Determining the optimal feedback settings for your assignments can be a great enabler for learning as well as a minefield. Should you show correct answers, and if so, when, etc? We've seen a lot of feedback settings for assignments, and this is our preferred.

Please note, each instructor has unique preferences and class set up. Some want to give feedback during class and walk through assignments step by step, others as soon as a student submits their assignment, and some even prefer next to no feedback to encourage more effort up front from students.

We're not recommending this set up, it's just one that we like. And if your preferred settings don't match ours, this article may have a few helpful tips in it anyway.

Let's take this in 3 steps:

Let's start at the end. Our preferred assignment feedback settings are as follows:

We like only 1 attempt because we think of the quiz portion of an assignment as simply a mechanism for students to submit their work. They get the questions beforehand. They can spend days or weeks thinking about and working out, and selecting answers for the questions, but when it comes to submitting their results, it's quite simply that - a one and done submission. Like handing over a piece of paper at the Submissions Office (back in the good ol' days).

We also like allowing students to submit late with a penalty by up to a day. This prevents students being cut off at the due time (e.g. 11:59pm), and being rejected from submitting by the system simply because they are 10 minutes late. We think it's helpful for them and for instructors to allow them to still submit their assignment, but do think there should be a meaningful penalty, say 20%. The reason for the penalty is that:

We like giving a grade to the student immediately upon submission. It gives them some certainty, a result. It doesn't allow them to see where they went wrong (or right) to improve at this stage. This reduces their ability to share insights and learnings with other students who are still completing their assignment.

After the Due Date, they get extensive actionable feedback and support. They can see what they got right and wrong, what the right answer is, and they can see a support video to self solve if they are struggling to understand why the correct answer is... well, correct.

Here what a student experiences with the above settings, at the two stages of:

Upon submission, students will only see their grade at the end of the quiz.

After the Due Date, students will see a lot of feedback, their answers, correct / incorrect, the correct answers and even the Student Support Video (where available).

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To achieve this set up, there are 2 areas to focus on:

The first step is to set the Due Date, End Date and Penalty for late submission. This allows you to set important dates, that trigger the release of feedback.

To set the Due Date, End Date and Penalty:

Note, if you want to allow one or two students to submit late without penalty, we recommend using the Deadline Extension feature, rather than changing the Due Date and End Date.

The second step is to set the Results Display settings.

To access Results Display settings:

Our favorite settings are:

Note that we have included the Due Date as the date from which the questions and responses, feedback, correct / incorrect and correct answers are provided to students. With this set up, prior to the Due Date shown above and written in, they only get their grade.