Introduction

In this article, we will walk you through how to set up Learning Collection from the perspective of a teacher. This tool lets your students bring together work from across their courses into a single curated collection, reflect on it, and submit it for assessment, so you can evaluate their learning holistically rather than from one final deliverable.

If you'd like more information on how this tool works, you can check out other articles here:

• Learning Collection: For Teachers (Active Assignment)

• Learning Collection: Overview

• Learning Collection: For Students
   

Tool In Action

How this article is structured

This article walks you through the steps of a  Learning Collection activity, following the same flow as the tool itself. It will describe the process of setting up the assignment. This refers to what you can configure before the assignment is published, such as instructions, settings, deadlines, grouping, and grading rules. Students cannot access the activity at this stage.

Note: When you open a published activity, you’ll land on the Active Assignment view by default. To return to the setup view after publishing, click Edit in the upper-left corner of the activity.
You can see the article about the Active Assignment view of this tool here.

Accessibility

We're devoted to making our tools as accessible as possible for all learners - to read more about accessibility in FeedbackFruits tools, check this article: Accessibility: Within FeedbackFruits Tools.

Creating the Activity

You can set up Learning Collection inside studio:

• As a learning step — Add a collection step to an existing learning activity in the Studio, alongside your other steps.

Because the collection is assessed like any other piece of work, you can combine it with other assessment steps — for example, adding a peer assessment so students also review each other's collections, or layering it into a larger activity.

Step 1: Instructions

Here, you can write the general instructions for the activity. These set the overall purpose and expectations, and they stay visible to students throughout the activity. You can also add items, such as attaching a file or recording audio/video, by clicking Add items if needed.

Collaboration Options

Directly underneath the instructions, you can select options for student collaboration. When selecting student collaboration options, there are several configurations to choose from. Please bear in mind that collaboration options need to be selected before students participate in the assignment - once a student makes progress, the configurations can't be updated.

Step 2: Student Collections

This is where you tell students what their collection should contain.

The Instructions for students are visible while students are building their collection, so use them to describe the specifications of the collection rather than general activity guidance - for example:

• "Include all the work that led up to your final assessment."
• "Include your strongest piece of work this semester and your weakest, and reflect on the difference."
• "Show a piece you're proud of, a moment where you struggled, and an example of how you've grown."

Required number of activities to select: Set a minimum, exact or between x and x, number of activities a student must include before they can submit. This ensures collections meet your expectations for breadth of evidence.

Scheduling deadlines: Set the hand-in deadline. Students have to upload their work before this deadline. After the deadline expires, students will no longer be able to submit and receive feedback. If no deadline is specified at this stage, students are free to utilize the submission section and receive feedback at their convenience.

If a deadline for this step has been set for the students, you have the option to allow for students to submit after the submission deadline has passed. Simply enable this option (as shown on the screenshot below), and students will be able to make progress after the submission deadline as well. Keep in mind that enabling this option will not affect the student analytics - you will still be able to see if students have submitted on time or not.

Uploading files: Choose whether students can upload additional files from their computer to supplement the activities pulled in from FeedbackFruits, and which file types are allowed (all file types are allowed by default).

Step 3: Give Feedback on Student Collection

In this step, you can specify the criteria the collection will be assessed on. Click configure to edit, add, or delete criteria. This uses the same criteria configuration as elsewhere in FeedbackFruits, so you can set up:

• Rubrics - with defined levels and descriptions
• Scales - numerical rating scales
• Comment-only - qualitative feedback without ratings

Click here for a detailed guide on setting criteria.

These criteria become the framework you (and any additional assessors) use to evaluate each student's collection as a whole.

Visibility: Choose when the students can see their feedback. You can set this to immediately, after certain date, or never.

Step 4: Received Reviews

Setting up received reviews is straightforward since there are only two options for this step.

Feedback-on-feedback: You can toggle whether or not students rate their received feedback on a scale of 1 to 10, with optional written clarification.

Scheduling deadlines: Set the deadline for reviewing received feedback. Leave the deadline blank to allow reviewees to view and their feedback indefinitely, without being too late to review.

Grading

After finishing setting up the core of the assignment, it is possible to add the configurable grading module. Click here to learn more about how this grading module works.

Publish grade as: Publish the grade as a percentage or as pass/fail.

Require participating for grade: Please see this article to learn more about this feature.

Scheduling & auto-publish grades: You can set a specific date and time for the grades to be published. It’s also possible to leave the date unset, which allows grades to be published manually instead.

Good to Know

• Instructions do two jobs. Use the general instructions for overall purpose and expectations, and the student-collection instructions for the specifics of what the collection should contain.
• Set a minimum for evidence. The required number of activities ensures students submit enough work to assess meaningfully.
• Uploads are yours to control. Students can only add files from their computer if you enable uploading, and you decide which file types are allowed.
• Collections are a snapshot. Once a student submits, their collection is locked and frozen as it was at submission, so you assess a stable set of evidence.
• Multiple assessors are supported. A collection can be assessed by more than one assessor independently, and you control when assessment results are released to students.
• Familiar configuration. If you've set up Peer Review or Feedback Request before, the criteria and deadline setup will feel very similar.