The assignment tool enables you to provide rich feedback without the need for face-to-face interaction. It also creates the convenience of storing and providing assignments for an entire semester in a single accessible location. Below are tips for effectively implementing the assignment tool into your course.

1. You may place the assignments icon directly on your home page, or you want to group the assignments icon with quizzes and self tests within a separate organizer page.

2. To more easily distinguish between students' assignments, establish a naming system to name files, e.g. assignment2_JohnR, assignment3_JennyM, etc.

3. Once an assignment has been graded, students will not be allowed to resubmit the assignment. If you would like your students to submit multiple drafts of the same assignment to be graded, consider using the mail, discussion or student presentation tools instead of the assignment tool.

4. If you would like to post an assignment on your WebCT course but you would like no submissions to be sent to you over WebCT, do not use the assignment tool. Create a content module and post the assignment as an HTML document within the content module.

5. Remind students that if assignments contain multiple files, students should submit all of their files at the same time. This is especially critical if you will not be allowing them to retrieve their assignment.

6. Remind students that they cannot submit an assignment from their own WebCT accounts for other students.

7. You may find that allowing students to submit late assignments creates less hassle than not allowing late submissions. Late versus on-time assignments can always be distinguished from one another, and allowing late exchanges will prevent students from unnecessarily using the mail tool.

8. The assignment tool allows instructor to zip up all students' files at once for downloading. You will need zipping/unzipping software to do this. Remember that large classes may take a long time to download.

9. The only place in WebCT to change an assignment grade is on the Grade Assignment page, which may be accessed from the Submissions page by clicking on the words graded or not graded. To change an assignment grade from Manage Students screen, click on edit submissions. You will be brought back to the Grade Assignment page.

10. The fastest way to curve grades for an assignment is to create another column in the gradebook to do the calculation.