Within the different activities, Assignment, Assessment, and Discussion, there comes different settings that the three of these activities share and this article will be walking through the settings that are shared among them.


General Details

The three images shown below (from top down, Assignment, Assessment, Discussion) show the main differences between the activities as well as all of the similarities. Assignments, assessments and discussions will all have settings for the title, and related C-Skills. However, assignments and assessments will have settings to allow students to leave comments and only assessments will have the setting to require a password on the assessment. 

  • Teachers can set assessment passwords to their liking, but the requirement for an assessment password is 6 characters; however, note that passwords are also case sensitive.


Publish and Due Date

The Publish and Due Date settings are the same for all three activities. The Set Default and Set to Now features are also the same for all three activities.

  • Publish Date - Sets a date and time for when the activity will be posted.
  • Due Date - Sets a date for when the activity should be submitted by and will also let teachers know when a submission is late.


Student Submission 

Student submissions are only present for Assignments and Assessments. These settings have mostly all of the same settings which are the following:

  • Submission type (In eKadnece, In Person, None)
    • An In eKadence submission is for when students are submitting work through eKadence. 
    • An In Person or None submission type is used when students are submitting work outside of eKadence such as in person or on third-party sites/apps. 
  • Submission cutoff time - Teachers can set a time for when students are no longer able to submit an activity
  • First submission allowed date - Teachers can set a time for when students are allowed to make the first submission. For example, this could be used for when the teacher would like the student to submit the activity at a later date from the publish date.
  • Allow student to unsubmit after due date - Students will be able to unsubmit and work on assignments and assessments after the due date has past and before the submission cutoff time.

Note: It is not important to have students know information, like dates and directions, about an activity, and the teacher would just like to record scores, please consider making a grade-only activity in the gradebook. 


The only difference between the student submission settings is that only on assessments will teachers be able to set a certain number of attempts that students are allowed to take for the assessment.


Grading

The Grading settings are the same for all three activities.

Different grading settings offered to teachers are:

  • Checkbox for is or is not graded
    Note: Checking the box for is or is not graded will determine if the activity is shown in the gradebook or not
  • Grading Category with a color code for the category - Please see our article on Grading Categories for more details
  • Rubric - This is a tool or set of guidelines used to promote the consistent application of learning expectations, objectives, or standards on the activity
  • Point Score - This may be an alternative point system instead of numbered points
  • Maximum Score - The maximum amount of points a student can score on the activity
  • Formative - Please see our article on formative grading for more information 
  • Do not count this assessment/assignment/discussion toward the final grade
    • Teachers can confirm if an activity is not counted towards the final grade by looking at the gradebook and the quick grader. In the gradebook, teachers will see a calculator with a strike through it indicating that it is not counted towards the final grade, and in the quick grader, teachers will see a highlighted notification saying "This assignment/assessment does NOT count toward final grade."
  • Extra Credit
    • Just like the "Do not count this assessment/assignment/discussion toward the final grade" feature, the extra credit feature also indicates when the activity is extra credit and will not negatively affect students' grades.

Assigning

The Assigning section is rather simple to what it has to offer. 

Teachers have three different options for assigning the different activities to students and an extra option for assigning which are:

  • Assign to all students
  • Assign to only certain students
  • Exclude assigning
    Note: For the 'Assign to only certain students' and the 'Exclude assigning' settings, after selecting one of these options, teachers will then specify which students by check-marking them.

 

  • Select group assignment/assessment/discussion - When selecting a group activity (Group Assignment shown), teachers can select a number of groups that the class will have and can make groups by using the Random Group Generator or by dragging and dropping students to different groups or not assign them to any group.


Advanced Settings

The final settings that teachers will find when creating an activity are the Advanced Settings. Assignments and assessments will both have the same advanced settings while discussions will have one different setting than the other two activities.

Settings that are offered for assignments, assessments and discussions are:

  • Must first open - The student will have to open a different activity in order to be able to open the newly created activity.
  • Must first complete - The student will have to complete a different activity in order to be able to open the newly created activity.

Settings that are offered for assignments and assessments are:

  • Time limit
  • Display only one question at a time
  • Randomize question order for each student

Shown below is the only different setting that discussions will have which is the option to share the discussion outside of the current class.