Overview

An essay assessment allows learners to submit their responses using the HTML editor and include an unlimited number of attachments such as PowerPoint presentations and Word documents. 

To provide an optional sample answer that can be seen by learners, click Add from the Samples tab. To provide an optional correct answer that can be seen by instructors when grading learner submissions, click Add from the Samples tab.

To allow learners to comment on each other's work, go to the assessment overview page and click Edit in the right bar under the first section. 

Then from the Options tab select to allows learners to comment. 

Submissions

To submit an answer, learners can click on "Prepare answer".

They can answer using the HTML editor together with an unlimited number of attachments (Word documents, images, videos, etc.). After the answer is entered, they can click "Save and submit for grading" or "Save but don't submit yet" if they want to refine their work before submitting it.

Learners can add attachments by clicking the appropriate button.

If learners want to submit another answer and they have not exceeded the maximum number of submissions, they can click "Prepare another answer".

Learners can see their latest submission in the Submissions tab.

If they added an attachment it will be embedded in the Flowpaper web viewer under Submissions. Please note that MATRIX will try for up to 2 minutes to convert an attachment to a Flowpaper version. If it takes longer than that (for example, if the submission is very large), it gives up and sends a notification to the learner.

If they have more than one submission they can click History to see the history of all submissions.

To access a particular submission they can click its icon under Show.

Grading

To grade a submission, click its icon in the "To grade" tab. 

If the learner added an attachment to the submission, it will be embedded in the Flowpaper web viewer.

Instructors can use the annotation ribbon at the bottom of the viewer to add a highlight, strikeout, draw, and/or notes. Please note that the annotations will be visible for learners only when you enter the score for the submission.

Peer-reviewed assessment

Peer review assessments allow learners in a course to review each other's work via a rubric and optionally add comments. This option applies to Essay assessments in instructor-led and blended courses. Please note that peer reviews are not used for grading purposes, only for providing useful feedback to other learners.

To use this feature, administrators have to install it via the App Center.

After the app is installed, the essay assessments will have the "Peer reviews" option that can be enabled in the Options tab when adding an assessment.

You can also choose if the peers are anonymous (in which case the learners don't know who is reviewing them) and whether peers are assigned manually or automatically.

If an assessment has peer reviews enabled, it is indicated with a special icon.

When you click on the Grades tab of an assessment, you can see how many peers have been assigned to a particular learner.

If you click on the Show icon for a particular learner, you can see the list of peers that have been assigned.

To manually add/remove peers, click the "assign" link in the "Assigned Peers" box.

Then move the peers you want to assign to the Selected area and click Save.

To assign peers automatically, select the Automatically radio button when setting the assessment options. Then enter the number of reviews per user and the date when you'd like the peers to be automatically assigned. Please note that if you leave this field blank it's set to the due date of the assessment or the end date of the course if the assessment doesn't have a due date.

When the peer assign date is reached, the system considers all the learners that have submitted assessments and then tries to assign one to the specified number of other learners who have also submitted an assessment. If this can be done successfully, the assessments are made and each learner is notified that they have some assessments to review. If the automatic peer assign cannot be done, the instructor is sent a notification with the reason for the failure. Also note that once automatic peer assessment is done, an instructor can still manually assign peers. 

When a learner submits an answer to an assessment, their assigned peers all receive a notification with a link to the assessment.

After clicking the link, the learner will see the grading interface that is similar to the one that instructors see. Here the reviewer learner can fill in a rubric (if the assessment has one) and/or leave a comment.

When the learner saves a rubric and/or comment, the learner who made the submission will receive a notification.

When learners view their assessment, the "Peer reviews" box indicates how many peers have left reviews and how many peers the learner has left reviews for.

They can click on the "Reviews given" and "Reviews received" tabs to see more details.