Assessment settings in Learn

The Learn Service team provides general advice on Marking an Assignment.

But there are a few points around assessments that you might want to check in your Learn Ultra courses.

Brief summary

More details further down the page, but following are the recommended settings:

Posting marks

Make sure you only ‘Post’ marks when the marks are ready for the students to see. If marks are accidentally posted, you can hide the assessment’s link on the Learn page to hide the marks again.

See further information on posting marks below.

Switch off ‘Automatic zeros’

  1. Select the ‘Gradebook’ tab.
  2. Log into the Learn Ultra course.
  3. Click the ‘Settings’ cog icon, near the top-right of the page.
  4. Scroll down to the ‘Automatic Zeros’ section, and untick the ‘Assign automatic zeros for overdue work’ box.
  5. If automatic zeros had been applied for overdue submissions in the course, you will be asked if you want to keep those exsiting automatic zeros or clear them – make your choise, and click the ‘Confirm’ button.

Switch off ‘Post marks automatically’ for Learn Tests

  1. Log into the Learn Ultra course.
  2. ‘Edit’ the assessment on the Learn page.
  3. Click the ‘Settings’ cog icon, near the top-right of the page.
  4. Scroll down to the ‘Assessment mark’ section, and untick the ‘Post assessment marks automatically’ option.
  5. Click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the sidebar.

Do not open Turnitin Assignments in a new window

  1. Log into the Learn Ultra course.
  2. On the Learn page, find the Turnitin Assignment link – click the ‘…’ menu on the right-hand side and select ‘Edit’.
  3. If ticked, untick the ‘Open in new window’ box.
  4. Click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the sidebar.

Further details

Posting marks

For Assignments and Tests in Learn, a student won’t see the mark you have given their submission until it is ‘Posted’ (‘Posting’ is what Learn Ultra calls releasing a mark to a student).

‘Posting’ a mark can be a manual process when you are ready to release the marks:

  1. Open the Assignment/Test’s Submissions list – by clicking the assignment’s link on the Learn page; or selecting the ‘Gradebook’ tab and clicking on the assignment’s title
  2. Then either:
    1. Post marks for all students at once: at the top of the Submissions table, click the ‘Post all marks’ button.
    2. Post a mark for an individual student: Look down the ‘Post’ column, and click the ‘Post # mark’ button for particular students.

‘Posting’ a mark can also be set to happen automatically for Tests that can be automatically computer-graded.

From Learn’s Assign Grades guide, “If you wish grades to be posted as soon as an attempt is graded, select the Post assessment grades automatically option in the assessment settings panel. This setting is not selected by default for assignments, but it is for new tests. To prevent grades from auto posting, simply de-select this option and post grades manually.”

Once a mark is Posted, it cannot be un-Posted. But if you accidentally prematurely Post a mark, you can hide the Assignment/Test link on the Learn page, and that should hide the mark.

Automatic Zeros

As of 2024-25, Learn Ultra courses have the ‘Assign automatic zeros for overdue work’ setting disabled as default.

The automatic zero setting means any student who does not submit before the deadline will be automatically marked zero. As there may be extensions, or other valid reason to give a student extra time, it is better to leave this setting set to off to avoid unnecessary stress.

For further information, see the ‘Automatic zeros’ section of Learn’s Ultra Gradebook guide.

Turnitin Assignments do not open in a new window

Some students have reported clicking on a link for a Turnitin Assignment, and seeing an error message saying “invalid or missing state”.

This error appears to be due to tracking cookies not being passed across if a Turnitin Assignment has been set to open in a new window. So the solution seems to be to not select ‘Open in new window’ for Turnitin Assignments.