Offline assignments.
Not every assignment lives online. A worksheet handed out on paper, a homework book collected on Monday, a practical done at the bench — the work happens off the platform, but the record of it should not. YESS offline assignments give a teacher a clean place to log that paper work and grade it by hand: create the assignment against a subject, class, term and due date, then enter a score per student with the percentage computed for you. This handbook is deliberately honest about the name — 'offline' here means the work was done off-platform, not that the app runs without a connection — and about where this record does and does not flow.
- 2assignment types
- 1grade per student
- 5chapters
- ≈8 minto read
Prologue
What 'offline' actually means#
This is the most important paragraph in the book, because the module's name is easy to misread. "Offline" here describes the work, not the app. It means paper homework, workbooks, bench practicals — assignments completed off the platform — that a teacher then records and grades on the platform. It does not mean the app keeps working when the WiFi drops. There is no on-device queue, no local storage that syncs when a connection returns, no offline-first anything. Creating an assignment and saving a grade are ordinary online actions that need a live connection like any other screen.
With that set straight, the feature is simple and genuinely useful. The desk lives at /dashboard/offline-assignments: a teacher creates an off-platform assignment, it joins a list of their assignments, and each one has a grade sheet where scores are entered student by student. This book walks that flow and is candid about the two things to keep in mind — the name, and where these grades travel.
The work happens on paper; the record of it belongs on the platform — clean, per-student, with the percentage done for you.
Chapter one
Creating an offline assignment#
Open /dashboard/offline-assignments and click Create Assignment. The form asks for what any assignment needs to be filed correctly:
The fields on an offline assignment
- 1
Title & description
A name for the assignment and an optional description of what it covered — the paper worksheet, the workbook exercise, the practical.
- 2
Subject & class
The subject it belongs to and the class-section it was set for — so the record is filed against the right roster and the right course.
- 3
Due date
When the work was due. The assignment is stamped with an assigned date (today) as well.
- 4
Max score
The mark the assignment is out of, defaulting to 100. Each grade is scored against this, and the percentage is computed from it automatically.
Two things the platform insists on before it will save. First, you must resolve to a real staff record — the assignment is filed under you as the teacher, and grades are stamped with you as the grader. Second, you must have a specific academic year and term selected in the top bar (not the "all" view), because an offline assignment is anchored to a term. Save, and it appears in your assignments list, ordered by due date; the action is written to the audit log.
Chapter two
Grading by hand#
Select an assignment from the list and its grade sheet opens beside it. Each row is a student with a score box and a status badge. Type a score, move off the field, and YESS saves it: it stamps the grade as graded, records you as the grader and the time, and computes the percentage from the score and the max automatically — you never do the division. The unique one-grade-per-student rule means re-entering a score updates the existing grade rather than adding a duplicate.
Behind the score box the grade record can hold more than a number — the schema carries a submission type (paper, photo, or none), a photo link, submission notes, and written feedback, plus richer states like late or missing. Today the screen focuses on the essential act: entering the mark. The extra fields exist for the fuller grading surface planned next.
Chapter three
Where these grades live#
The second thing to be honest about, alongside the name, is where an offline grade travels — because today the answer is: it stays here. These assignments and their grades are a self-contained record. They do not use the normal online-assignment tables, and a score entered here does not yet flow into the gradebook, the term average, or a report card. The assignment carries a weight field, but nothing consumes it yet.
That is not a bug so much as an unfinished bridge, and it matters for how you use the feature. If your school needs paper homework to count toward a student's term grade, that wiring is not in place — treat this as a clean, auditable log of off-platform work and its marks, not as a gradebook input. When the bridge is built, these grades will contribute like any other; until then, they are a faithful record that lives in its own place.
Chapter four
What this desk does well#
Four things done right
- 1
Filed against the real spine
An offline assignment is anchored to a subject, a class-section, an academic year and a term, and to you as a real staff member — so a paper worksheet is recorded against the same academic structure as everything else, not floating loose.
- 2
Percentage done for you
Enter a score against the assignment's max and the platform computes the percentage on save through a database trigger — the maths is consistent and never hand-typed.
- 3
One grade per student
A unique rule ties one grade to one student per assignment, so re-entering a mark corrects the existing grade instead of creating a duplicate — the sheet can never disagree with itself.
- 4
Writes locked to the right people
Creating assignments and saving grades are gated at the database to the assignment's own teacher or a permitted LMS user — a recent fix closed the gap where these writes were silently blocked, so the desk now works as intended.
Planned & honest gaps
What is still to come#
The record-and-grade core is real and now writes correctly. The name's promise of true offline capture, the roster convenience, and the gradebook bridge are honestly not there yet. The straight list:
Five honest gaps
- 1
True offline capture
Despite the name, there is no on-device offline queue or sync. Capturing an assignment or a grade with no connection and syncing it when one returns — the thing 'offline' implies — is a substantial planned feature, not today's behaviour.
- 2
The gradebook bridge
Offline grades are an island — they do not flow into the gradebook, the term average, or report cards, and the assignment's weight field is unused. Wiring these marks into the grade pipeline is planned.
- 3
Whole-roster grade entry
The grade sheet shows students as grade rows exist; seeding a blank row per enrolled student, and a bulk grade sheet for a whole class, are planned so large classes can be graded in one pass.
- 4
The richer grade record
Submission type, a photo of the work, submission notes, written feedback, and late/missing states all exist in the data but are not yet surfaced on the screen. Exposing them is planned.
- 5
A completion summary
A per-assignment summary (graded, submitted, pending, missing, class average) is computed in the platform but not shown here. Surfacing it on the assignment card is planned.
Adjacent modules
Where offline work connects#
The offline record sits under the LMS, is anchored to the academic structure, and is designed — one day — to feed the gradebook and the report card.
Adjacent modules
- 12LMS & virtual classesOffline assignments live under the LMS permission set and sit alongside online assignments, courses, and materials.
- 07Gradebook & assessmentThe planned bridge carries an offline mark into the gradebook and term average — today these grades stay in their own record.
- 09Report cards & transcriptsOnce wired to the gradebook, paper homework would contribute to the report card the way any other assessment does.
- 04Academic structureEvery offline assignment is anchored to a subject, class-section, academic year and term from the academic structure.
- 55Plagiarism & integrityPaper work is graded here off-platform, outside the text-similarity check that only ever sees typed online submissions.
Tutorial
Do it step by step#
Record a paper assignment and grade it by hand — from the worksheet on the desk to a mark with its percentage. Four steps, all the teacher's.
- 1
Set your term context
In the top bar, choose a specific academic year and term (not the 'all' view) — an offline assignment is anchored to a term, so the platform needs to know which one before it will save.You also need a real staff record — the assignment is filed under you as the teacher.
- 2
Create the assignment
Open /dashboard/offline-assignments, click Create Assignment, and enter the title, an optional description, the subject and class, the due date, and the mark it is out of. Save — it joins your assignments list. - 3
Enter the marks
Select the assignment, and grade student by student in the sheet beside it: type a score, move off the field, and it saves — the percentage is computed for you and you are stamped as the grader.Re-typing a student's score corrects the existing grade — one grade per student, never a duplicate.
- 4
Keep it as the record it is
Treat the graded sheet as a clean, audited log of off-platform work. Remember these marks do not yet flow into the gradebook or report card — that bridge is planned — so record anything that must count toward the term grade through the online gradebook for now.
Paper work, given a proper home — filed against the right class, graded by hand, and kept as a faithful record until the gradebook bridge is built.