Assessment Settings

Assessment settings give you precise control over how a task is delivered to students. Beyond the questions themselves, you can attach supporting materials, control when students can access the task, require a declaration before starting, and define exactly how many attempts are permitted and when each one is due.

Configuring these options correctly protects the integrity of your assessment outcomes and ensures students receive the right level of structure and support throughout their learning journey.

What's Covered in This Article

This article walks through the configuration options available in the settings of an assessment task.

• Supporting Documents: Attaching templates or reference materials directly to the task.
• Delivery Settings: Configuring trainer activation and agreement declarations.
• Attempt Limits: Defining how many times a student can submit and what triggers a new attempt.
• Tiered Due Times: Setting deadlines for each successive attempt.

Who can do this: Content Editors with Program permission can configure assessment settings. Administrators with RTO Settings permission can set organisation-wide defaults for attempt limits

Supporting Documents

You can attach files directly to an assessment so that students have access to necessary materials, such as templates, case studies, or learner guides without leaving the task.

1. In the assessment editor, navigate to the Supporting Documents section.
2. Click Upload a file or drag and drop your file into the upload area.
3. Repeat for any additional files.

Note: Individual files cannot exceed 500 MB.

Delivery Settings

Trainer Activation Required

Enable this setting to prevent students from accessing the assessment until a trainer deliberately unlocks it. This is recommended for supervised assessments or tasks where timing is critical.

Toggle on "Require trainer to activate activity manually" in the assessment settings.

Once published, this setting cannot be changed. When enabled, trainers must navigate to Class Management > Activity Activation to release the task for each student. See Content Activation for Students for the full workflow.

Agreement Declaration

When enabled, students must read and accept a declaration before they can begin the assessment. This is useful for confirming academic integrity, consent, or acknowledgement of assessment conditions.

Enable the Agreement Declaration toggle under Other Settings.

Internal Notes

The Internal Notes field allows you to record guidance or context that is visible to trainers only — for example, instructions for administering a supervised exam, or notes about the intent behind specific questions. Students cannot see this field.

Attempt Limits

Attempt limits control how many times a student can submit a self-marking assessment. This setting applies only to assessments that include auto-marked question types (True/False, Multiple Choice, Selection).

Enabling Attempt Limits

Toggle on "Attempt Limit" in the assessment settings, then set the maximum number of attempts permitted. The value must be 1 or greater.

Note: Attempt limit settings cannot be changed after an assessment is published.

What Counts as an Attempt

A new attempt is consumed when:

• A student submits and one or more auto-marked questions are answered incorrectly.
• A trainer requests a resubmission for the whole assessment or selected questions.

When a student reaches their final attempt, the submission is automatically sent to the trainer for marking - regardless of whether the auto-marked answers are correct.

Note: Once the limit is reached, the work is automatically sent to the trainer for final marking, regardless of the answers provided

Organisation-Wide Defaults

Administrators can set default attempt limit behaviour for all new assessments via RTO Settings. The available options are:

• Set per assessment — off by default: New assessments have attempt limits turned off. Content editors can enable them individually.
• Set per assessment — on by default: New assessments inherit the default attempt limit and due time values set by the administrator. Content editors can still adjust these for individual assessments.

Existing assessments are not affected when the default is changed.

Tiered Due Times

When attempt limits are enabled, you can assign a specific due time to each attempt. This allows you to set a longer window for the first attempt and shorter windows for subsequent attempts — encouraging students to engage seriously from the outset.

Due times are configured per attempt (e.g., Attempt 1: 14 days, Attempt 2: 2 days).

When the Clock Starts

• Attempt 1: The due time begins when the assessment is opened by the student, or when it is activated by the trainer (if Trainer Activation is enabled).
• Subsequent attempts: The due time begins immediately after the previous attempt is submitted.

Auto-Submission

If a student does not submit before the due time expires, the system automatically submits their work. Unanswered questions are marked NS (Not Satisfactory) and the submission is sent to the trainer for marking. Students see a pop-up notification when their work is auto-submitted.

Trainer Overrides

Trainers can manually set or adjust due dates for individual students when activating a task or requesting a resubmission. A trainer-set due date overrides the assessment's default due time for that student's current attempt. See Content Activation for Students and Requesting Assessment Resubmission for details.

Related Articles

• What is an Assessment?
• RTO Settings (organisation defaults)