Online Assignment Submissions

Kathy Hannon

Found out today that a student can click “Submit” for an Online Submissions assignment and not actually attached a file or made a comment. This “Completed” the assignment on the student's assignment area. Our students are saying they submitted the assignment online because it says “Completed” next to the assignment. Support told me this is by design - REALLY?!?! - oh my - in a time when we have remote students and we are limiting the paper we are turning in - this is just bad design. We are now spinning our wheels with students saying they turned in their assignment(s) on time, that it says “Completed” and trying to explain this to parents

Jess Moxsky

This sounds like perhaps more of a policies and procedures issue than a system issue. I would make it clear to parents and students that students are responsible for confirming that assignments they submit are truly complete. Are students purposefully marking work as complete or accidentally selecting the status in their Assignment Center?

Steven Ragatz

"Completed" should be interpreted in only one way. If the Assignment is set to have a file submitted, then by design, that should be a requirement that needs to be met to achieve "Completed" status.

Jess Moxsky

I suppose it's important what age the students are. I would expect high school students to understand that they need to actually complete the assignment. It feels like turning in a blank test or a blank worksheet - a purposeful decision resulting in no credit, but a decision nonetheless.

Steven Ragatz

Yes, in our case, we have some manipulative students who are attempting to game the system.

Ben Leddy

Hi all – just affirming I've been following this thread, and appreciating the varied pros and cons of allowing blank submissions vs. not allowing them. Does anyone have any anecdotes to share about how students who submit blank assignments explain themselves?

Kathy Hannon

"It says submitted on my assignments page - so I must have submitted it!"


several students are now using that excuse, teachers then think the system failed.

Nancy Kierstead

We actually have a few teachers that have students submit work only in the "Submitted Text" file occasionally, without requiring an upload. Not very often, but I do see it here and there.

We also have some students who have trouble uploading their documents and choose to email their teachers. We ask these students to write a note in the Submitted Text section letting their teacher know that their work was emailed instead of uploaded. They then submit the assignment to the teacher without an attachment. This allows the teacher to have a record of this work-around, and a reminder that the document was mailed and marks the status as completed on the student's end. For us, it's actually helpful to be able to submit the assignment without an attachment every once in a while.

Kathy Hannon

The issue we are having is that the students can submit without having entered text or a file. I agree with Nancy Kierstead that the text is helpful for those students who have difficulty uploading and don't want to be late with their submission, teachers are instucting them to use the text box similarly - it's the being able to click submit when there is NOTHING to submit - neither text nor an upload.

Ben Leddy

Thanks, all. I've brought these notes to my team and we are going to work on a solution!