{"id":3824,"date":"2022-05-09T13:36:35","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T12:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/?post_type=ht_kb&p=3824"},"modified":"2025-07-28T09:24:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T08:24:23","slug":"how-to-add-an-empty-submission-point-to-your-moodle-course","status":"publish","type":"ht_kb","link":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/article\/how-to-add-an-empty-submission-point-to-your-moodle-course\/","title":{"rendered":"How to add an empty submission point to your Moodle course"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Moodle assignments can be used for formative and summative assessments to evaluate student understanding of course material within a semester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There might be occasions when these assignments would take place outside of the DLE, such as group or presentation projects, but you would like to administrate the given grades and feedback inside Moodle to be able to transfer them to the UNIT-e without the need to manually upload\/enter them in the Markbook. In this case, you can create empty submission points as placeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article, we will show you how to add an empty submission point to your Moodle course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to add an empty submission point<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To add an empty submission point to your Moodle course, please follow the steps below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Sign in to your Moodle account and select the course where you would like to add an empty \u2018Assignment\u2019 activity.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Click on the ‘Edit mode’ toggle switch and then select a section where the submission point will be located.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Click on the ‘Add an activity or resource’ button and then choose ‘Assignment’ from the pop-up window.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. A new page will be shown where you can customise the settings of the activity.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    How to set up an empty submission point<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    In terms of the setup of an empty submission point, please follow the steps below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    General<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    In the \u2018General\u2019 section, you can give a useful name and description to the activity. In the \u2018Description\u2019 field, we suggest explaining to the students that this activity is used purely to upload marks, not to make submissions – this is only needed if you wish to show the marks in the DLE\/Moodle too, in addition to UNIT-e.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Availability<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    In the ‘Availability’ section, you can define the time frame for the activity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Please note that even though your students will not submit work, you still need to select an open (\u2019Allow submissions from\u2019) and close date (\u2019Due date\u2019) for the assignment, otherwise, the grades will fail to transfer to UNIT-e. Please also note, we highly recommend the \u2018Due date\u2019 to be a date in the far future, after the grades have been released as otherwise, the grades would have a \u2018late\u2019 tag in UNIT-e which manually needs to be taken off. When you set up the date, we strongly suggest using a future date, for example, in three weeks time. Please do not use end dates that are on weekends or bank holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Submission types<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    In the \u2018Submission types\u2019 section, please make sure you untick all the boxes, including \u2018File submissions\u2019, \u2018Video Assignment\u2019, and \u2018Online text\u2019 as your students will not submit their work via the DLE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Grade<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    In the \u2018Grade\u2019 section, you can define the grading strategy that you have used for this particular assessment, such as numerical value, also known as \u2018Points\u2019, or \u2018Scales\u2019, such as \u2018Pass\/Fail\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Please make sure you set the \u2018Blind marking (Anonymous)\u2019 setting to \u2018No\u2019 as otherwise, the student identities would be hidden from you and therefore, you will need to reveal them to be able to upload the grades to the DLE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Common module settings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Please make sure you hide this activity from your students. For this, you will need to change the setting \u2018Availability\u2019 to \u2018Hide on course page\u2019. This is essential as otherwise students would see this submission point on their Moodle Dashboard (\u2019Timeline\u2019 section) and get an e-mail notification about this activity (even if making submissions have been disabled in the settings). This therefore might be confusing and so we strongly suggest hiding the activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In the \u2018Common module settings\u2019 section, please make sure you select an assessment placeholder from the drop-down list where it says \u2018Link to UNIT-e\u2019 as the grades would be transferred to this specific folder in the student record system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As the activity will remain hidden at all times, the transferred grades will be accessible for your students via UNIT-e only (\u2019Statement of Results\u2019), in the DLE they will be inaccessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Screenshot<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Last step<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    As the last step, please make sure you click on the \u2018Save and display\u2019 or on the \u2018Save and return to course\u2019 button to finalise your action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How to upload grades to an empty submission point<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Once you are done with the setup process, you can then enter the grades you have given to your students. You can do this by using the blue \u2018Grade\u2019 button that appears next to each student. For more information about this process, please read the following article<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Please make sure you also release the grades and the feedback you provided for your students the same way as you would do in a regular \u2018Assignment\u2019 activity, but without notifying them about these changes (if the activity needs to be kept hidden); otherwise, you can notify them about the changes. For more information about this process, please read the following article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In this article, we will show you how to add an empty submission point to your Moodle course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"ht-kb-category":[27],"ht-kb-tag":[108],"class_list":["post-3824","ht_kb","type-ht_kb","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","ht_kb_category-moodle","ht_kb_tag-assignment"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb\/3824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ht_kb"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3824"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb\/3824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8430,"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb\/3824\/revisions\/8430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ht_kb_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb-category?post=3824"},{"taxonomy":"ht_kb_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digi-ed.uk\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ht-kb-tag?post=3824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}