Google Assignments

Do You Need a Better Way to Manage and Grade Student Assignment Submissions?

Google Assignments provides a variety of features that can make assignment completion and grading better for instructors and students.

Portrait of African American male teacher working at desk

Google Assignments, formerly Google Course Kit, is an easy-to-use, free toolkit that allows instructors to use Google Docs and Google Drive to create and collect assignments, give feedback to students and share course materials. Google Assignments is a learning management software (LMS) application add-on, so instructors can complete all of these tasks through Moodle.

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Why use Google Assignments to create assignments?

Instructors can upload assignment files and course materials within Google Assignments to distribute to students.
Through Google Assignments, instructors can set due dates and point values for assignments.
Instructors can embed Google Assignments within Moodle for better access for students.
Google Assignments provides an Originality Reports function to allow instructors to analyze the authenticity of students’ assignments and detect plagiarism.
Students can submit various types of files and work through Google Assignments, including: PDF, Google and Microsoft Word documents; image, video and text files; spreadsheet, slides and sites.

“

I have used Google Forms for various assignments. All responses to a single question can be graded without immediately seeing who submitted the question, which reduces the chances of subjectivity.

”

– Elaine Bohórquez
Teaching Associate Professor
Physiology Graduate Program

How can Google Assignments make grading easier?

Google Assignments is designed to give instructors the tools necessary to conveniently grade and return assignments to students while maintaining privacy, provide feedback on assignments to improve student learning and manage grades on individual assignments as well as within Moodle’s grading system.

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How does Google Assignments improve the process of grading and providing assignment feedback?

Instructors can upload grading rubrics to Google Assignments to conveniently grade students’ work according to certain criteria.
Google Assignments allow instructors to annotate student assignments through Google’s comment and suggestion features, as well as by digitally drawing on assignments to give students feedback on their work.
Google Assignments syncs with Moodle’s Gradebook, so instructors do not have to manually enter grades into Moodle.

“Settings allow for students to receive an email with their responses automatically, and submissions are time-stamped, which helps ensure that deadlines are met. Individual feedback is easily provided, and grades are released to all students with a single click. It’s a very efficient process.
”

–Elaine Bohórquez
Teaching Associate Professor
Physiology Graduate Program

How does file management work within Google Assignments?

When students submit work on Google Assignments, they give full document editing access to the instructor, and the student receives a carbon copy of the original file.
After submitting work on Google Assignments, students have “View Only” access to the original assignment file, so instructors can maintain privacy from students while grading and leaving comments on assignments.
When instructors return the graded assignment to the student, Google Assignments saves a carbon copy of the graded assignment to the instructor’s Google Drive and the original file is given back to the student.
Through automatic saving and file management, Google Assignments limits the amount of manual file saving and transfer between students and instructors.