Assignments overview

An assignment is a piece of work a learner hands in for someone to mark: an essay, a lab report, a recording, a file. It carries instructions, a deadline, and usually a rubric.

What this does

An assignment is a kind of assessment, not a separate part of the product. It lives at /dashboard/assessments, appears in the same lists, and uses the same grading tools. What makes it an assignment is the shape of the work: instead of answering questions in a timed run, the learner produces something and hands it in.

That shape brings four things a quiz doesn’t have:

A deadline that marks work late rather than blocking it.
A hand-in — a file, a written answer, or a recording.
A roster showing who has handed in, who is late, and who is missing.
A revision loop — send work back with a note, and the learner submits again.

Your organization may call these Tasks rather than assignments, and learners Employees rather than learners. See Terminology.

The whole flow

Create it. Pick An assignment in the assessment wizard, or add one to a course from the Create flow. AI can draft the instructions, rubric and a sample answer for you to review. See Creating an assignment.
Set the dates. When it opens, when it’s due, and what happens to late work. See Deadlines & late work.
Learners hand in. See Handing in work for their side.
Mark it. Work the roster, open each hand-in, score against the rubric. See Submissions & grading.
Release. The grade and feedback reach the learner, and the guardian where there is one.

The one rule that surprises people

A due date on its own never blocks a hand-in. It marks work as late. Whether late work is then refused is a separate switch.

Two things stop somebody submitting:

The close date — the end of the access window. Nothing can be started or handed in after it.
Accept late hand-ins, turned off — a late hand-in is refused. The learner is told: “The deadline has passed and late work is not accepted.”

The refusal is deliberately narrow. It only fires on work that is already late by the assignment’s own reckoning, so it can never catch somebody still inside their deadline — and it measures against the deadline that learner holds, so an extension or an accommodation moves the refusal with it.

The penalty stays advisory. Acceptance and penalty are different questions: turning late work off is a gate, a penalty per day is a suggestion shown to whoever marks the work and never applied to a score by the system.

Where each person meets it

Who	Where	What they get
Whoever sets the work	`/dashboard/assessments/:id`	The policy panel, the Submissions roster, the grading drawer, the AI draft card
The learner	My assessments, then the assignment	A due badge, the hand-in screen, their result and feedback
A guardian	The child’s Upcoming and Results tabs	What’s due, what’s missing, released marks
A manager	My team	An overdue column for the people they manage
The assistant	⌘J on the assignment page	Reads who’s missing work; can grant an extension or send a reminder

Status, and what each word means

The same vocabulary runs across the roster, the learner’s list, and reporting.

Status	Meaning
Upcoming	Has a due date, not close yet
Due soon	The deadline is near
Overdue	Past the deadline, nothing handed in
Handed in	Submitted on time
Handed in late	Submitted after the deadline
Missing	Past the point your organization counts as missing, still nothing
Exempt	Excused. It doesn’t count against them, and it genuinely excuses — an exempt learner isn’t counted as missing and isn’t chased

Grading runs on its own track: Not graded → Awaiting grading → Under review → Graded → Released, with Revision requested and Resubmitted where work went back.

A learner who never opened the assignment has no record of their own. “Missing” is counted from who is enrolled, not from who started — so somebody who ignored it entirely still shows up.

Hand-ins inside a lesson

Some question blocks placed inside a lesson are hand-ins too: Essay, Open Ended, File Upload and Audio Response. The learner answers in the lesson — writing, files or a recording, as the question allows — and selects Submit for grading. The work lands in Marking under the Programs chip, named with its lesson and program, and is marked like any other hand-in. Each question is handed in once; Request revision sends it back, and the learner’s new hand-in replaces the one sent back. Once released it appears in the learner’s My results alongside their other marked work.

See Set how learners answer an essay or open question and Hand-ins from lessons.

Reference

Thing	Behaviour
What it is	An assessment whose type is assignment
Due date	Advisory. Marks work late; never blocks
Close date	The only thing that stops a hand-in
Late work	With late hand-ins accepted: recorded and marked late. With them not accepted: refused outright
Penalty	A suggestion shown to the grader. Never applied to a score automatically
Extensions	Per person or in bulk. Only the people you pick move; everyone else keeps the original date
Revision	The resubmission doesn’t count against the attempt limit
Files	Private to the learner and the graders. Guardians see them only after release

Troubleshooting

There’s no “An assignment” option when I create something. You need permission to create assessments. It’s the same permission as any other assessment type.

A learner handed in after the deadline and it went through. Late hand-ins are switched on. Turn off Accept late hand-ins to refuse them, or set a close date to stop submissions entirely.

A learner says they were refused, and I wanted the work. Late hand-ins are switched off for that assignment. Turn them back on, or grant that person an extension — the refusal follows their own deadline, so an extension lifts it for them alone.

The penalty wasn’t applied. Penalties are shown to the grader as a suggestion and never subtracted automatically — somebody decides.

Somebody is listed as missing who was never going to do it. Mark them Exempt rather than extending their deadline forever.