Assignments

Assignments are pieces of work set for students, such as homeworks. Assignments can be created in Insight, PARS or in SIMS Homework.

Assignments can viewed in Insight by parents, pupils and staff. You can upload attachments to an assignment and record which pupils have and have not completed their homework. It is also possible for pupils to upload completed assignments which can be accessed online by staff.

Managing Assignments

Creating an Assignment

The role options required to create an assignment are:
Manage > Assignments (On)

To create an assignment, staff should go to:
Manage > Assignments

Click Add to create a new assignment. This will take you to a new screen. Enter a Title for the assignment. The Issued date is the date that the homework is given to the students and the Due date is the deadline for the assignment to be completed.

You can categorised the assignment if you are a PARS user at this point.

iParents/students may or may not see assignments with an Issued date in the future. See the Students and Parents View section below for further information.

Enter the amount of time that you estimate the assignment will take to complete in the Expected field and a description of the task in the Detail section at the bottom of the window. In the Detail section you can edit the text (font, size, colour, etc.) and insert links to webpages (web addresses are automatically converted to links).

The Submission in class option determines whether students will be able to upload their work via Insight. When this option is enabled students cannot upload their work via Insight.

If Create forum topic has been selected, then Insight will create a forum topic about the assignment that will be visible to any parents or students that the assignment is issued to, if they also have access to the Forums page.

Use the Attachments tab to upload files to your assignment. These attachments can be accessed by parents or pupils via Insight. The attachments are not included in any emails sent (see below for information regarding emails).

Selecting Students

Click the Assignees tab to select the students that you are going to issue the assignment to. Use the options on the left of the screen to find groups such as classes and registration groups. Select each group that you want the assignment to be issued to. When you select a class, all of the pupils in that class will appear on the right hand side. You can deselect specific students from that list if you wish.

Student exemptions: all "issued" (red folders icon) assignments to "exception" (yellow warning icon), next to the existing button to change all "issued" to "received"

If you only see academic classes that you teach and want to issue an assignment to another class, click the Show all classes option at the top of the window. Collapse then expand the Class section on the left of the window and all subjects will now be shown. The Show all classes option can always be turned on using the following role option:
Manage > Assignments > Show all subjects and classes (On)

It is also possible to create assignments for user defined groups. Click on the User defined section to see a list of the user defined groups from SIMS. The following role option is required to see the User defined section (which appears immediately below Classes and Pastoral sections):
Manage > Assignments > Show user defined groups (On)

Emails and SMS

When creating an assignment you may see options allowing the assignment information to be sent via email or SMS.

• Email Students

This will send an email to the students' work email addresses from SIMS, or to the email from their Insight user account if pupils have their own accounts. To see this option the school must have purchased the AD links module for Insight and you must have the following role option enabled:

Manage > Assignments > Allow Email notification (On)

This option can be enabled by default using the following role option for staff:

Manage > Assignments > Default to email student (On)

• Email Parents
  

This will send an email to all of the parental Insight accounts, that are linked to the students that the assignment is given to. In order to see this option you must have the following role option enabled:

Manage > Assignments > Allow Email notification (On)

Manage > Assignments > Allow Email notification to parents (On)

This option can be enabled by default using the following role option for staff:

Manage > Assignments > Default to email parent (On)

• SMS
  

This will send an email to all of the parental Insight accounts, that are linked to the students that the assignment is given to. In order to see this option you must have the following role option enabled:

Allow SMS notification (On)

iInsight needs to be configured in order to send emails and SMS messages. See the communication setup page for further information.

Marking assignments and giving feedback

Students with different statuses for their assignments. One student has uploaded their work using Insight.

The role options required to mark an assignment and give feedback are:
Manage > Assignments (On)

To do this, staff should go to:
Manage > Assignments

Select the assignment you would like to deal with then click Edit. Click on the "Assignees" tab in the window that opens. Each pupil will be listed with an icon next to their name. The icon represents the status of their assignment:

	Issued	The pupil has not yet submitted the assignment
	Complete	The pupil has completed the assignment
	Exception	The pupil has been excused from completing the assignment
	Incomplete	The pupil has failed to complete the assignment

Click on an icon to toggle to the next status or use the Set all Issued to received to change the statuses in bulk.

Click Feedback if you would like to leave feedback about a student's work. This feedback can be viewed by both students and parents. Insight will not send email or SMS notifications about assignment feedback.

If a student has uploaded their work via Insight then you will see a button in the Evidence column. Click this button to view and download the files that the student has uploaded.

Additional Options

The following role options will decide whether previous assignments will be displayed:

Manage > Assignments > Include older assignments	- Assignments that were issued more than 1 month ago will be displayed
Manage > Assignments > Rolling archive in weeks	- Assignments whose due date was up to this number of weeks ago will be displayed

Accessing Other Staff Members' Assignments

When dealing with Assignments, by default staff will only be able to see their own assignments. Certain staff, such as Heads of Department, may need access to view Assignments created by other staff members. The Assignment Permissions page is used to grant this access for staff. The Assignment Permissions page is only available to admin users.

The role option required to access the Assignment Permissions page is:
Manage > Assignments (On)

The Assignment Permissions page is accessed via:
Manage > Assignment Permissions

A User name dropdown appears at the top left of the page which contains a list of staff members. Select a staff member who needs access to other staff members' assignments.

The main section of this page shows all of the staff at school with an On/Off button next to their name. The staff member selected in the User name dropdown at the top left will be able to view assignments created by any staff whose On/Off button is set to On.

Once a staff member has been given access to view somebody else's assignments, they can use various reports (see the Reporting On Assignments section) to see those assignments. The assignments will also be shown on the Manage > Assignments page (see the Managing Assignments section) after clicking the Filtered button on that page.

Students and Parents View

The role option required to access the Assignment Permissions page is:
Manage > Assignments (On)

The Assignment Permissions page is accessed via:
General > Assignments
The user may also be able to access assignments via the Snapshot page, which its own set of options and preferences.

The assignments page will show a list of current and previous assignments. Various information is shown about each assignment, such as the issued date, due date and status.

Users will be able to download any attachments that have been added to the assignment. If the assignment was configured to allow pupils to submit their work online then users can click the Evidence button to open a window which allows them to upload a document. Staff will then be able to access these documents via the manage assignments page (see the Marking assignments and giving feedback section above for further information).

Options to Configure This Page

There are several role options that affect the Assignments page for students and parents. The role options are found via:
General > Assignments > ...

Earliest	Homeworks created prior to this date will not be shown
Rolling archive in weeks	Assignments with a Due date more than this number of weeks in the past will be hidden
Strip old open	Assignments with a Due date in the past and with a Status of pending will be hidden
Strip old complete	Assignments that are complete will only be displayed if their Due date is in the future
Strip future	Assignments which have a Issued Date in the future will be hidden
Show status column	This will display the Status of the assignment. If this option is disabled the Assignments section on the Snapshot page will show 0 assignments.
Show mark column	Show the grade given for the assignment. Grades can only be given to assignments created in PARS
Show user check column	This shows a column where the user can 'tick' assignments that they have completed. This is for their use only and does not get displayed to staff
Include exceptions	This option displays assignments where the student has been given a Status of Exception
Order by issued date	The assignments will be ordered by their Issued date, rather than their Due date
Group by subject	Assignments of the same subject will be grouped together
Allow uploading evidence	Allows the users to upload their assignment work via Insight. This is not possible for SIMS homework

iInsight will display a Status of Late if an assignment that was created in PARS is marked as Complete more than 1 day after the Due date. To prevent this (so that Insight displays Complete instead of Late in these circumstances) use the following preference:
PARS > Ignore PARS assignment handin dates

Reporting On Assignments

Only assignments created in Insight can be reported on using Insight; assignments created in PARS can only be reported on by using PARS and likewise for SIMS homework.

There are three assignment reports available in Insight, which are listed below. The data on the Assignment Summary and Assignment Summary (Staff) reports are affected by the user's ability to view other staff members' assignments (see: the Accessing Other Staff Members' Assignments section above for further information). The Assignments Report will always show data about all staff.

Assignment Summary

The role option required to access this report is:
Reports > Assignment summary (On)

This report is accessed via:
Reports > Assignment Summary

The assignment summary report shows the assignments that have been issued to each of the subjects and classes. The assignments for each subject will be grouped together. Within each subject, you will see one row per assignment including which class the assignment was issued to, and the status that each pupil received.

Assignment Summary (Staff)

The role option required to access this report is:
Reports > Assignment summary (Staff) (On)

This report is accessed via:
Reports > Assignment Summary (Staff)

This report shows a list of the assignments given, broken down by subject. Each assignment will show the class it was issued to, its issued date and due date, the staff member that issued it and any additional details.

Assignments Report

The role option required to access this report is:
Reports > Assignments Report (On)

This report is accessed via:
Reports > Assignments Report

Use the calendars at the top of the page to select the Start Date and End Date of the range that you would like to use on the report.

The Report by Staff option will show the number of assignments that each staff member has issued, broken down by the subject that the assignments were issued to. The Report by Student option will show the number of assignments given to each student, broken down by subject and showing the status of each assignment.

You can also use the Assignment filter or Name filter options to search for specific assignments, students or staff members.