Is your Moodle assignment-tool filling up with a large number of submissions waiting to be graded? The assessment process can be made more efficient with a few settings that are especially helpful when grading large course implementations. This tip introduces three practical ways to streamline assessment.
1. Display only submissions awaiting grading
You can speed up grading by filtering the view to show only submissions that are waiting to be assessed. This hides empty submissions and work that has already been graded.
How to do it:
- Open the assignment and select Grade.
- Go to the Submissions tab.
- From the Workflow status drop-down menu, select Not graded (or the equivalent status indicating that grading is pending).
- Open the menu in the Grade column and select Grade.
If needed, you can restore the view to show all submissions by changing the filter settings.
2. Take advantage of annotatable PDFs
If students are asked to submit their assignments in PDF format, there is no need to download the files to your computer. Moodle provides a preview of submitted documents, allowing you to browse the pages directly within the grading interface.
Please note that links embedded in PDF files cannot be opened from the preview view. These settings must be configured before the assignment becomes available to students.
How to do it:
- Open the assignment and go to Settings.
- Navigate to Submission types.
- Under Accepted file types, allow only PDF files.
- Navigate to Feedback types.
- Enable Annotate PDF.
After this, you can review students’ submissions directly in Moodle without downloading any files.
3. Publish grades simultaneously
Using a staged grading workflow is helpful when assessments are completed in multiple batches or when grading criteria are refined during the process. This ensures that students receive their grades and feedback simultaneously once all grading has been completed.
If there are multiple assessors on a course, workflow grading also makes it easier to divide responsibilities and monitor grading progress.
- Enable workflow grading
- Open the assignment and go to Settings.
- Navigate to Grade.
- Set Use grading workflow to Yes.
If there are multiple assessors
- Set Use grading allocation to Yes.
- Assign submissions to assessors in the Submissions view.
- Grade submissions
During the grading process, assign a grade and select the appropriate Grading workflow state. For example, the state Grading completed indicates that assessment is finished but has not yet been released to students.
Publish grades when all submissions have been assessed:
- Return to the Submissions view.
- Select all students from the list.
- Open the menu at the bottom of the page and select Set grading workflow state.
- Set Grading workflow state to Released.
- Set Notify students to Yes.
Grades and feedback will then be released to all students simultaneously, and students will receive a notification that grading has been completed.
Tip by Miina Kivelä, Digital Lecturer, Lime Competence Unit.