Get Your Learners Taking the Right Actions with Assignments
Unlock learners results through task lists, uploads, essays, and more with LifterLMS Assignments.
How LifterLMS Assignments Gets Learners Taking Action
This webinar walks through LifterLMS Assignments, the add-on that gets learners doing the work instead of just consuming lessons. It covers the three assignment types (task list, essay, and upload), what each looks like for a student, how to review and grade submissions, and how to build all three inside the LifterLMS course builder.
What You’ll Learn
- The three LifterLMS assignment types (task list, essay, upload) and when to use each one
- What each assignment type looks like from the student’s point of view, including autosave behavior
- How to review, grade, and leave remarks on student submissions from LifterLMS Reporting
- How to build a task list, essay, and upload assignment in the course builder, including word count limits and file type restrictions
- How assignments and quizzes differ, and where the two features overlap
Key Takeaways
- Pair your lessons with a task list, essay, or upload assignment so learners apply what they just watched instead of only consuming it
- Use a task list for simple, unambiguous action steps; use an essay when you want a written response with an optional word count; use an upload when the proof of work is a file, image, video, or audio recording
- Restrict upload file types in the builder when you need a specific format, such as PDF only or images only
- Review submissions from LifterLMS Reporting, where you can grade, leave remarks, and mark a submission incomplete if it needs another pass
- Remember the one-assignment-per-lesson limit when planning your course structure, and split content into additional lessons if you need more than one
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. LifterLMS saves the essay as the student writes it, so they can leave and come back later to finish. The submit button only activates once the entry meets any minimum or maximum word count you set, but the draft keeps saving the whole time.
Both are options. In the assignment builder, the Upload type includes a Restrict File Types setting. Leave it off to accept any file (video, image, PDF, Word document, audio) or turn it on and select exactly which formats you want, like PDF only or images only.
Mostly semantics. A quiz question can include an upload type, so quizzes and assignments overlap in what they can do. Use whichever label fits how you talk to your students. Assignments are built for task lists, essays, and open-ended uploads outside a graded quiz flow.
Not as a built-in assignment feature. Submissions are private between the student and the course instructor. For peer feedback, pair assignments with the LifterLMS Social Learning add-on, where students can post their work to the community timeline and comment on it there.
Uploaded files land in your WordPress media library, the same place as any other media on your site. Because of that, very large files are limited by your hosting and WordPress’s own upload limits, the same limits that apply to any other media upload.
No, LifterLMS supports one assignment per lesson, the same as one quiz per lesson. If a lesson needs more than one task list, essay, or upload, split the content into additional lessons rather than stacking multiple assignments on a single lesson.
Full Webinar Transcript
The Three LifterLMS Assignment Types
This webinar is a live demo of the LifterLMS Assignments add-on. There are three assignment types: task list, upload, and essay. We are going to look at how to build each one, and what each one looks like from the student’s side.
This is a sample LifterLMS site, similar to what you get with the LifterLMS 30-day trial, with most of the premium add-ons installed. It has three sample courses loaded, and we are going to start with the student experience before switching over to the builder.
How Task List Assignments Work For Students
On the front end, logged out, a course shows the progress widget, the course syllabus widget, the course description, the instructor information, and the access plans. The lesson content itself stays locked until a student enrolls. For this demo, our test student, Chris Baker, enrolls in the corporate training course through a free access plan and starts at 0% progress.
At the bottom of a LifterLMS lesson there is usually a Mark Complete button, or a Take Quiz button if a quiz is attached. When an assignment is attached, that button becomes a Start Assignment button instead. A lesson can carry both an assignment and a quiz at the same time, and a student has to complete both before the lesson counts as done.
Starting the assignment on this lesson opens a task list, the simplest of the three assignment types. Chris Baker checks off “I have read the employee handbook,” then leaves and comes back later to check off “I have watched the HR training video” and “I have filled out the TPS report.” LifterLMS saves partial progress on a task list, so a student can complete one task now and the rest later. Once every task is checked, the button to complete the assignment becomes active.
Why Course Creators Need Learners Taking Action, Not Just Consuming Content
One way to think about task lists is that they are self-graded. A student either did the work or they did not. If you were teaching someone how to build their first WordPress website, a lesson might ask them to buy a domain name, buy web hosting, and get WordPress installed with a username and password. Those are three tasks, and there is no interpretation involved in whether they got done.
A common problem in the online course and membership industry is that learners get stuck consuming premium content without ever taking action on it. They get excited about a course, watch the videos, maybe download a bonus, but never apply what they are learning. It is easy to put that on the learner, but it is also the course creator’s job to guide people from information into action. That is the whole idea behind assignments: help your learners take action, not just consume content.
How Upload Assignments Work For Students
Moving to the next lesson, Chris Baker starts an upload assignment. An upload can accept nearly any file type: video, image, PDF, Word document, or audio file. It is entirely up to the course creator what they want the student to upload for a given lesson. In this demo, the upload is a headshot photo meant to illustrate a company value.
Once selected, the file uploads and the assignment gets submitted. The submission shows as 0% and pending because it has not been graded yet. If a course has prerequisites in place, a student cannot move forward past an ungraded or unapproved upload until it gets reviewed.
Creative Ways To Use Upload Assignments
An upload assignment is only as limited as your imagination. A yoga instructor could ask students to upload a photo of themselves in a specific pose. A strength training coach could ask for a form-check photo or video, and grade it with a required minimum score, like 80%, before the student advances, so nobody gets hurt practicing bad form.
A language course could ask students to record themselves speaking a phrase and upload the audio file. A business course could ask for a one-page PDF pitch covering the idea, the unique selling proposition, and the supporting research. Whatever the lesson is teaching, the upload type lets a student hand back real, concrete proof of work.
How Essay Assignments Work For Students
The essay assignment type is a long-answer response. This lesson’s essay has a minimum and maximum word count configured, along with a live word counter, so a student can see exactly where they stand as they write. A course creator does not have to use either limit, but both are available if you want to enforce a range.
Just like the other assignment types, an essay autosaves as the student writes. If they leave partway through and come back later, their draft is still there. That is especially useful for a long-form response someone might not finish in one sitting. Once a student submits, the essay locks for grading and shows a pending status, the same as an upload.
An essay works well for a written reflection on what a student took away from a lesson, a poetry submission in a writing course, or a business plan document in an entrepreneurship course. The format is flexible: whatever you want a student to explain in their own words in writing fits the essay type.
Grading Task List Submissions In LifterLMS Reporting
Switching to the WordPress admin view, LifterLMS Reporting has an Assignments tab, the same way it has one for quizzes. Opening the corporate training course from Reporting shows the recent event where Chris Baker passed the task list assignment with a 100%, along with a timestamp for when each task was checked off. That level of detail is useful if you want granular insight into how a student worked through a task list, not just whether they finished it.
Even though task lists are self-graded, a course creator can still open a submission, start a review, and leave remarks, or mark it incomplete and ask the student to try again. That matters if a student checked every box but clearly did not do the work the timestamps describe.
Grading Upload Submissions With Remarks
The second submission in this course is Chris Baker’s upload, still showing a 0% pending grade. Opening it starts a review, where the course creator can view the uploaded file, leave remarks, and assign a percentage grade. In this demo, Chris Baker’s upload earns a 96%, and saving the review immediately makes that grade and any remarks visible to the student the next time they visit the lesson.
Grading Essay Submissions With Remarks
The third submission is Chris Baker’s essay. Opening the review shows the full submitted text. A course creator can leave remarks and assign whatever percentage grade fits, independent of the task list or upload grades on other lessons in the same course. Reporting keeps every submission organized by course and by student, so a course creator can review one student’s full history or scan a whole course’s pending submissions.
How To Create A New Assignment In The Course Builder
Back in the course builder, a checkmark icon on each lesson opens the assignments area. Adding a new lesson and clicking that icon lets a course creator either build a brand-new assignment or clone one that already exists elsewhere in the course.
A new assignment starts with general settings: a title, an automatically generated permalink that can be customized, and an option to delete the assignment entirely. Above the assignment content, a course creator can add a Video Embed URL or an Audio Embed URL, useful for recording spoken instructions instead of, or alongside, written ones. Below that sits the regular WordPress editor for writing out instructions in text. From there, the Assignment Type dropdown switches between Task List, Essay, and Upload.
How To Build A Task List Assignment
For a task list, the builder shows an “Add Task” button. Each click adds one line item to the list, like “ID badge obtained,” “name card on desk,” or “step three” and “step four” for a more literal checklist. The instructional content above the task list can use the regular WordPress editor, or the same quick video and audio embed fields available on every assignment type. Everything here autosaves as you build it.
How To Build An Essay Assignment
Switching the Assignment Type to Essay exposes a Passing Percentage field along with two optional settings: Minimum Word Count and Maximum Word Count. A course creator does not have to use either word count setting, or can require just one, like a minimum of a thousand words with no upper limit. Instructions above the essay field can again use video, audio, or the standard WordPress editor.
How To Build An Upload Assignment And Restrict File Types
Switching the Assignment Type to Upload exposes a Passing Percentage field and a Restrict File Types setting. Leaving it off allows any file type. Turning it on opens a list of allowed formats a course creator can select from, so an upload can be locked to images only, PDF only, MP4 video only, or any other combination that fits the lesson. A language teacher who wants students to record themselves speaking a phrase, for example, could restrict the upload to audio and video formats and let the student pick either one.
Why Assignments And Quizzes Overlap
Assignments and quizzes overlap by design, and a lot of that is semantics. In a traditional classroom, a quiz happens during class time and an assignment happens outside it. Online, that distinction mostly disappears, since the whole world is the classroom. The LifterLMS quiz system even has its own upload question type, so a course creator can put a file-upload requirement inside either a quiz or an assignment and get a similar result. Use whichever label matches how you talk to your own students, whether that is “assignment,” “action step,” “to-do,” or “assessment.”
How Assignment Grades Fit Into The Overall Course Grade
At the time of this webinar, an assignment’s grade was tracked on its own, separate from a lesson or course’s overall grade, the same way a zero-weight quiz question can give feedback without affecting the final score. The LifterLMS team’s stated plan was to fold assignment grades into the overall grading system so a course creator could assign assignments a specific weight, similar to how quiz questions are weighted. If you are building a course today, check the current LifterLMS Assignments settings for grading and weighting options, since that part of the add-on was still evolving when this webinar was recorded.
How To Add New Assignments To A Course Learners Have Already Started
Adding an assignment to a lesson inside a course that students have already completed changes those students’ progress percentage, since a course with a new, uncompleted lesson item is no longer 100% done for anyone who already finished it. That is a version control problem more than an assignments problem. One practical approach: add new assignments to lessons near the end of the course that existing students have not reached yet. For a bigger restructure, clone the course, hide the original with the catalog visibility setting once existing students have finished it, and build the new assignments into the cloned version for anyone enrolling going forward.
Can Assignments Support Peer Feedback Between Students
LifterLMS Assignments does not currently include a built-in way for students to review or comment on each other’s submissions; assignment feedback runs between a single student and the course instructor. For peer feedback or group work, the Social Learning add-on already lets students post to a community timeline where classmates can comment, which covers a similar need in a more open, conversational format rather than a formal graded exchange.
How To Get LifterLMS Assignments For Your Site
LifterLMS Assignments is available on its own or as part of the Infinity bundle. Anyone on the Universe bundle can upgrade to Infinity from inside their account, or add Assignments individually if they only want that one add-on rather than the whole bundle. The Infinity bundle also includes the weekly LifterLMS Office Hours Mastermind call, a standing community session where members bring questions about their courses, their tech stack, and their teaching approach.
