moodle resubmit assignment

Students can edit after the due date??

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Currently using 2.5, about to upgrade to 2.9. Have been running 2.5 for about 2 years.

Recently moved from the Moodle admin to Business owner and trainer. Finally given me a chance to look more closely at how things work.

After some investigation, have discovered that no matter what is done in the set up (except for cut off date which defeats the purpose) - student can edit their assignment after they have submitted, including after the due date. So, students can go to the assignment and click edit submission anytime after the due date and upload a 'new' assignment. Styaff will not know as usually notifications are turned off

There are 2 ways of preventing this, markers need to either prevent changes or lock submissions.

However, still in shock that students can delete and re-upload after the due date. Possibly after the tutor has marked, given feedback, and then the student then makes changes.

Should that student ever appeal their grade in the future, the assignment will be [much better], and there is little chance that whoever is taking the assignment out of the back version will notice the date stamp.

Am i completely wrong in my thinking here? It seems to me the following is more appropriate - Resubmissions prior to due date, no submission changes except later submitters after the due date... Is this achievable?

Re: Students can edit after the due date??

Sorry, should have added that if we ask students to submit as drafts, and then submit for grading, 9 times out of ten, they simply do not do it.

I think I get the logic of the way it has been done here, but think/feel that the original assumption still has merit - students should not be able to change the assignment after the duedate - unless submitting late.

Sorry if this is coming across as a bit of a rant - not the intention

I just discovered this too.

What is the possible logic for this???

Hi, Madhusudan. I saw your post in another thread and decided I needed to understand this possible feature gap better. 

While I really need the cutoff feature myself when I teach Composition or other related rolling deadline type coursework, I agree that a site admin should be able to make decisions based on what is the general protocol used at his/her institution/organization.

I think I am understanding a little bit better now. Since I personally always either used the submit button or cutoff date options, I didn't understand that the "attempts reopened" option (which I usually set to manual for myself from the default never) is also highly dependent on using the submission button. I just tested it for myself and found the same results that "Edit submission" was still an option after the due date if the submit button and the cutoff date are not used. 

Sooo...if I'm understanding it correctly, the use-case demand in this thread is that there be a way to set a hard deadline without using the submit button as the main default control, which I totally understand. From the other thread where it was suggested that a tracker item feature request be suggested, it seems there may be something in the tracker worth looking for on this subject. I will have a look today as I do understand why this option would be preferred in many organizations.

I did a little digging and found that others had the same query here: Submission@assignment: Editing submission is possible although it isn't allowed MDL-43494 where the assignment maintainers confirmed that this is expected behavior if the submit button is not used, and I just confirmed in Moodle 2.8.7 that the edit button is still there for my student after I graded it if I didn't use the submit button or the cutoff date option (since I had never really tried that myself before). In this case, it may be that some of the language around what does what needs to be refined, perhaps, as it does say "submitted for grading" whether I require the submit button or not. 

But the student cannot submit or change anything after I grade it if I do turn on the cutoff date whether I use the submit button or not.

Which brings me, I guess, back to the question of why this cutoff date feature is insufficient to meet your needs and why you think teachers will not understand how to use it. It is pretty standard practice in many institutions/academic departments to allow late submissions for a period of time that get huge deductions in credit if they are late and then NO credit after being so many days/weeks late. 

If I am teaching a course where I am using the use-case you describe as having students turn in something at my desk that I will absolutely be tracking for timestamps/timeliness, then I also understand it is my responsibility as the instructor to be at "my desk" to receive the assignment if I am using the delayed cutoff date. This can be done a couple of ways if you use the marking workflows.

If I want Moodle to control absolute timestamps and not have to be at "my desk" so to speak, I can set the cutoff date to be the same as the due date. It isn't that much of an extra step, really. You can set your site defaults for the assignment to turn on the cutoff date by default so that teachers will need to make that decision the same way they need to make the decision to have a due date or not. 

Thanks for your detailed background analysis and exhaustive response.

See, for a teacher coming over to Moodle Assignments from the world of paper, the natural expected behaviour is "the due date is the due date - they are no late submissions". Late submissions are allowed in an instructor dependent manner in many Universities (including our own) but they then contain other possible fancy stuff like - penalty based on how late the submission is (late by 5 minutes is different from late by 1 day).

I think that allowing late submissions should not be the default as it is highly dangerous for some teacher who does not read all the docs and makes semantic assumptions on the basis of what is written.

In my case, I realized that the submissions were open a week after the deadline as I had just assumed that the due date was the due date. Imagine the sinking feeling I had when I realized that the submissions were still effectively open. 

Should the cut off date exist as a control - absolutely. There are use cases where this would be useful (time dependent penalties where I can write an expression for a function with values between 0 and 1 which multiplies the score received would be amazing). My argument is about default behaviour.

Oh, dear. I very much sympathize regarding the misinterpretation of terms as I have done similar things in the past where I found out, much to my chagrin, that certain grade-related terms did not mean what I thought they meant in the country where the functionality was developed (In other words, it was a moment of, "Huh, I guess that does not mean the same thing in Australia as it does in the U.S. Who knew?"). 

That said, at first I thought it was mostly just a language issue that could be refined by just better naming conventions. Then when I tried out your scenario for myself, I did really wish that whatever the cutoff date functionality is called (it is really the final, absolute due date), I could use it without having to set a due date, per se--meaning that from a user perspective, I do agree that it would make the most sense to have the ability to set the cutoff date as the date that shows up on the assignment info page communicating to students what is due and when and that if it could be set without a due date, it would essentially BE the final due date. Not sure how that would work or if it would be possible to do without causing havoc in the code.

It is good that you have brought up this issue here as now we can find out more about what is possible from those who know the code, explain the basic requirements for the change, and then have someone take the pertinent parts of the discussion to the Moodle Tracker where we can have the nitty gritty functionality/feature change request discussions with the developers. In addition, from there votes will tell them how many of us who use the module think this would be useful.

From a development point of view however, the due date is the original setting and allows the tutor to determine whether submissions can be made late - they are marked as late, so it is easy to see those that were submitted on time or after the deadline, while most institutions would have a system of 'extenuating circumstances' whereby a late submission may be allowed.

It would be interesting perhaps to find out what the majority use case is in terms of defaulting late submissions to be allowed or not, but for me I think the way it is set up at the moment is certainly perfectly in line with what my institution does and my awareness of what other institutions do. Without that late submission (or if it defaulted to not allowing them and relied on tutors remembering to turn it on) we would have to set up a different way of getting late submissions in and returning feedback and grades for them.

Although I hesitate to suggest adding yet more settings, I wonder if this is perhaps a behaviour which ought to be configurable at the plugin/site level.  Something along the lines of "Allow late submissions without a cut off date" - which would then allow for both cases presented here: wanting to allow late submissions by default (Richard), and wanting to allow them only when deliberately set (Madhusudan).

A single option at the plugin/site level would mean that each institution can set it in line with their expectations, though perhaps there would need to be some visible indicator in the assignment settings so that any teacher moving between Moodle instances can immediately tell which way it's set.

While I would like to agree with that in principle, I must disagree.

This cannot be Institution dependent as it is highly instructor dependent. There are some faculty colleagues here who have done away with any notion of a due date (it is mentioned but it does not mean anything). Most don't run their courses that way.

However, the default case should be something that does not do violence to the notion of a due date, and removes any possibility of unfairness. Let us take two worst cases:

1. Due date = cut off date is adopted as a default in a place that allows late submissions as a matter of course. End result of an instructor misunderstanding the meaning: inconvenience for the instructor and students.

2. Due date = malleable, cut off date = actual hard stop date as a default in a place that does not allow late submissions as a matter of course. End result of an instructor misunderstanding the meaning: unfairness for the students as soon as some students figure out the loophole, and resubmit their assignment after the instructor releases the solutions (usually on the due date).

Shall we weigh inconvenience vs unfairness and a complete ethical disaster?

It is clear that scenario 1, though it runs counter to the current Moodle practice is the safer option. I am not sure if I can explain this better than that.

My experience of two countries (US and India, at least in engineering) suggests that the due date is the due date - if you want a late submission, make a special request. Maybe it is different in the UK/Australia/elsewhere.

Hi, Davin. I guess I'm a little confused as to why the three main controls you have mentioned for the assignment module (lock changes, prevent changes, and use cutoff date) are not satisfying your requirements.

As someone who has used the assignment module extensively for writing workshops where rough drafts can sometimes be VERY rough, I will say I absolutely needed the ability to allow my students to submit a new draft to me between the deadline and the cutoff date if they completely missed the mark on their original submission (and by "missed the mark," I don't mean they fell short of a good grade; they actually missed the point of the whole exercise the first time they tried it or some other similar misunderstanding occurred). It is part of the learning process for developing writing skills, so with that type of assignment, deadlines really are just metaphors.

You are right, though, at a certain point, they should not be able to change their work and should have to live with their submission as is for that particular learning experience. The cutoff date worked for me there.

Where I needed even more restrictions, I would also employ "restricted access" dates or other criteria so that they could not change work after whatever date I communicated as the absolute last day they could pull that assignment back into a portfolio somewhere (for me this was usually the end of the term). 

Perhaps restricted access would give you the additional "off" switch you are looking for on editing requirements if the other options are not working for you.

If you don't find this option available to you in assignment settings, you just need to turn it on at the site level in Site Administration>>Advanced Features. It is a small tick box for conditional access.

Thanks for the info. It helped a lot. 

Thanks for the info..I am happy to be a part of this discussion.

We would like something very similar to what David has described. I am detailing the behaviour we would like to see below.

Desired behaviour:

1) Specific deadline.

2) No submission button as a  lot of our students forget to press the button.

3) No cut-off date to allow students who have NOT submitted any files before the deadline to submit something. Resits are only allowed if students submit something even if that something is only the description of the assignment.

4) Prevent any changes after the deadline on the submissions that were completed successfully before the deadline.

Do we have any news or suggestions on how this can be achieved?

Educational Vignettes

Assignment extensions and resubmissions

November 4, 2014 , Olivia Fox , Leave a comment

Audience: City University London staff

Our latest reports from Moodle show that 63 Moodle assignments were due last week with a further 42 due this week. This post contains tips and guidance on how to grant assignment extensions and enable resubmissions in Moodle.

Grant an extension

Using the Grant extension function means that you can use the same assignment point to manage assignment extensions.

• Click the link for the assignment from the module page.
• On the Grading summary page, click View/grade all submissions under the Grading summary table.

Grant extension to selected students

• At the bottom of the page in the With selected… drop down box select Grant extension and click Go .
• Click Ok on the message that appears.
• Tick the Enable box and add in the new submission deadline.
• Click Save changes .

Enable resubmission

If you require students to resubmit an assignment following a fail at first or subsequent attempts you will find the improvements in assignment resubmission useful. The Attempts reopened setting in the Moodle assignment allows you to specify how assignment attempts are reopened.

To enable resubmission you first need to activate the Attempts reopened setting .

Enable resubmission ti p

Attempts reopened setting

Maximum attempts should be set to a minimum of 2 as a student’s original submission counts as an attempt.

You can then manually select students to grant another attempt to submit.

Setting a date for assignment resubmission

The selected students will now be able to resubmit their assignment up to the cut-off date in the assignment. If your resubmissions are due after the cut-off date you will need to use the grant an extension function to enable the students to resubmit.

Support for setting up assignment extensions and resubmissions

Guidance on setting up assignment extensions and resubmissions is available on our educational technology guidance site .

If you have any specific queries that are not answered in the guidance do log a query on the IT Service Desk and one of the Educational Technology Team will be able to help.

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Submit Moodle Assignment guide

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It can take time for your file to be uploaded to Moodle and for it to be processed by Turnitin. This can be anywhere from a couple of minutes to up to 30 minutes per file, depending on the size and format of your file and your connection speed. Ensure you leave yourself adequate time to successfully submit your assignment, especially if you are submitting multiple large files.

If you delete an assignment submission, it is your responsibility to ensure that you then submit the correct file before the deadline. Your lecturer will be able to see if you have deleted an assignment but will not be able to access the file and it will not be counted as a submission. If you have uploaded the wrong file as part of your assignment you will be able to delete the file prior to the assignment deadline (unless the Submit assignment button has been enabled)

• Select the link to Assignments from the Module Dashboard to open a list of all your Moodle assignments. Select the relevant assignment to open it.
• On Grid format, open the Block drawer and navigate to the Activities block, select the link to Assignments.
• Your  Submission status  page will open. 
• Select Remove submission  beneath the assignment description. 
• Select Continue on the confirmation pop-up.
• Your submissions status will revert to "No submissions have been made yet". You will need to re-add your submission before the assignment due date.

To re-add your submission:

• Select the assignment.
• Select  Add submission.
• Check the box next to the assessment declaration. 
• Upload or drag and drop your coursework into the File submissions field.
• Scroll down and Save changes.
• As before , confirm that you can open the file(s) and that you submitted the correct file(s).
• You will receive a notification to your university email stating that a submission has been added.
• Confirm submission
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• Last Updated: Nov 21, 2024 2:57 PM
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