Create assignments and assess submissions

Assignments basics
What is the Assignments tool?

Learners use the Assignments tool to upload and submit assignments directly in Brightspace Learning Environment, eliminating the need to mail, fax, or email their work to instructors. On paper submissions, and observed in person assignments are also available and do not require file submissions to be made in Brightspace Learning Environment.

Instructors use the Assignments tool to see users’ submission times, view submissions on the Evaluate Submission page, associate assignments to rubrics and competencies, and return submissions with grades and feedback. For assignments that included file submissions, instructors can download the submissions to their computer for review offline.

In the Submissions area for file and text submissions, instructors can view users' submissions and submission dates, eliminating the need to collect assignments and making it easy to track when files were submitted.

Instructors can create categories to group and organize assignments. They can also restrict access to assignments by date and time, group membership, or special access permissions.

Instructors can manage exemptions by launching the Manage Exemptions page from the following locations in Assignments: 

  • On the Assignments page, in the context menu of an assignment
  • On the Assignments page as a button at the top of the page
What file types are supported in Assignments?

The following file formats are compatible with the Assignments document viewer:

Extension

File Type

Notes

HTM, HTML, MHT, MHTML

Web document

Brightspace Learning Environment strips the <title> tag and text within the tag from user created web documents

RTF, PPT, PPS, PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPTX, XML, XLS, TXT, WPD

Text document

 

JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIF, TIFF

Image

 

SWF, MPG, MPEG, RM, MP3, MP4, M4V, M4A, AVI, WAV, RAM, ASF, MOV, RA

Media

The extensions MP4, M4V, and M4A allow users to drag entire albums, video podcasts, and movies from iTunes
File types supported by built in annotations

The following file types are supported by the annotation tool in Assignments:

  • .doc
  • .docx
  • .rtf
  • .odt
  • .ppt
  • .pps
  • .pptx
  • .ppsx
  • .odp
  • .xls
  • .xlsx
  • .txt
  • .jpg
  • .jpeg
  • .png
  • .tif
  • .tiff
  • .gif (once converted to a PDF, only the first frame of the .gif displays)