Building your course
Add an assignment
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An assignment asks the learner to do something and send it back, a piece of writing, a file, or both. Unlike a quiz, nothing is marked automatically: a person reads it and decides.
That makes it the most demanding thing you can put in a course, on you as much as on the learner.
Title and instructions
The title is the subject line, the same as lessons and quizzes.
The description is the brief. Be specific about what finished looks like - length, format, what you are looking for. A vague assignment produces submissions you cannot fairly approve or reject, and the learner is the one who pays for that.
What the learner sends back
Choose what a submission must contain:
Text - written in the browser
A file - uploaded
Both, if you want a file and an explanation of it
Uploaded files are kept in private storage, not on the public web. Only your organization can open them.
Somebody has to review it
Assignments are reviewed by an instructor assigned to the course. They read the submission and either approve it, reject it, or ask for changes, and can leave feedback as comments.
A member needs a display name before they can act as an instructor - see Invite your team and choose roles.
Blocking
A blocking assignment holds the course until the submission is dealt with. This is on by default.
The course waits for approval, not for submission
Sending the work in is not enough. The next lesson is only scheduled once an instructor approves it, so a learner who submitted on Monday and is still waiting on Friday receives nothing in between.
Before you publish a blocking assignment, make sure a real person is going to read submissions promptly. An unreviewed queue does not look like a queue to a learner; it looks like a course that stopped.
Turn blocking off and the course carries on regardless. The submission is still reviewed, and feedback still reaches the learner, they simply are not held up waiting for it.
Deadlines and reminders
A deadline gives the learner a number of days to submit, and a reminder goes out shortly before it. Leave it at zero for no deadline.
Without a deadline, you can set a reminder interval instead, which nudges a learner who has not submitted every so many days, a few times, and then stops.
A missed deadline on a blocking assignment ends the enrollment
If the deadline passes and the learner has not submitted, their enrollment is stopped and no further lessons arrive.
On a non-blocking assignment nothing is lost, the course simply moves on to the next item.
Blocking plus a deadline is the strictest combination available. It suits accredited or paid-for programmes; it is usually too much for a course somebody signed up to out of curiosity.
When it arrives
An assignment carries a waiting period like any other content, see Write a lesson for how it works.
Leave more room than you would for a lesson. The learner has to actually do the thing.
On a branching course, an assignment can sit on a track like any other content, but it can't send learners onto one, routing rules only attach to quizzes and decision points.
Publish it
A new assignment is unpublished and reaches nobody until you publish it.