NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY

Guidelines for Submitting Assignments 

These guidelines are intended to explain the overall process for submitting assignments through the NCU website. 

 NOTE: Learners are required to submit their work to mentors electronically via the NCU website.  However, other types of course work (e.g., audio and videotapes, workbooks, and lengthy essays) may be easier to review/evaluate on hard copy. In these cases, contact your mentor to make arrangements for submitting the work. 

Assignment Cover Sheet – In some instances, mentors may require that you use an Assignment Cover Sheet, this form is located on the Learner website, under Common Documents. 

How To Submit Assignments Through The NCU Website : Learners send assignments to their mentors via the course work area located on the Course Forum screen of the Learners website.   

• How to Get To The Course work Area – After you log into the Learner website (if you are a new Learner refer to appendix A  “Tour of the Learner Website” for instructions in setting up your Login and Password) , go to the left side of the screen under the Heading COURSE FORUM and click on your current course code (e.g., LS6010); this will take you into the course forum area for your current course.
  
  Look toward the top of the Course Forum screen for the heading course work, to the right of the word course work you will see two icons, a + icon which is the actual course work upload file and a ? icon which is a help text file (you can even watch a movie which explains how to submit course work if you have media player on your computer).

• Sending Assignments to Your Mentor – After you have completed your assignment and saved the file, go into the Learner website, go to the Course Forum area into the course work section and click on the + icon.
  
  Enter the following information or take the following actions: 

• Assignment – Type the assignment number
• Course work File:  Browse  - Click on browse to go into your browser and retrieve your course work/assignment, this is very much like sending an attachment. You should see a pop up window with “Choose File” in the upper left side and right below that, “Look in”. Look in refers to the path or place that you have saved your course work/assignment to (e.g.., C drive, my documents, A drive/disc). After you “point” your computer to look at the correct path/place, select the course work file by highlighting /double left click on it. An image of the course work file will drop into the course work file box.
• Read the Academic Integrity statement, click on the box to indicate you have read the statement and then click on SEND.

• How the Mentor Knows You Have Sent in an Assignment – After you click SEND, the assignment is sent into the course work area on the Mentor’s site and a message is automatically generated in the message area of the mentor’s site telling the mentor that course work is waiting from a Learner (refer to Appendix A  Tour of the Learner Website, for an explanation of how the message system works.).

• How You Know The Mentor Has Graded/Returned Your Assignment – After the mentor reviews and grades your assignments, the mentor will upload the assignment and send the graded assignment to your Course Forum course work area. You will receive a message “course work updated” (refer to Appendix A Tour of the Learner Website for an explanation of how the message system works). Go to the Course Forum area, into the course work section to view and download your graded assignment.

NOTE:  In many instances the mentor will use track changes and/or highlight to indicate suggested corrections/feedback. If the mentor indicates that you need to resubmit the file, you must SAVE the file first before you work on it. Open the graded course work file only to VIEW the file. 

Edit Files Feature – A feature of the course work upload file is the ability to edit/replace an uploaded assignment file. The feature works like this: suppose you had just submitted your assignment (i.e., hit SEND) and then you realized that you needed to correct/change the assignment; you could go into the original assignment, make the correction/change, resave the file and then go back into the Learner website course work area, click on the EDIT pencil  (located on the left side of the course work file) and re-upload the assignment . The replacement assignment would overwrite the original file. You can only use the edit file feature if the mentor has not opened/graded the assignment. 

File Status – The fourth column on the course work header is Status. When you first submit the course work to the mentor, the status display is NEW; when the mentor sends the graded course work back the status displayed is GRADED; if you use the edit pencil to replace a file the status displayed is RENEWED. 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONCERNING SUBMITTING ASSIGNMENTS 

Software Formats: NCU uses Microsoft Word, and to assure the widest compatibility, we use Rich Text Format (.rtf) for the information we routinely send out.  “rtf” extensions are readable and easily sent as email attachments by virtually all systems.  ”rtf” provides direct readability for previous versions of Word and several other word processing software, including WordPerfect.   We also can accept files created by the other Microsoft Office tools: Excel, PowerPoint, and Access.  Spreadsheets in .csv (comma separated values) are acceptable, but sometimes spacing format is lost by this transmission.  Learners and mentors should establish at the beginning of each new course what software works for them. 

Assignments Sent from Learner to Mentor: The mentor specifies the content and format of Learner submissions, but several things are required for all submissions. 

First, use a header containing your name, the assignment number and course code. Some mentors will print the files so that they can take them along on travel, etc.  It’s easy to get them mixed up.  Putting your identification information in a header makes it easy and automatic. 

Second, save and name your file so that it can be identified as shown in the below example: 

nameinitialcccc-assgn#

name = Last Name 

initial  = Initial of first name

cccc = course code,e.g., PSY5003(upper case for letters)

- = dash after course code

assgn# = Assignment number (based on syllabus) 

Third, specify the “save as type” based on the type of document; text files are saved as.rtf,

an excel spread sheet is saved as .xls, etc.

EXAMPLES:  If Dora Everest is submitting assignment 2 for her Psychology course, PSY5003 , and it is a text file and she saves it in rtf it would look like this: everestdPSY5003-2.rtf.  If Dora Everest is submitting assignment 2 for her Business course, BUS5003, and the assignment is an excel spreadsheet, it would look like this: everestdBUS5003-2.xls.  Some software programs only allow one period to separate file name from the file extension ( the extension is based on the “save as type” you choose).

Assignments Returned by Mentor  to the Learner:  Many software programs have tools (sometimes called Track Changes) for editing and commenting on documents, but not all combinations of mentor and Learner will be able to use them.  Whatever works for the Learner and mentor is okay with the University.  The simplest system that seems to work for any software is to use the strikeout font for deletions and put comments or additions in all capital letters. Comments can be made either in the body of the document, at the end.  

There is a place on the Course Forum course work area for both an assignment grade and a writing grade. The scale for the writing grade is explained in this Learner Handbook, Section 8. Learners should expect that the grade on all written assignments will be influenced by the quality of the writing.  

The mentor may or may not decrease the grade for the assignment because of poor writing.  That decision is left to the mentor and should be documented in the syllabus. 

When the course is complete, the final grade is submitted online and the grade will appear in the course review area of the learner section of the web page and the Registrar will send an email notification to the Learner. The course and grade will appear on any subsequent transcripts.