FAQs About Assignments

• Can I make a group assignment?

  Yes, you can create a group assignment using the Assignment in Cougar Courses.  Turnitin does not yet have this capability. 

  See the Faculty Guides>Assignments and TurnItIn>Creating and Adding Assignments.  The document contains a section on Group Submission Settings.   Before creating a group assignment, you must create the groups and add students to the groups.  For more help with groups, see the Groups section of the faculty guides.

• How do I grade the student submissions?
  See the faculty Guides>Assignments and Turnitin section and select  "Assignment Grader".  Once you have graded the assignment, the grade will be automatically entered into the gradebook.
• How do I allow a student a second attempt on an assignment activity?
  1. Click on the assignment name on your course homepage.
  2. Select View all submissions button.
  3. In the submissions table, locate the row with the student’s name and click the edit dropdown to the right of the Grade button.   Select one of the following options:

  • Allow submission changes – this unlocks the submission so the student can update or replace their original submission
  • Allow another attempt – The student’s first attempt and any feedback you provided will be archived, but will no longer be available on the View all submissions page.  If the student does not submit another attempt, there will be no submission listed on the View all Submissions page.  Selecting this option is not reversible, so consider using Allow submission changes instead.
• How do I download all the submissions to grade offline?
  1. Click the assignment link on your course homepage.
  2. Click the  View all Submissions button.
  3. At the top left of the page, there is a Grading action dropdown.  Select Download all submissions.  They will download in a single zipped folder, with a file for each submission.  The file name will include the student’s name and the title of their submission. 

  NOTE: If you are planning to upload your annotated file, do not change the filename when saving.

• How do I reupload all the papers with my annotations?

  If you’d like to use Word’s markup and tracking features and upload the file with your annotations,  see the Faculty Guides> Assignments and TurnItIn>Manage Assignment Submissions. Scroll down to the section entitled: Upload Multiple Feedback Files in a Zip.

  You must enable Feedback Files in the Feedback Types section of the assignment settings.

• Turnitin: How do students see my feedback?
  1. Click on the assignment link on the course homepage. 
  2. In the Assignment inbox, click the submission title to open the grademark screen. 

  • Inline submissions will be displayed. 
  • To view overall text or audio feedback, similarity details or  e-rater grammar comments, they may need to expand  the different layers using the icons on the right side of the screen.
• Turnitin: Students can't see the grade.

  Students can’t view the grademark feedback, or see their grade in the gradebook until after the Post Date you set in the Turnitin assignment setup.  To edit this date:

  1. Click on the assignment on your course homepage. The Turnitin Assignment Inbox will open in a new tab/window. 
  2. At the top of the window, click the edit pencil to the right of the Post Date.
  3. Modify the date, then click in a blank area of the page to save the update.
• Turnitin: My grades aren't displayed in the Turnitin inbox.
  If you see the grades when you click on the individual papers, but they aren't displaying in the Turnitin inbox click the refresh submission icon ( located to the left of the trashcan icon) for each submission.  If this doesn't resolve the issue, contact us.
• Turnitin: I set the maximum grade to X but it is displaying differently.
  1. Locate the Turnitin assignment, click the edit dropdown to the right and select edit settings. 
  2. Scroll down to the Grade section and expand it.
  3. Verify the maximum grade is correct. 
  4. Scroll to the Assignment Part 1 section and verify the Max grade is the same as the Maximum grade in the Grade section above. If you have a multi-part assignment, the sum of the Max grades must equal the Maximum grade in the Grade section.
• Turnitin: Can I setup a group assignment?

  Turnitin doesn’t support group assignments.  For other students in the group to see the feedback, the student who uploaded it will need to download the paper and share it via email.  To download a paper with comments:

  • view the paper in Feedback studio
  • click on the download icon on the right and select Current View in the Download popup. Save the downloaded file.
  • To grade the other students in the group (who didn't submit),  you will need to edit their grade in the Cougar Courses gradebook. 
• Turnitin: My student submitted something, but I can't open it.

  This error can be caused when Turnitin is experiencing problems, but it usually is caused when you change the setting "Allow submission of any file type from NO (the default) to YES and the student saves/uploads their document in a file type that can not be displayed in the Grademark screen. You can download the document and view it with the appropriate software or have the student use a word processing program to save the file as one of the accepted types, with a different file name.

  • Best choices are .Microsoft Word (DOC and DOCX) or PDF
  • Students can also save as Plain Text (TXT) or Rich text Format (RTF), but they will lose some formatting. 

  If the assignment is still open, and you set it to allow resubmissions until the due date, they can download their original submission and replace it.   If it's past the due date,  and you aren't allowing late submissions, you will have to delete their original submission and upload the student's document.