I want my students to submit their papers electronically using Moodle.  In the past my students have e-mailed their papers to me, but this is time consuming and hard to manage. I  have heard that there is a Moodle assignment feature I can use to provide electronic feedback in the form of an annotated file with comments (e.g. Word document with comments feature turned on).  How do I do this?

Advanced Uploading of Files Assignment Type

Of the four available assignment types in Moodle, you need to set up your assignment using the Advance uploading of files type.  [Moodle docs reference to this assignment type.]

This assignment type allows instructors to upload files to students in response to their submissions. A typical way to use this would be to edit the student’s submitted file by adding comments and/or corrections, and then returning this newly saved and named file back to the student for their review. When a student clicks on the assignment, files uploaded to him or her appear as a list of “Response files.”

Response Files

Once the assignment settings are completed and students begin to upload their assignment files, you are ready to start reading and marking papers electronically.  After you have read the student’s document and drafted comments electronically using the Comments feature in your word processing tool of preference.

To upload a “response file” with electronic comments view the list of assignments in your course, and then click on the assignments that have been submitted.  E.g. below, there is one submission for the “Bottled Water – ban or not?” assignment and you will see that it is an “Advanced uploading” task.

Next you will see a list of students in your course “Gradebook.”  Navigate until you locate the student you plan to upload the response file to.  Once you locate the student, click on “Grade.”  This will take you to the grading area for the advanced upload of file type.  You will see the student’s rough draft or final assignment document(s) listed at the bottom. Also note that there are areas for providing a grade, writing rich text comments, and for uploading a “response file.”
Advanced Upload of Files Assignment type in Moodle
Teaching Caveats for Response files
Response files can be uploaded by the instructor as a means of offering each student a different assignment file to work with.
  • Students may also enter notes describing the submitted files, progress status or any other text information.
  • Submission of this type of assignment must be manually finalized by the student.
  • Teachers can review the current status at any time, unfinished assignments are marked as Draft.
  • Teachers can revert any ungraded assignment back to draft status.

A quick guide about marking and sending back work is shown in the following video (duration: 1 min. 36 sec.)