How to Use Moodle’s Marking Workflow
If you use Moodle’s Assignment activity you may have seen this option in the Grade settings:
You may have asked yourself: what is the marking workflow? When should I use it? How do I use it?
Let’s answer those questions!
What is the Marking Workflow?
The marking workflow is a setting that allows assignment graders to stage the marking process into specific states: not marked; in marked; marking completed; in review; ready for release; and released. These states control whether or not students can see their grades and feedback. The state of a student’s assignment is visible to other instructors in the course.
When should I use it?
The marking workflow serves two primary functions:
- Coordinating with student graders, or other instructors
- Releasing assignment grades and feedback at the same time for the whole class.
If either of things appeal to you, this is a setting you want to enable.
How do I Use the Marking Workflow?
Setting up Marking Workflow
The first step to using the marking workflow is to enable it on your assignment activity. This setting can be found in the Grade Section. The default for “Use marking workflow” is No, change it to Yes to enable it.
Using Marking Workflow
Now that it’s enabled, we’ll have a couple more options when we view and grade student assignments. When grading an individual assignment we have an additional dropdown menu on the grading screen:
With this dropdown menu we can set a workflow state for that individual student (or group if it’s a group assignment). Whenever a student submits an assignment it will start in the Not Marked state.
If you are the only grader you could use this for a workflow, shifting the state from Not Marked to Ready for Release once you have finished grading a student. Shifting to Release will let the student see their grade and feedback once you save the changes.
If you have student graders or multiple instructors are grading assignments you may want to work out a system for the workflow states, such as a student grader setting the assignment to “In review” or “Marking completed” once they have finished marking the assignment.
In the View All Submissions page there are additional options as well. One note is that the additional option of being able to filter by Marking Workflow state:
With the workflow filter you can view or select all all assignments that have a workflow state. For example you may use this to review a student grader’s marking by setting the filter to your agreed upon reviewing workflow state. Another use of the filter is to quickly select all assignments of a state to change their state. For example selecting all “Ready to be released” assignments so they can be released at once.
How to Release Grades
One of the benefits of a marking workflow is being able to release the grades and feedback for all students at once. (Note that you can pair this with filtering submissions by Workflow State: Ready to Release if you are using that state and following all of the next steps).
Begin by making sure that no other filters are applied, you may need to press “Reset table preferences” to do so. If you are using the Ready to Release workflow state, set the workflow state filter to “Ready to Release” otherwise leave that as No Filter.
Check the top level Select box to select all submissions
Scroll to the bottom of the spreadsheet and open the “With Selected…” dropdown filter and choose the option “Set marking workflow state” and then press Go
On the next page you will see the students names, scroll to the bottom of the list and change the workflow state to “Released”. You will likely want to change Notify Students from No to Yes as well
Do students see the Marking Workflow state?
Yes! It’ll appear on their submission page in a section called “Grading Status”. This may be a consideration for you as you use these workflows.
