Assessment for staff

Below is information for Instructors and Course Convenors to help with choosing which electronic file submission tool is most appropriate for use in their course.  In Learning@Griffith, there are several ways of collecting student's assignment or other files in electronic format.  The different tools each have a different purpose, and work in different ways.

Online assignment submission tools

• TurnItIn
• Assignment, optionally incorporating SafeAssign

Other tools able to collect and store file attachments

If you require students to submit files for peer review, draft purposes etc there are a number of options available

• File attachments in the Discussion Board
• File exchange in a Groups area (though note that files can be deleted by students)
• File exchange in the Content Collection (though note that files can be deleted by students)
• Wikis
• Journals (note that a journal is primarily a reflective tool)

Collaborative tasks

The tools in this list are not designed for standard assignment submission (eg essays, reports etc), but may be suitable for assessable collaborative exercises.

• Discussion Board
• Wikis
• Blogs
• Wikis

Complete list of available online assessment tools

For a list of the online assessment tools see:

• Assessment Tools

Considerations when selecting an appropriate tool

• Is the assignment an individual or group assignment?
• Do you want the submission to be checked for originality using text matching tools?
• Will more than one file need to be submitted per person?  Are some of the files in a non-essay format?
• Are students in the course working collaboratively on an assignment?  Does the structure of the course encourage students to view and comment on the work of others?
• Will file type or file size be a factor?

These questions are answered below.

Is the assignment an individual or group assignment?

All of the tools will support an individual student submitting an individual assignment, but some tools are better at "understanding" a group assignment than others. For example, TurnItIn is designed for individual assignment submissions.   However the Assignment tool is designed to accept group assignments, and enabling SafeAssign for the assignment can be used to generate text-matching reports if desired.

The Content Collection, Group File Exchange, Wikis and Discussion Board tools do not record the receipt of the assignment in the Mark Centre, so are more flexible in terms of accepting group assignments or multiple submissions per student. However, using these tools also allows other students in the course to see the submitted files.

Do you want the submission to be checked for originality?

Using SafeAssign in an Assignment, or using Turnitin, means that assignments are automatically submitted for text matching, and that the student is able to check their work with a draft copy of their assignment prior to making a final submission.  These files are stored only in electronic format, although course convenors may choose to print the files themselves for marking. Only certain file types are accepted - refer to the help documentation for more information.

Assignments submitted through any other electronic assignment submission method may be checked for originality by the convenor, using the Direct Submit feature of SafeAssign to submit a file or group of files. Note that one of the benefits of having students submit through these tools is that students have the opportunity to submit and review a draft version of their assignment prior to submission. Convenors who choose not to use text-matching software to collect final assignments but do intend to use it later for text matching those assignments are able to set up a draft submission point for students to check their drafts.

Will more than one file need to be submitted per person? Are some of the files in a non-essay format?

The Assignment tool is the only purpose-designed assignment tool that allows more than one file to be submitted for an assignment. It is also the only purpose-designed assignment tool that accepts non-essay files (for example .xls , .swf , .exe .  Essay files submitted using the Assignment tool may later be submitted to Direct Submit in SafeAssign  or to TurnItIn.

Otherwise, files could be collected using the Content Collection, Group File Exchange, and Discussion Board tools: remembering that files collected this way are visible to other students in the course.

Are students in the course working collaboratively on an assignment?  Does the structure of the course encourage students to view and comment on the work of others?

The Content Collection, Group File Exchange,Wikis and Discussion Board tools are all designed to store and share files.  If you have students working on assignments in groups, you can use the Groups functionality in Learning@Griffith to set up group spaces where members of the group can exchange files either on a Discussion Board or in a File Exchange space.   Course convenors are also able to access these group spaces.

It is also possible to configure the Discussion Board, or a folder in the Content Collection, so that all students in a course can upload files and see other student's files.   This is valuable in courses where students discuss their work through the semester and assist each other in the development of their individual papers.

Will file type or file size be a factor?

For some assessment items file type and file size will be a deciding factor. For example, if you wish to assess audiovisual items you would probably use the Assignment tool, or could use collaboration tools such as a Blog or Journal. The relevant file size and file type limits are listed below.

File size limits for Assessment tools:

• The Assignment tool has a limit of 250mb, unless you are using the SafeAssign option, which has a limit of 10mb
• Blogs, Discussions, and Journals have a limit of 250mb
• Turnitin has a limit of 40mb

File types accepted by Assessment tools:

• The Assignment tool will accept multiple files in any file format, and can also be set to accept multiple submissions. Conversion for viewing within the inline viewer works on Word (DOC, DOCX), PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX), Excel (XLS, XLSX), and Portable Document Format (PDF).  SafeAssign can read the following file types only: .doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf, .txt or .html
• Blogs, Discussions, and Journals will accept multiple files in any file format
• Turnitin can accept multiple parts, and can be set to allow multiple submissions. Turnitin accepts the following file types: Microsoft Word (.doc / .docx), OpenOffice (.odt)*, WordPerfect  (.wpd), PostScript (.ps/.eps), Adobe PDF, HTML, Rich text format (.rtf), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Plain text (.txt). * Note that a Google Doc downloaded as an .odt file can't be accepted
• Turnitin is not suitable for the upload of scanned image files or PDF templates with form / fillable fields