i.e. those who did not submit the assignment) and also the option to post the marks that you just uploaded.

12. Before you post the marks, it’s worth quickly checking that your upload worked. Click on the assignment name and you will be taken through to a list of all the students on the course. You can then check the a few of their marks and feedback in Learn with your spreadsheet to make sure that the upload worked properly.

Note: If you only want to post marks to certain students, you can do that from this view. Just click the “Post” button next to the name(s) of the student(s) whose marks you are to post.

13. Once you are ready to share the marks with the students, Click to Post the marks. And then “Post All Marks” when the dialogue box opens.
14. Go back in to the Edit view of the assignment (by clicking the three dots … at the end of the row for it) and from the drop-down menu choose to make it “Visible to students”. Press Save. The students will now be able to view their marks and feedback for this assignment.

With the new release of Noteable in August 2022, ISG have configured a new way to connect your Learn course to Noteable –  Noteable LTI 1.3.

Step 2. Check the settings and then click on Submit.

Step 3. The Noteable link will appear in the Learn course page. Click on it, it will launch on a new tab.

The Informatics Teaching Festival is back for a third consecutive year and will run Monday May 9th to Wednesday May 11th 2022.

The 2022 Informatics Teaching Festival will focus on the design of teaching and learning and consist of the following sub-themes:  

• overview of course design (Day 1, May 9th 2022)  
• design to develop student skills, including for the industry (Day 2, May 10th 2022)
• design of assessment (Day 3, May 11th 2022).  

Each day will include both presentations on school and university processes, tools and support, as well as the sharing of experience and good practice around different approaches to the design of teaching and learning, and internal (Informatics or university-based) as well as invited external speakers.

If you’d like to attend any of the following sessions, and are not a member of the School of Informatics, please register your interest here, and a Collaborate link will be emailed to you in advance of the session(s).

Schedule* –

Day 1: Overview of Course Design. Monday, May 9th 2022

Day 2: Design to develop student skills. Tuesday, May 10th 2022

Day 3: Assessment. Wednesday, May 11th 2022

* The schedule is still subject to change. As best we can we will not make big adjustments to speakers and timings.

The Informatics Teaching Festival is back for a second consecutive year. 

 Join us for the opportunity to:

• hear interesting presentations around lessons learned in the past year and good practice in online/hybrid teaching from colleagues and inspiring speakers from other schools
• listen to the feedback provided by student representatives regarding their experience with studying in an online/hybrid context
• listen to the feedback provided by teaching support and administrative staff as to their experience with teaching and administration this past year
• learn about new approaches to teaching and educational software
• share your own experience with teaching delivery, student support and course administration during workshops and informal GatherTown meetings
• reflect and come up with ideas together for improving our delivery of online and hybrid teaching, both as a school and in our different courses.

If you’d like to attend any of the following sessions, and are not a member of the School of Informatics, please register your interest here, and a Collaborate link will be emailed to you in advance of the session(s).

Schedule