Leaving feedback and grading dropbox submissions

The Evaluate Submission page enables you to evaluate and leave feedback for user submissions, but you can also download submissions from the Folder Submissions page to work on files offline.

The Evaluate Submission page contains two main sections: the Submissions List panel and the Evaluation panel. From the Submissions List panel you can download submissions to work with offline or view them inline with the document viewer. The Submissions List panel also displays a user's or a group's file submissions. Use the Evaluation panel to grade and provide comments.

The following file formats are compatible with Dropbox's document viewer:

• MS Word (DOC, DOCX)
• MS PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX, PPS)
• Adobe Acrobat (PDF, PDFS)
• Web (HTM, HTML)
• Plain text (TXT)
• Images (BMP, GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG)

If you grade directly on the Evaluate Submission page, you can choose to 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 also have the option to retract published feedback if you want to provide an update to past evaluations but only want students to access your most recent feedback. You can also annotate users' web and plain text file submissions with the HTML Editor and attach those annotations as part of feedback.

If you use rubrics to assess Dropbox submissions, you can append the overall rubric feedback to the submission Feedback field. If the rubric uses points, you can also scale and transfer the overall rubric score to the submission Score field. Both of these fields transfer to Grades if the dropbox folder is associated with a grade item.

Table of contents

1. Access the Evaluate Submission page
2. View a file submission in the document viewer
3. Transfer feedback from an associated rubric
4. Evaluate a dropbox submission
5. Provide feedback as an annotated file attachment
6. Retract published feedback
7. Uploading and attaching feedback from downloaded submission files

Access the Evaluate Submission page

On the Folder Submissions page, click the Evaluate Submission link beside the name of the user you want to leave feedback for.

View a file submission in the document viewer

In the submission list on the Evaluate Submission page, click View Document from a file submission's context menu.

Evaluating and grading submissions

Transfer feedback from an associated rubric

You can assess a user submission with a rubric associated with the dropbox folder. For each associated rubric, you can grade a user based on set criteria, and you can also provide additional feedback in the HTML Editor.

1. Click on the associated rubric in the Evaluation panel.
2. In the rubric, click on a criterion's Edit feedback icon and enter feedback in the text field. Click Save.
3. Select Transfer rubric feedback to general feedback for the assignment.

   Note  If you transfer rubric feedback to general feedback, it will appear beneath your manually entered feedback. You can edit transferred rubric feedback in the general feedback HTML Editor, but the rubric will not reflect changes you save here.

4. Click Save & Record to push your rubric assessment score and feedback into the submission's overall score and feedback area. Otherwise, click Save if you want to keep the rubric score separate from the overall score and prevent the transfer of rubric feedback into general feedback.

   Note  You can attach multiple rubrics to a dropbox folder, but you can only push one rubric's assessment score to the submission's overall score.

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Evaluate a dropbox submission

1. If you created a grade item for the dropbox folder, enter a value in the Score field. See Creating categories and dropbox folders to learn about associating grade items to dropbox folders.

   Note  Information about grade items tied to the dropbox folder appears beside the score value.

2. Provide comments and suggestions in the Feedback field.
3. You can Add a File, Record Audio, or Record Video as feedback. Feedback given as an annotated file also appears in your list of added files. See Provide feedback as an annotated file attachment to learn about leaving feedback directly on a copy of a user submission.
4. Click Save Draft to save feedback and continue grading submissions. Click Publish to release your feedback to user.
   Notes

   • As you grade each submission, you can click Next Student until you reach the final submission where you can click Finish to return to the Folder Submissions page.
   • If you want to publish feedback simultaneously for multiple users, you can bulk publish from the folder's Folder Submissions page. See Bulk publish feedback for more information.

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Provide feedback as an annotated file attachment

You can edit .html, .htm, and .txt files directly from the Evaluate Submission page. Your feedback will include the annotated file as an attachment.

1. In the submission list on the Evaluate Submission page, click Edit a Copy from the context menu of the file you want to annotate.
2. A copy of the user submission appears in the HTML Editor. You can add feedback and highlight text directly on the copy submission.
3. Click Attach Change.

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Retract published feedback

If you want to remove published feedback, go to the user's submission on the Evaluate Submission page and click Retract and Clear Feedback in the Evaluation panel.

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Uploading and attaching feedback from downloaded submission files

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

Note  Internet Explorer 9 and older currently do not support dragging and dropping files from your desktop into Learning Environment.

Upload feedback files

1. Do one of the following:
   • On the Dropbox Folders page, click on the folder you want to view submissions for.
   • On a folder's Edit Folder page, click Folder Submissions from the context menu beside the page heading.
2. Click Upload Feedback Files.
3. You can drag and drop multiple files from your computer or you can click Upload to select them.

   Note  If you are uploading a compressed zip file that contains dropbox folder submissions you previously downloaded to add feedback (see Download submission files), your compressed zip file structure must be identical to the bulk submission download, and file names should remain unchanged. This ensures the automatic distribution process runs smoothly.

4. By default, the system overwrites duplicate upload files. Clear the Overwrite duplicate files check box if you want to keep duplicates.
5. Click Upload.
6. Feedback files that do not automatically distribute display in the Distribute Feedback dialog. Select a file, then click on the student you want to send the feedback to.

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See also

• Creating categories and dropbox folders