Evaluate and add feedback to assignments

The Evaluate Submission page enables you to evaluate and leave feedback on user submissions. It contains two main sections: The Submissions List panel and the Evaluation panel. Use the Evaluation panel to grade and provide comments on submissions. On paper submissions and Observed in person assignments display only the Evaluation panel, as no submissions are made in Brightspace.

Note: For more information about evaluating and adding feedback to assignments using a screen reader or keyboard-only navigation, see How assistive technology interacts with the inline grading experience.

If you make evaluations directly on the Evaluate Submission page, you can publish feedback immediately or save your feedback as a draft and release it at a later time. This enables you to revise and review evaluations, and publish your feedback to multiple users at the same time. You have the option to retract published feedback if you want to provide an update to past evaluations but only want learners to access your most recent feedback.

If you use rubrics to assess submissions, the rubric opens in a pop-up window to enable easy grading, and the score transfers automatically to the Evaluation and Feedback sidebar. The overall score of the rubric transfers automatically to the Score field and appears in Grades if the assignment is associated with a grade item. The rubric feedback appears on the Feedback page to the learner.

To publish all draft feedback to learners at once, click Publish All Feedback on the assignment page. If you have Anonymous Marking enabled, you must click Save Draft and save your feedback for each anonymous user, then click Publish All Feedback on the assignment page to submit feedback to the anonymous users. Instructors cannot publish feedback from the Evaluate Submission page, and must do so from the assignment page.

If you have built in annotations turned on, you can mark up submissions using highlighting, free hand drawing, shapes, and associated commenting directly from the Evaluate Submission page. Use the icons in the document viewer toolbar to select between Pen, Note, Text, and Line. Each tool has additional options to change color, font size, font, and many other customizable items. Once you publish the feedback, learners can view their submission with the annotations visible, providing additional context on their instructor's notes.

If you download user submissions and leave feedback within the files, you can upload them back to the appropriate assignment, so they appear as attachments to each user's submission evaluation. To ensure successful feedback upload and distribution back to learners, do not rename the downloaded files' names after you enter feedback and save changes.

  1. On the navbar, click Assignments.
  2. On the Assignments page, from the context menu of the assignment you want to evaluate, click View Submissions.
  3. On the Submissions page, do one of the following:
    • If you want to return feedback on multiple downloaded submissions at once, click Add Feedback Files. Upload your compressed .zip file using the same format that it was downloaded with, then click Add.
    • If you want to evaluate an individual user, click on their name, or the Evaluate link for their submission.
    • To add evaluations using an attached rubric, on the Evaluate Submission page, in the Evaluation panel, click the rubric you want to use, or click Assess All Rubrics if more than one rubric is attached. Select the rubric you want to use from the Scoring Rubric dropdown list. The Score for the submission is populated automatically from the Scoring Rubric.
    • Add or edit the Score for the submission, and any additional Feedback, including text, audio, or video files.
    • To evaluate using learning outcomes, select the desired level of achievement below the outcome.
    • When you leave feedback in Turnitin, the feedback icon displays on the assignment submission page, in the Turnitin GradeMark column.

    • If you added a GradeMark score, the score displays on the submissions page, in the Turnitin GradeMark column.

For information about file types that are supported by the annotation tool in Assignments, see File types supported by Annotations