An Assigned (online) Assessment in Crowdmark is administered fully online. It allows students to receive the assessment via email and submit their responses digitally within a specific time frame. Students can complete the assessment on paper and take photos using a mobile phone or complete it digitally using Microsoft Word and save it as a PDF file.
This guide outlines the steps to create an Assigned Assessment in Crowdmark.
Before you Begin
- Log in to Crowdmark
- Check if the course you are creating the assignment for is set up in Crowdmark
- The course is set up if you see it listed under Courses section.
- If you do not see it under Courses, refer to this guide to connect your Quercus course to Crowdmark: How do I connect my Quercus course to Crowdmark?
Jump to
How to set up your Crowdmark Assigned Assessment
- Select your Course
- Select +Create assessment on the Assessments page
1.1. Add Assessment title
- Enter the name of your assessment in the Assessment title field
1.2. Select Assessment Type - Assigned (online)
- Select the Assigned (Online) assessment type.
1.3. Choose submission type
- Select Individual submission or Group submission
- In Individual submission students complete and submit their online assessments individually.
- In Group submission students complete assessments in groups that are assigned by instructors or created by students themselves.
1.4. Confirm your selections
- Confirm your selections (In this example we use Individual submission type)
- Select Done
2.1. Create Questions
2.1.1. Navigate to Questions section
2.1.2. Add Questions to Assessment
- Select Add assignment description button to outline the assessment details. You can also attach it as a document with Attach files option. (optional)
- Add Point value for your question.
- Select question type: Image/PDF, Text answer, Multiple choise
- Add your question:
- Type question text directly into the Question field
- Copy and paste content from a text document. If you paste question content, the formatting will not be maintained and you will have to re-format the text in Crowdmark.
- Attach file with the question using Attach files option.
- Select Add another question for each questions you need to include in the assessment
To help your students submit more clear and legible hand-written work, please feel free to distribute our guide How can I submit handwritten (or paper-based) work?
2.2. Distribute Assessment to students
2.2.1. Navigate to Schedule section
- Continue to Schedule your assessment section or select Schedule option on the left-hand side navigation bar
2.2.2. Set up Schedule
Now that your assessment has been fully set up, you can Distribute to students right away or Schedule automatic distribution for a later date and time.
- Select Schedule distribution or Distribute now option.
- If you’re setting a synchronous exam, where all students will write at the same time, you can use the scheduled distribution function to send out the exam at the designated time. For more information, see Distributing to Students. (In this example we use "Schedule distribution" option)
- Select Customize students to customize student list for this assessment (optional)
- Specify Start and Due dates
- Select Schedule distribution button to confirm the dates (you will be able to edit them later if needed)
- Set time limit (optional)
- Apply latency penalty (optional)
2.3. Customize Grading Team (optional)
- Select Team option on the left-hand side navigation menu
- Select Customize team
- Select/deselect members of the grading team for this assessment
- Select Save button
2.4. Define Student Groups (for group assessments only)
- Select Students option from the left-hand side assessment navigation menu
- Select Edit groups button
- Create student groups by dragging students to the Drag students here to create a new group area
How to grade your Assigned Assessment in Crowdmark
You can start grading an assigned assessment after the due date.
Grading may be conducted by you or by other members of your teaching team. Before you start grading, ensure you've completed Step 4: Add your Teaching Team to Crowdmark from our guide How do I connect my Quercus course to Crowdmark?
To help you decide which roles to assign your teaching team members, please refer to the Crowdmark guide: What is the difference between team member roles?
3.1. Select a question for grading
- Select a question (Q1, for example) from the Grade panel, to proceed to the grading interface
3.2. Enter grades and feedback
- Use the grading tools to leave feedback
- Assign points for the questions
- Navigate to the next booklet or next question using navigation options.
For a full list of grading tools for different questions types, including comments, stamps, and free-form annotations, review the Crowdmark guide: Grading Tools
For complete instructions on navigating between questions and booklets, review the Crowdmark guide: Grading navigation
Once all the booklets have been graded, you are able to share the grades with your students and export the grades to Quercus.
4.1. Return graded assessments to students
- Open Results section on the left-hand menu
- Add assessment summary message (optional)
- Enable/disable display of scores graph distribution for students
- Select Return grades button when you are ready to share the grades with students. This will send an email to each student containing a link to their score page, which includes their submission, scores, feedback, and additional information you’ve chosen to include.
What will your students see in Crowdmark when you select the Send grades to students option? For more information about the student view of the score page, review the Crowdmark guide: What do students see?
4.2. Sync grades with Quercus
- Select Sync grades button to add grades to your assessment in a Quercus course. This will create a new Assignment group called Crowdmark Assessments in your Assignments page and a new assignment (with a corresponding gradebook column) with the same name as the Crowdmark assessment.
4.3. Download copies of graded assessments (optional)
- Select Export CSV option to generate a CSV file that can be opened as a spreadsheet and edited in a program like Excel, or imported to the Quercus gradebook using the UT OMR tool.
- Select the Export PDF option download a local copy of the graded booklets. You may want to keep printed copies of graded assessments to support exam services (i.e., to provide exam copies, and to facilitate grade re-checks or exam re-grading), especially in those cases where you are not releasing the assessments back to students (e.g., for final exams).
If you want to know more about Crowdmark from an instructor's experience, please see U of T Economics Instructor, Jennifer Murdock's article Instructors' Insights on Crowdmark that outlines tips and best practices for U of T faculty.