Tasks

Under “Tasks” you will be able to add your tasks following these steps:

Click on the blue “Add Task” icon, and you will get the spaces to fill in the information your task:

Note

You can also export and import CSV files for batch task creation. To view the correct format of the CSV file for import, you can export the CSV by selecting Download CSV. You can then upload all the task descriptions and resources in a zip file.

1. Task details

Choose the task achievement level aligned to this task: Pass, Credit, Distinction or High Distinction. (In the non recommended case where you want to be able to grade a task, you can choose this option under (8) Optional settings.)

Label the task with an abbreviation that includes week, sequence and grade eg. 1.1P

You can choose to assign a weight to the task based on the effort that it takes as compared to other tasks. This is only to provide students’ an indication of the time/effort it takes, it does not affect anything else.

Choose a descriptive name for the task, eg. Module review 1.

Add a task description.

2. Inbox

Here you assign which tutorial stream will be used as the marking one.

Note

If you have assigned tutors to tutorials and tutorials to students, but your tutors can’t see any students this is what is missing! Ensure the tutorial stream assigned to marking is the right one.

3. Due dates

Students have access to the unit’s OnTrack site from the moment their email is added to it. But the timelines for submitting each specific task are set here.

1. From start date to suggested completion date: students can submit an assignment for feedback.

Students see the dates in this format, with suggested completion date expressed as due date:

2. After due date (suggested completion date): students can submit their assignment but will get an automatic “time limit exceeded”. These tasks do not appear in inbox but can be found through “Task explorer”. Tutors can choose not to provide feedback from this point.

If students submit their work at this point, this is the message they receive:

3. Between suggested completion date and deadline: students can resubmit tasks that have been marked as “fix and resubmit” after the due date (suggested completion date) without it being marked as “time exceeded” if you enable this. To enable this you need to go to the “Unit details” tab and set the number of weeks extensions to be added to a task when it is placed in this status. This will be applied each time the task is assessed as needing to be fixed, but will only extend the time to the task’s deadline.

4. Upload requirements

For students to be able to upload their submission for a task, you need to specify the number and type of files they need to submit. For each file, you specify the name of the file and the type of file that needs to be uploaded.

There are three types of files students can submit:

1. image - the student can upload an image file in a wide range of formats.

2. document - documents need to be uploaded as pdf. The pdf must not be encrypted or locked.

   Turnitin can be set for checking document similarity in document submissions as can be observed in the image below.

3. code - the student can upload a text file containing the source code.

   Syntax highlighting is supported for a wide range of languages, and code similarity checking is supported for C, C#, C/C++, and Python. Moss can be used to check similarity in code submissions as can be observed in the image below.

   Jupyter notebooks are also supported, but files must be self-contained and only use basic formatting features in markdown cells.

5. Task description and resources

Before uploading your documents save the task by selecting the blue symbol on the bottom right of the page. If you don’t do this you might not be able to upload the documents.

Here you will upload the pdf with the task description and a zip file containing any other resources students need to complete the task. For example, you can use the resources to provide students with templates or starting work that they need to build upon.

For task description you can only upload one single pdf.

In resources, you can upload multiple documents, images and code compressed in a zip. file. Even if you only have one document to upload as resources you need to compress it into a zip file before uploading it.

6. Task assessment automation

You can provide automated scripts to check student work on submission.

Details coming soon.

7. SCORM test

SCORM packages can be included to run within the submission process. For example, Numbas tests can be used to test student ability to complete a set of questions prior to submission of the task.

Details coming soon.

8. Optional settings

Here you can choose two thing:

1. Restricting students resubmissions. If you choose this, students can’t resubmit the task even if asked to fix it.

2. Make this a graded task (choose a weight out of 100). Although we do not recommend having graded tasks, you can choose to have one or more tasks be graded tasks using this option.