How to submit work for assignments

In this article, you'll learn about how assignments work, including how to submit work for grading.

Assignments are work you submit to your course instructor to be graded. There are several types of assignments in Populi courses:

• Grade-only: You don't submit anything to your instructor (through Populi at any rate)—you simply receive a grade.
• File: You upload a file (or files). There's also a Peer Review version, which is described below.
• Essay: You compose an essay right in Populi. This, too, has a Peer Review version.
  • Peer Review: Peer review files and essays allow you and your fellow students to grade and review one another's assignment submissions. Your own grade for such assignments may depend, in part, on your interaction with their work.
• Test: Tests and quizzes you take online in the course's Tests view.
• Discussion: Course discussions that grade you on your participation.
• Attendance: Your attendance in course meeting times can be factored into your course grade.

A few of the other things to notice about assignments:

• You're probably familiar with due dates...
• "Availability" refers to the time period in which you'll be able to submit work for the assignment.
• "Drop lowest" means that the final grade calculation will not count the lowest-graded assignments in that group. In the above example, the Tests assignment group will drop one assignment.

How to submit work for your assignments

First, let's get oriented as to what you'll find on the assignment page. Pictured above is a file-type assignment which the professor has graded with a rubric and annotated. Depending on the options your professor uses, your own assignments might show different details—but the layout of each assignment page remains the same.

• You'll reach the assignment page by clicking its name. You might find it:
  • In an Alert on your Home page or the course Dashboard view
  • In the main course Assignments view
  • Via a course lesson
• On the right side of the screen you'll see assignment info and feedback:
  • Info includes the assignment's type and number of grade points, your grade (if any), and a link to the rubric used to grade your assignment (if any).
  • If you see , click that to see how your professor used it to grade your work.
  • The feedback section lets you share comments, questions, and files with your instructor.
• On the main part of the screen you'll see your work—whether a file or essay, a test history, or a link to a graded discussion.

Submitting work for your assignments varies depending on the assignment type:

• File: To submit a file assignment, just upload a file (either in the main part of the screen or in the feedback section). You can delete the file up until your instructor views or grades it.
  
• Test: Have a look at this article to learn about online tests.
• Discussion: Have a look at this article to see how to contribute to graded discussions and meet your instructor's requirements.
• Essay: Essays provide you with an online text editor that lets you submit long-form writing.
• Peer review: Have a look at this article for the details.

How assignment groups are used to calculate your grade

Assignment groups are different categories of assignments. They are used calculate your final course grade according to how each group is weighted. In the above example...

• Tests is worth 25%, Papers is worth 35%, and Participation & Discussion is worth 40% of the final grade.
• "Carver Essay", although the same number of points as many of the other assignments, is itself worth 35% of the course grade. That's because it's the only assignment in the Papers course group.
• The three Participation... assignments show how an assignment group's weight is distributed according to the number of points in the component assignments:
  • "Attendance" is worth 100 points; the two discussions are worth 50 points each.
  • That totals 200 points for the Participation... group. Those 200 points = 40% of the final course grade.
  • "1980's Novels" is worth 50 points, or 1/4 of the Participation... group. That works out to 10% of the final course grade. And so on with the other assignments.