Assignment lessons are great for encouraging student engagement and strengthening understanding of your course material. Assignments can be approved or rejected, and you have the option to send student feedback!
Create an Assignment Lesson
See detailed instructions on how to create an Assignment Lesson in the Course Builder.
Student Assignment Experience in the New Course Builder
Once you have added an Assignment content block to a lesson, your students will be able to make submissions.
They will see your Assignment title, Assignment description, and uploaded template file in the Course Player.
Depending on your configuration, your student will be able to submit a single file from their computer files, provide a text response (e.g. a written response or a link), or include both. After they upload their submission and select Submit Assignment, they have an option to resubmit the assignment, even if the assignment has not been approved yet.
When an assignment is approved or rejected, the learner will see a pop-up notifying them of the approval/rejection when they access the course again. When an assignment is approved, the status will read Approved, the lesson will be marked complete, and the student will not be able to make another submission. When an assignment is rejected, the status will read Rejected, the lesson will remain incomplete, and the student will be required to make another submission.
Student Assignment Experience in the Classic Course Builder
Once you have created an Assignments Lesson, your students will be able to make submissions.
They will see your Assignment title, Content description, and your uploaded template file in the Course Player.
Your student will be able to submit a single file from their computer files, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive. At this time, students can not submit links or files in a Google format, such as Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides. After they upload their submission and select Submit Assignment, they have an option to resubmit the assignment, even if the assignment has not been approved yet.
Submission Notifications
To enable email notifications for the Site Owner, Site Admins, and Course Admins when a student submits an assignment:
- From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
- Select Notifications
- Under Admin Notifications, turn the Assignment Submission toggle On
- Select Save
Learn more about it here: Automated Email Notifications.
Manage Assignment Submissions on Accounts Created on or After January 28th, 2026
Once a student has submitted, the Site Owner, Site Admin, Course Admins or users with a custom role with the corresponding permission will have the following options:
- Search for submissions
- Review submissions
- Send message
- Review submission history
- Review message history
- Approve submission individually and in bulk
- Reject submission individually and in bulk
You can access assignment submissions from all courses by following these instructions:
- From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
- Select Assignments
You can also access assignment submissions for a specific course by following these instructions:
- From your Admin Dashboard, select Products
- Select Courses
- Find the course you want to see the assignment submissions for
- Click on the course name or select Manage
- Select the Assignments tab
Search for the right submission by course name, learner name, or assignment. Navigate between tabs for all submissions, submissions needing a review (unreviewed submissions), or reviewed submissions.
Review, Approve, or Reject Individual Submissions
To review your student's submission:
- Follow the instructions above to open an Assignments table
- Find the desired assignment
- Click on the assignment name
- If the submission includes a file, open the file in a new tab or download it
- Review the file or text submission
- Select Approve (or press A on your keyboard) to approve the assignment and Reject (or press R on your keyboard) to reject the assignment
- Optionally: in the confirmation pop-up, select Send approval email or Send rejection email to send a student an email. You will see an email template that you can customize.
- Confirm your selection (or press Enter on your keyboard)
Once approved, the status will read Approved, the lesson will be marked complete, and the student will not be able to make another submission. This action is final and irreversible. Your student will see a pop-up notifying them of the approval when they access the course again. If you have optionally selected to send a message while approving, you will be prompted to create one on the confirmation pop-up screen.
Once rejected, the status will read Rejected, the lesson will remain incomplete, and the student will be required to make another submission. Your student will see a pop-up notifying them of the rejection when they access the course again. If you have optionally selected to send a message while rejecting, you will be prompted to create one on the confirmation pop-up screen.
If a learner resubmits an assignment that was rejected, an assignment will appear as Pending again and a new assignment attempt will appear on an individual assignment submission screen.
If you would like to keep a copy of the email that you send to your student for reference, select Send me a copy to send a copy to your personal email address. You can also see a copy of all messages sent to a student about each assignment attempt in the Messages History panel of the submission screen. To ensure your student can reply to your emails, make sure you have your desired Reply to email specified in your Site Settings.
Review, Approve, or Reject Submissions in Bulk
The option to approve and reject assignments is available to customers with accounts created on or after January 28, 2026.
To review the submissions in bulk:
- Follow the instructions above to open an Assignments table
- Click the checkbox next to assignments you want to review in bulk
- Click the download icon to download files in bulk
- Select Approve to approve the assignments and Reject to reject the assignments
- Optionally, turn the toggle on to send an email. When selected, you will see an approval/rejection email that you can customize.
- Confirm your selection
Review the Submission and Message History
When opening an individual assignment submission screen, you will see the submission date, how long a learner has been waiting for a review, submissions that you can open in a browser or download, the submission history, and the message history.
The submission history lists all attempts that were submitted by a specific learner for a specific assignment. The most recent unreviewed attempt will have a Pending status badge, while previous attempts will have a Replaced or Rejected badge. The submission history also shows the name of a user that approved/rejected the assignment.
Each submission attempt has its own message history. Select each submission to see messages specific to this assignment attempt that were sent from the assignment menu.
Manage Assignment Submissions on Accounts Created before January 28th, 2026
Once a student has submitted, the Site Owner, Site Admin, or Course Admin, will have the following options:
- Search for Submissions
- Download File
- Send Message
- Approve Submission
- Reject Submission
Search for Submissions
Search for the right submission by file name, student name, or student email. Additionally, the Assignment Table includes two filters: Assignment Status and Course:
- Status: filter for assignments that were Approved, Rejected, or that are still Pending
- Course: filter for assignments based on the course name the assignment less is in
Download File
To review your student's submission:
- From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
- Select Assignments
- Look through your assignment list for the desired assignment OR search and filter
- On the desired assignment, select the 3 dot menu on the right and select Download File
Approving Assignments
Want your students' submissions to be automatically accepted? Check out the Auto-approve submissions feature! Learn more here: Create an Assignments Lesson.
- From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
- Select Assignments
- Look through your assignment list for the desired assignment OR search and filter
- On the desired assignment, select the 3 dot menu on the right and select Approve Submission
- Optionally: in the confirmation popup select Send a message to send a student an email. You will see a rejection email template that you can customize.
- Click Approve to confirm
Once approved, the status will read Approved, the lesson will be marked complete and the student will not be able to make another submission. This action is final and irreversible. If you have optionally selected to send a message while approving, you will be prompted to create it after this confirmation popup.
Rejecting Assignments
- From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
- Select Assignments
- Look through your assignment list for the desired assignment OR search and filter
- On the desired assignment, select the 3 dot menu on the right and select Reject Submission
- Optionally: in the confirmation popup select Send a message to send a student an email. You will see a rejection email template that you can customize.
- Click Reject to confirm
Once rejected, the status will read Rejected, the lesson will be marked incomplete and the student will be required to make another submission. This action is final and irreversible. If you have optionally selected to send a message while approving, you will be prompted to create it after this confirmation popup.
Send Message
To provide student feedback, you can send an email message to your student regarding their submission:
- The 3 dot menu on the right side of the assignment selection
- In the Approve Assignment popup confirmation
- In the Reject Assignment popup confirmation
This will prompt an email modal where you can input your message to a student.
If you would like to keep a copy of the email that you send to your student for reference, select Send Test to send a copy to your personal email address. Once received, select Send to send it off to your student! To ensure your student can reply to your emails, make sure you have your desired Reply to email specified in your Site Settings.
Updating and Deleting Assignment Lessons
If you need to make any changes to your Assignment lesson like updating the text or file included, you can do that at any time. Once you save your changes, students will see the new details reflected in the Course Player. It will not affect previous student submissions.
If you no longer need an Assignment lesson, we do not recommend deleting it if you have had any submissions. Deleting the Assignment lesson is irreversible and deletes all previous submissions permanently. To maintain your records, it's best to set your lesson to Draft. Draft lessons are not visible to students and you will still have access to all previous submissions.