VIU Campus

Assignments

The Assignments tool enables you to submit assignments to your course online. The assignments you encounter in the Assignments tool are much like the assignments you would encounter in a regular classroom. For example, you may be asked to complete questions, exercises, and written work or essays in order to help you gain a better understanding of the course material.

Once you have uploaded to an Assignment Submission folder, your instructor may choose to assess and give you feedback on your assignment. In this case, you can revisit the Assignment Submission folder in order to view the feedback your instructor has provided. 

Submit an Assignment

  1. Select Assessment and then Assignments from the course navigation bar. 

  2. Click on the name of the Assignment Submission folder you want to submit to.

  3. On this screen, you may be able to read the assignment instructions, download any attached files, or view any attached rubrics if your instructor has provided any.

  4. Depending on the settings your instructor has put in place, you may need to write some text, mark the assignment as complete, or submit a file in order to complete your submission to the Assignment Submission folder. In most cases, your instructor will be asking you to upload a file to the Assignment Submission folder.

  5. Click the Add a File button. Select My Computer if the file you wish to upload is located on your computer or ePortfolio if the file you wish to upload is located in your ePortfolio in VIULearn.

  6. If you selected My Computer, you will be given the option to upload your file by dragging and dropping the file into the upload field. Alternatively, you can click the Upload button to find and select the file from your device.

  7. Once your file has finished uploading, click the blue Add button.

  8. Write any comments you wish to provide to your instructor into the Comments input field.

  9. Once you are ready, click the blue Submit button to confirm your submission.

  10. If your submission has been submitted successfully, you should receive a file submission confirmation screen. You will also receive a submission receipt to your email address.

View Assignment Feedback

When your instructor makes feedback for an assignment available to you in VIULearn, you will see an alert in the Updates area of your Course Home page letting you know you have unread feedback. If you have subscribed to Assignment feedback notifications, you will also receive an email alerting you that feedback is available. Use the steps below to access feedback from the Assignments tool. Depending on how your instructor has set up your assignment, you may be able to see the same feedback in Grades as well.

  1. Select Assessment and then Assignments from the course navigation bar. 

  2. In the Evaluation Status column, you will see Feedback: Unread or Feedback: Read text next to any Assignment that has been assessed by your instructor.

  3. Click the Unread text (or Read if you are revisiting feedback you previously viewed) to view any new feedback your instructor has left you on your assignment. 

Solve Common Problems

This error will occur if the name of the file you are trying to submit contains characters that VIULearn cannot process. This error primarily occurs on Mac computers which allow you to use slashes and other special characters in your file names. If you are receiving this error message, try checking the following:

  1. File Name: Some special characters (including \ / : * ? “ < > | ~ # % & + { }) cause issues when included in a file's name. Try removing all special characters from the filename (leaving only letters, numbers, & spaces). In addition, if your file name is too long, you will not be able to upload the file to VIULearn. Please ensure that the file name is under 45 characters.

  2. File Size: The maximum file size in VIULearn is 2 GB. Please ensure that the file you are attempting to upload is smaller than 2 GB.

VIULearn accepts the file types listed below. To resolve this error you will want to save your file as a supported file type. If your instructor needs you to submit a file type that is not supported, you can put that file inside a zipped folder and submit the file that way. However, this method should only be used if your instructor asks you to submit an unsupported file type. If you submit an unsupported file type your instructor didn't ask for, such as a Pages file, your instructor may not be able to open your assignment.

Extension File Type Notes
HTM, HTML, MHT, MHTML  Web DocumentVIULearn strips the <title> tag and text within the tag from user created documents
RTF, PPT, PPS, PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPTX, XML, XLS, TXT, WPD Text Document
JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIF, TIFF Image
SWF, MPG, MPEG, RM, MP3, MP4, M4V, M4A, AVI, WAV, RAM, ASF, MOV, RA Media For media, we would recommend uploading your media to VIUTube and then providing your instructor with the link to the media.

This error message will appear if you click the Add button before a file has been uploaded to the Assignment Submission folder. If you are receiving this error message, check and make sure that your file has finished uploading to the Assignment Submission folder before clicking the Add button. If your file is still uploading, you will see a green progress bar.

If you click the Add a File button and nothing happens or if the page is not loading fully, your Internet Browser may be out of date. VIULearn is supported in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari. Please check and make sure that you have updated to the latest version in one of these Internet Browsers. 

You may also have better luck with getting the page to be responsive if your clear your Internet Browser's cache and cookies and try again WhatisMyBrowser.com is a great resource for checking to see if your Internet Browser is up to date. This website will also provide you instructions on how to update your browser and clear your cache and cookies.