How to Grade Assignments on Edmodo

If you have read my previous posts on Edmodo, you should know how to share information with your students. What I would like to share with you today, is how you can post an assignment to your class, grade it and how the students will become informed on their immediate feedback.

To publish an assignment, go up to the posting box in the middle of the screen and find the tab on top called "More." By clicking on "More," you will have more options to come up, such as Alerts, Polls and Assignments. Selecting assignments will change the style and appearance of your posting box.

The first box is the "Assignment Title," I would recommend that you make this fairly unique as it will help with the sorting and grading of assignments in the future. The "Describe" box is below that, where you would actually type the directions for the assignment. I have been able to save myself some time by having a word document with all of my assignments written already, so that all I have to do is copy and paste the same assignment each semester.

Click on the calendar and select a due date for your assignment, this will then appear as a notification for your students up to two weeks in advance when it is due. Below the "due date" box is an option to post a file for the assignment. All of my assignments refer to a piece of art and some writing prompts, so if I hit "browse" I will look for that saved image file and post it as an embedded thumbnail into the assignment. And again, just like posting "links" and "files" I can also upload files from my library if this is an assignment from a previous semester.

Finally, within the "send to" box, I will type in the recipients for this assignment. I can pick individual groups or all of my groups at once. Once I have everything filled out, I will hit send and this will appear as a notification within each student's spotlight. If the student pays attention to their spotlight, they will know when assignments are due and if/when I have graded them.

If I want to see the assignments that have been posted to my class/group, I will go over to the "filters" located on the right side of the screen and click on Assignments. This will show any assignments that I have posted to that class. The top of the assignment will show the title, and directly blue that will be the due date for the assignment. At the bottom of the assignment, you will see options that are similar with the other posts, such as "tag" where you can organize your assignments by similar subject matter, units or content.

The "Turned In" option at the bottom of the assignment is different for teachers and students. If the teacher clicks on turned in, it will open up to another page that lists the assignment status for all students that have received this assignment. If I have already graded their work, their grade will be posted below their name. If they haven't turned in the assignment yet, there will be a red box labeled, "not turned in." If a student has submitted the assignment, but I haven't had a chance to grade it yet, there will be a blue box with a notification for me to grade that assignment.

Now, if the student clicks on "Turned In," a smaller dialogue box will open up allowing them to type in their answer. The weekly requirements for my assignment are to write a five sentence paragraph without spelling or grammatical errors, so I recommend students type their response in a word processor program to utilize its spell checker. I also post my rubric as a "link" on the main page so that students can refer to my site and learn exactly what I am looking for.

IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a major difference with "Turn In" and the other option below the assignment for "Reply." Teachers can only grade assignments if the student hit the "turn in" option, but if the student just hit "Reply" it will create a threaded message that will appear to all classmates to see. This is a good option if you would like your students to respond to something in particular on an assignment or to each other's posts, but you won't be able to grade it with Edmodo's easy grader.

Now let us start to grade a student. Again, I go to assignments and click on "turned in" to access my class. I will also notifications in my spotlight to tell me that a student has just submitted an assignment. If a student has not failed to submit anything and it is way past the deadline, I can go to the "turned in" page for an assignment and hover the mouse next to a student's name. Again, there will be a red box labeled, "not turned in," but there will also be a blue box labeled, "grade."

Once you click on "grade," the assignment will open up with a smaller "turned in" dialogue box from your student on the bottom of the page. In the upper right hand corner of the page, there will be two boxes, the box on the left is for points earned on the assignment and the box on the right is for total points available. Beneath the grading boxes is a "grade comment" box where I can provide specific and fast feedback for the assignment. I can also browse for and attach a file for the student, "i.e. This is the artwork that you were supposed to write about. Click on this to view a larger version of the picture." My final option is to "post the grade" which will become a new notification on my student's spotlight.

Once I have graded an assignment for my whole class, I need to transfer the grades to my school's grade book. Unfortunately, there is no easy way for me to bridge my grades between Edmodo and my school sanctioned grade book program, but Edmodo does layout all of your student's grades in a neatly laid out format.

Let us go back to the Edmodo home page, I have found the easiest way to do this, is to click on the white boxed Edmodo logo in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Once there, click on "grades" which will be found in white letters within the blue banner across the top of the screen. Your Grade Book screen will give you a layout of all your available groups, if you click on a group, it will show a table of every submitted grade for a class.

My grade book for the individual class will have a table with several columns. The column all the way to the left is an alphabetical listing of each of my students in that group. The columns to the right are my assignments, and what each student scored on an assignment. The column all the way to the right is a listing of total possible points for all assignments. For example, I have posted two assignments that are worth a hundred points apiece. Johnny scored a sixty on both assignments, so his total points column would read: 120/200. There is also an option in the upper right hand corner of your grade book screen to "Download as CSV." This will allow me to open these scores up into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and possibly convert the scores into a graph or other possible Excel options.

Well, this is my run down on Edmodo for now. I have only been teaching with this tool for two weeks so far and I am already really enjoying it. It has made communicating information to my students in an instant, fun for the students to respond with it's Facebook like qualities and easy for me to grade assignments. I would highly recommend this web 2.0 tool of a social networking site for any teacher hoping to embrace twenty-first century technologies.

Resource: http://www.edmodo.com/guide/