Upcoming changes to grading from FeedbackFruits LTI Tools

Most FeedbackFruits tools can be used with grading: submitting results gained in the learning activity within FeedbackFruits, back to the LMS using our (LTI) integration. We are making a change to how grading works within FeedbackFruits in the upcoming release, and want to explain the change in detail.

Within Peer Review & Group Member Evaluation, when no 'Configurable Grading' module is added, but the assignment does have a deadline for reviewing and the LMS integration allows for grading, we currently submit a grade automatically. Internally, we refer to this as 'implicit grading': teachers don't opt-in explicitly, but do see an orange warning when configuring their assignment that grades will be submitted back.

In most learning management systems, this has no impact by default: the teacher needs to enable grading within the LMS for the assignment for the grades to show up in the grade center. Within Brightspace, after recent changes, this can have an unintended effect: a grade item will be created for the assignment implicitly, leading to grades to be submitted and visible.

Within all other FeedbackFruits activities that support grading, the 'Configurable Grading' module needs to be added explicitly by the teacher. After configuring it, and the assignment being completed, 'Publish grades' needs to be clicked within FeedbackFruits to submit the grades to the LMS.

We recommend Brightspace users that are seeing grade items being created unexpectedly, due to the 'implicit grading' method as described above, to add 'Configurable Grading' as a workaround. While counterintuitive, this will prevent a grade item to be created automatically: only when the teacher would click 'Publish grades', grades would be submitted to the LMS.

All FeedbackFruits activities that support grading, will have a 'Configurable Grading' module added by default upon creation. This module can be removed upon creation or editing of the activity, and will only submit grades when the teacher clicks 'Publish grades' after the assignment is done.

We will discontinue 'implicit grading' as a feature: all Peer Review & Group Member Evaluation assignments created after the release, will need a 'Configurable Grading' module to send back a grade to the LMS. All assignments created before the release will continue to behave as before, and use 'implicit grading', unless a 'Configurable Grading' module is added.