Completing Essay Assignments

In some courses, you are asked to write essays in response to topics or to questions that do not have simple answers. These essay assignments are called open response assessments (ORA) because they have a flexible design, and can include various assessment options, including peer assessments and self assessments.

In some ORA assignments, in addition to writing text responses, you can submit an image or other type of file. Learn how to submit a file with an ORA response.

For details on how to work with open response assessments, see:

• Steps for Completing an ORA assignment
• Grades for Essay Assignments
• See your ORA assignment score
• Learn how peer assessment scores are calculated

Open response assessments can have several possible steps, which appear in the order that you must complete them. Future steps are not available until you complete your current step. This topic describes all of the possible steps. The actual steps in your assignment depend on how your course team has designed the assignment.

• Your Response: In this first step in an open response assessment, you submit your response to the assignment question.
• Learn to Assess Responses: In this step, you practice grading some responses. You evaluate example responses and then see how the grade you gave differs from the grade that a member of the course team gave. The goal is to learn how to assess responses similar to the way that course staff would assess them, using the same rubric.
• Assess Peers: You grade responses that other learners in the course have submitted, and other learners in the course grade your responses.
• Assess Your Response: In this step, you assess your own response, using the same rubric that you used to perform peer assessments.
• Staff Grade: Members of the course team assess your response. If you receive a staff grade for your assignment, it always overrides any peer assessment grades that you receive.

Grading for every type of assessment step in an open response assessment (ORA) is done by comparing each response against the same set of guidelines, called a rubric. Every open response assessment has a rubric provided by the course team.

A rubric consists of several criteria and a set of options for each criterion.

Criteria

Each criterion describes characteristics that a response should have.

For example, "Determine if there is a unifying theme or main idea" or "Assess the content of the submission" are possible criteria for assessing a response.

Options

Each criterion has options which describe how well each response satisfies the criterion. The options are usually a range of ratings, with details to help you decide the rating, and an associated point value.

For example, this table shows the options for the criterion "Determine if there is a unifying theme or main idea".

When you assess a response, you evaluate the response, and for each criterion, select the option that best describes how well the response met that criterion.

Submitting your response is usually the first step in an open response assessment (ORA) assignment.

To submit your response to an Open Response Assessment question

1. Read each question carefully: Some course teams include important information in the question, such as how long a response must be, or specific topics that your response must cover. Note that the total word count for your response cannot be more than 10,000 words.
2. Enter your response: For each question, enter your response into the field under Your Response. In some assignments, you can submit images or other types of files along with or instead of a written response. If available, Browse and Upload your files options appear below the response field. Learn how to submit a file with an ORA response.
3. When you have finished answering all of the questions, select Submit your response and move to the next step.
4. If you need more time, you can select Save Your Progress to save a draft of your responses, and then come back and submit them later.

 After you submit your response, the next step, which is usually either assessment training or peer assessment, becomes available. However, you do not have to start the next step right away. If you want to stop working and come back later, just refresh or reopen your browser when you come back.

For more information about the steps in an ORA assignment, see Steps for Completing an ORA assignment

If your open response assessment (ORA) requires or allows you to submit images or other types of files, you see two buttons below the response field: Choose Files on one side of the page, and Upload Files on the other side of the page.

To upload files in your response:

1. Below the responses field, select Choose Files.
2. In the dialog box that opens, select the file that you want to upload, and then select Open. A preview image of each file is visible.
3. In the boxes next to each preview image, enter a written description of the image. This step is required to help learners who cannot see or access the image understand and evaluate your response.
4. Across from the Choose Files button, select Upload files.

You can replace the files that you uploaded with different files until you submit your response. To replace your uploaded files, repeat steps 1-3.

You can view your own response in an open response assessment (ORA) at any time after you submit it.

Select the Your Response heading in the assignment to expand the section.

Some  open response assessment (ORA) assignments include a training step, so that you can learn how to effectively assess responses for a later peer assessment step.

In a training step, you evaluate example responses using a provided rubric as a guide for grading. After you complete the grading, you are shown how the grades you gave differ from the grades that a member of the course team gave. The goal is to learn how to assess responses similar to the way that course staff would assess them, using the same rubric.

To Learn How to Assess Responses:

1. Read each sample response and the rubric carefully, then for each criterion, select the option that you think best reflects the response.
2. When you are satisfied with your assessment, select Compare your selections with the instructor’s selections.
   • If all of your selections are the same as the instructor’s selections, the next sample response opens automatically.
   • If any option that you select is not the same as the instructor’s selection, you see the response again, with a message indicating that your assessment differs from the instructor’s assessment.
3. If your assessment did not match the instructor’s assessment, review the response again and consider why the instructor assessed the response differently than you did. Continue to assess the example response until the options you select for all criteria match options selected by the instructor.

When you have successfully assessed the sample responses, the next step in the assignment becomes available.

In the peer assessment step of an open response assessment, you perform assessments of responses that were submitted by other learners in your course. The course team sets the requirement for how many peer assessments each learner is expected to complete.

How to Assess Peer Responses

At the top of the peer assessment step, you can see counts of how many responses you are expected to assess and how many you have already assessed. For example, if you are required to perform 3 peer assessments and are about to start your first peer assessment, the count appears as “1 of 3”.

Within the Assess Peers step, you see each question, a learner’s response, and the rubric that you will use to grade the response.

You assess other learners’ responses by selecting options in the rubric. This process will be familiar to you if your assignment included the learn to assess responses step. Additionally, this step has a field below the rubric where you can provide comments about the learner’s response.

After you have selected options in the rubric and provided comments about the response, select Submit your assessment and move to response #{number}.

After you submit each peer assessment, a response from another learner becomes available, until you have assessed the required number of responses. The count of how many responses you have assessed updates after you assess each response.

When you have completed the required number of peer assessments, the next step in the assignment becomes available.

Optional: Assess Additional Peer Responses

If you have assessed the required number of peer responses, the peer assessment step collapses so that only the Assess Peers heading is visible.

If you want to, you can assess more peer responses than the assignment requires. To assess more responses, select the Assess Peers heading to expand the step, and then select Continue Assessing Peers.

When you have completed the required number of peer assessments in your open response assessment (ORA), the self assessment step of the assignment becomes available. You see your response along with the same rubric that you used in the peer assessment step.

Perform an assessment of your own response, and then select Submit Your Assessment.

When you have completed assessing your own response, the next step in the assignment becomes available. If there are no further steps, and if you have received the required number of peer assessments on your own response, you can receive your score.

In some open response assessment (ORA), a staff assessment step is included for a member of the course team to grade your responses. You do not need to take any action for this step. The status of the Staff Grade step changes to Complete when a member of the course team has completed grading your response.

If a Staff Grade step exists in your assignment, you receive your final assignment grade when staff grading is complete, even if your response has not been assessed by the required number of peer reviewers.

You receive your score for an oopen response assessment (ORA) pen response assessment when you have completed the following steps:

• Submitted your response to the question.
• Completed the assessment training step (if included).
• Performed the required number of peer assessments.
• Performed a self assessment (if included).
• Received the required number of peer assessments of your own work.
• Received a staff assessment (if included).

If other learners are still assessing your response, you see the following message below the Assess Your Response step:

Your Grade: Waiting for Peer Assessment

Your response is still undergoing peer assessment. After your peers have assessed your response, you will see their feedback and receive your final grade.

If you see this message, check back periodically until peer assessments of your work are complete.

View Your Score

When peer assessment is complete, and if the assignment does not include a staff assessment step, you can see the scores and any comments that you received from peers who assessed your response. You also see the scores from your self assessment.

If the assignment included a staff assessment step, you receive your final grade after a member of the course team grades your response. In this case, your score details will include peer assessment scores and comments, but the staff grade becomes your final assignment grade.

If you want to, you can provide feedback on the peer scores or comments that you received.

If you want to, you can provide feedback on the peer scores or comments that you received in an ORA assignment, under Provide Feedback on Peer Assessments.

Some open response assessment (ORA) include a Top Responses section below your own score that shows the highest scoring responses that were submitted for each question.

If your course team included this section in your assignment, it appears only after you have completed all the steps of the assignment.

Peer assessments are scored by criteria. The score for each criterion is the median (not the average) of the scores that each peer assessor gave that criterion. For example, if the Ideas criterion in a peer assessment receives 10 from one learner, 9 from a second learner, and 5 from a third learner, the score for that criterion is 9 (the median), not 8 (the average).

Your final score for a peer assessment is the sum of the median scores for all of the criteria.

For example, your response might receive the following scores from peer assessors. 

To calculate the final score, the system adds the median score for each criterion:

Ideas median (8 out of 10) + Content median (8 out of 10) + Grammar median (4 out of 5) = final score (20 out of 25)

Note, again, that your final score is not the median of the scores that each individual peer assessor gave the response. Your final score is the sum of the median scores for all of the criteria.