Sep 13, 2020 - 3 min read - 445 views 

6 Ways to Assign and Collect Assignments for Remote Learning.

I was asked to create a few tutorials and recommendations on how to share assignments with students remotely and not have them need to be printing out pages at home. These are 6 of my favorite methods of creating and sharing assignments in the digital age, but there are so many others available. In these video tutorials, I briefly go over the features and how to use these, but there is so much more. If you like an option and want to learn more about it, I would highly recommend viewing some of my other blogs that go into more depth or the YouTube channel of the app developers.

Share a document and have students share assignments!

• Pros: Most students know how to do this already and if not it is easy for students to learn. All shared work will be accessed in your email or drive. You can create folders to help keep files organized.

• Cons: You will have to search for each document to provide feedback and grade assessment. This can be very time-intensive and cause digital clutter on your drive and /or inbox.

Assign and grade documents in TEAM's

• Pros: Assign Docs, PPT’s. Class Notebook pages, etc. to students in your team. Easily track and monitor student progress, grade, and provide feedback. All digital grades are viewable in one place. Students will get notifications through teams.

• Cons: You will have to show students how to use this. You will have to make a new assignment for students added to your roster after the assignment is published.

Use Nearpod to convert your assignments to a digital format.

• Pros: Easily create and share digital lessons including instructional presentations and interactive student features. Integrated with learning resources like flocabulary, Virtual field trips, and Phet Labs. Nearpod app developers have an outstanding YouTube Channel with tutorials that will show you how to utilize all of their amazing app's features.

• Cons: My county provides this app to us, but it would otherwise cost money to access all features.  Requires a slight learning curve for educators to use.

Use Flipgrid to assign and share multimedia presentations.

• Pros: Free app.Assignments distributed by access code/URL. Students can create and share multimedia presentations of their work and provide peer review. You can put limits on time and student features. Great for presentations. Flipgrid developers have a great YouTube Channel with Tutorials that can guide you through their app much better than I can.

• Cons: Separate app. It can take time to review and grade submitted work. If you leave student comments on you have to monitor those. Some students may struggle with the technical aspects.

Assign and grade documents in your Canvas LMS

• Pros: Assign and grade assessments within Canvas. Can link MS docs or google drive files to assignments. Canvas allows a lot of addons with 3rd parties. They have a gradebook feature as well. You can also assign discussion-based assignments. The Canvas LMS platform has a great YouTube Channel with Tutorials I would recommend.

• Cons: Less intuitive and comes with a learning curve for students and educators. Will have to show students how to use and submit work within Canvas.

Use Forms to convert your assignments to a digital format.

• Pros: Easy to set up and distribute. There is no app or outside training required for students to use. You can share these by sharing the URL in an email or a Teams post.  Can provide you with instant assessment data and you can manipulate the result data in excel. Can set up auto-grading.

• Cons: Students cannot complete the assignment in multiple sessions (all or nothing).

• Here is my blog and tutorial on Google Forms.